"The first casualty, when war comes, is truth"
Chlorine gas and nerve agents, just like the above quote, were spawned by World War I. If there were ever a war where human ingenuity for destruction was revealed (Google "flechette bullets" if you're unfamiliar), it was that one, the 101th anniversary of America's entry into which last Friday no sane individual celebrated.
Yesterday in Douma, Syria, if anything can be believed, up to 70 people, including children, were exposed to a mixture of chlorine and some other gas, courtesy of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The doctors on scene claim the weapon had to release more than just chlorine, because people tend not to die quickly from chlorine gas exposure proved they are removed from the source.
The Syrians and Russians, of course, deny the use of chemical weapons in Douma, one of the few remaining holdouts of the Syrian opposition. The Russians have also vehemently denied wiping a double agent's door in Salisbury, England, with novichok (Russian for "newcomer"), a nerve agent developed and manufactured exclusively in the 1970s and 1980s in Shikhany, a defense laboratory north of Volgograd on the Volga River. (It has since been synthesized by chemists in Iran, so sleep well, knowing two of our avowed enemies are capable of weaponizing it.)
Shikhany doesn't appear on most maps, but lest you think Russia holds the monopoly on secret cities or undercover laboratories or lethal nerve agents, ask ranchers 50 miles north of Dugway, Utah, why they lost so many sheep back in March 1968. Dugway was home to the Dugway Proving Grounds, a highly secure military testing facility about the size of Rhode Island, where the VX nerve agent was developed and (at least once) released through the air, with (at least one) unintended consequence (the military still denies these sheep were killed by drifting VX, because thousands of sheep (or scores of children) routinely fall over dead every day from natural causes, it's an evolutionary trait we civilian humans wouldn't understand).
The Russians claim they had to develop novichok, the next generation of nerve agent, because word leaked out the U.S. was developing VX. Thus it follows that everyone will eventually kill everyone else, because Homo sapiens, the intelligent one, is most advanced over its ancestors when it comes to lying.
Would the Syrian opposition have the time or energy to fake these images? Would Larry Lemming like to save the taxpayers a whole bunch of money by making the security footage available? These are questions that should be answered, yet won't be, to the benefit of the truth, over the coming days. Instead, leaders on every side will prevaricate and obfuscate in order to protect themselves and their livelihoods, under the guise of protecting us from unpleasantries, or of revealing the truth. Here is the truth during times of war: Our leaders are, for the most part, unqualified to slop hogs, and rose to their positions because they kept their noses down or their hearing on pause when, days earlier, the exposed incompetents above them asked "now whose with me?"
The Syrians and Russians, of course, deny the use of chemical weapons in Douma, one of the few remaining holdouts of the Syrian opposition. The Russians have also vehemently denied wiping a double agent's door in Salisbury, England, with novichok (Russian for "newcomer"), a nerve agent developed and manufactured exclusively in the 1970s and 1980s in Shikhany, a defense laboratory north of Volgograd on the Volga River. (It has since been synthesized by chemists in Iran, so sleep well, knowing two of our avowed enemies are capable of weaponizing it.)
Shikhany doesn't appear on most maps, but lest you think Russia holds the monopoly on secret cities or undercover laboratories or lethal nerve agents, ask ranchers 50 miles north of Dugway, Utah, why they lost so many sheep back in March 1968. Dugway was home to the Dugway Proving Grounds, a highly secure military testing facility about the size of Rhode Island, where the VX nerve agent was developed and (at least once) released through the air, with (at least one) unintended consequence (the military still denies these sheep were killed by drifting VX, because thousands of sheep (or scores of children) routinely fall over dead every day from natural causes, it's an evolutionary trait we civilian humans wouldn't understand).
The Russians claim they had to develop novichok, the next generation of nerve agent, because word leaked out the U.S. was developing VX. Thus it follows that everyone will eventually kill everyone else, because Homo sapiens, the intelligent one, is most advanced over its ancestors when it comes to lying.
Would the Syrian opposition have the time or energy to fake these images? Would Larry Lemming like to save the taxpayers a whole bunch of money by making the security footage available? These are questions that should be answered, yet won't be, to the benefit of the truth, over the coming days. Instead, leaders on every side will prevaricate and obfuscate in order to protect themselves and their livelihoods, under the guise of protecting us from unpleasantries, or of revealing the truth. Here is the truth during times of war: Our leaders are, for the most part, unqualified to slop hogs, and rose to their positions because they kept their noses down or their hearing on pause when, days earlier, the exposed incompetents above them asked "now whose with me?"
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