Apr 9, 2017 It's clear who's intelligent and who isn't from this thread. So many people with opinions supported by... absolutely nothing. Funny thing is I actually agree with a lot of people I usually disagree with on broader issues. The attack was justified as proclaimed by many Syrians, but there are questions moving forward. Hopefully those were thought out beforehand.
Apr 9, 2017 People strongly connected to the situation around the world lauding the decision as well as evidence of a chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.
Apr 9, 2017 Same. I've be arguing with friends of mine who I usually agree with on this issue and defending associates who I usually disagree with. What I find astonishing is those on the far-left (and some one far-right) trying to dispute that Assad wasn't the one who used the chemical weapons. That it was the rebels or that the trump administration is working with Russia to create this big smoke screen. The hypocrisy here is just....crazy. You can't criticize the president for entertaining conspiracy theories and then go and do the exact same. Not only that but our intelligence agencies have concluded the attack was conducted by Assad. The response I usually get is "but it's good to be skeptical! We shouldn't trust his administration!" So is it ok to be skeptical about Russia meddling in our election in order to help Donald Trump to get elected? Usually after I ask that they don't have anything else to say lol.
Apr 10, 2017 Our branch of intelligence has lied to us for a century lol. Vietnam? Iraq? Even in the 2013 chemical attack the Obama administration might have not been actually sure what happened: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin This doesn't mean that everything the government says is automatically false. I think there's a pretty decent chance the Assad regime is responsible. However, believing it solely on the basis of "the intelligence organizations said so" is foolish.
Apr 10, 2017 The thing is, it wasn't so much that intelligence had lied to us but more so that the bush administration did. The Bush administration directed intelligence agencies to find evidence of WMD's in Iraq rather than see if any really existed. In the CIA report that the bush administration used to justify going into Iraq, there were clear doubts that the CIA had. The bush administration simply did not tell those doubts to the general public. Also, this isn't just U.S. intelligence who pointed at Assad. So did European intelligence. We have eye-witness reports on the ground who said they saw Syrian jets in the skies. It doesn't get more concrete than that tbh.
