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Young Freud posted:Nice to see that this is moving quicker than with Mubarak. I'm guessing the military is going to sit this one out. They might go the Turkey route and use it as an excuse to declare themselves "defenders of the Ideals of the Revolution" [which happen to include keeping the country reasonably secular].
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Dec 4, 2012 21:53
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McDowell posted:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20576197 I fail to see what his problem is, other than perfunctory "gently caress da police" bitching. The Patriot isn't designed to take out ICBMs anyways.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:30
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This is the best video from Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXxUnzximuY
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Dec 4, 2012 22:49
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Is that a cluster bomb shell made into a trike?
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Dec 4, 2012 22:54
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Sword of Chomsky posted:Is that a cluster bomb shell made into a trike? Yep, rather heartwarming after seeing kids blown up by cluster bombs.
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Dec 4, 2012 22:56
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DarkCrawler posted:Why, though? He's no use to them if he isn't in power. Because he HAS been very useful to them over the years. Acting as the conduit to get Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, probably buying plenty of weapons from Iran for the Syrian military, and well, the whole "gently caress the west" thing they share in common. Plus Syria has pretty much been Irans only ally in the Middle East. I think if Assad needed to flee he would probably be welcomed with open arms in Iran. Probably more so than Russia.
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Dec 4, 2012 23:23
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Rent-A-Cop posted:The US could probably bring down enough diplomatic pressure to make him unwelcome anywhere on Earth. Which would mean it was only a matter of time before rebels pulled him out of some hole and cut off his head. Russia could take him in and there isn't poo poo we'd do about it. Putin turning down a request for help/asylum would make him look weak or afraid of helping a friend if it angers the US/NATO/Santa/etc and he doesn't want to risk that cult of personality he's been building for the last decade.
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Dec 4, 2012 23:38
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Iranian TV shows off 'captured US ScanEagle drone' US Navy is, of course, denying that any of its drones are missing. 
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Dec 5, 2012 00:14
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Crasscrab posted:Iranian TV shows off 'captured US ScanEagle drone' quote:Rear Adm Fadavi said that "such drones are usually launched from large warships". Oh Iran, never change. Edit: A picture that gives a good idea of the size of the ScanEagle and it's launch/recovery system. You can see a trailer set up for launching in the middle, with another trailer folded out into its recovery position in the left background. 
Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 00:37
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Kaal posted:Deployment isn't as difficult as some might think. To hear some here talk about it, chemical warfare is a mere military inconvenience that is more than likely to hurt the wielder than the target. Or that chemical warfare doesn't deserve to be treated as a WMD. But that simply isn't the case. I think it's fair to say it can be considered a "WMD" in the context of a military capable of deploying it. Artillery, air force, etc. But a lot of the pushback on if it is a "WMD" exists in the context of justifications for invading Iraq in 2003. "What if terrorists had a nuclear weapon?" Well, obviously that would be terrible. "So what if they had a different Weapon of Mass Destruction?" Oh yeah, let's lock that poo poo down. But, in the context of terrorist deployment, the Madrid train bombings were far more deadly than the Tokyo sarin attacks.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:17
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Haha, holy poo poo my dad flies RC hobby planes bigger than that. You really can just start up the engine and then do a running throw to get them into the air.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:19
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How does Iran seem to manage to keep capturing drones more or less intact?
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Dec 5, 2012 01:22
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Torpor posted:How does Iran seem to manage to keep capturing drones more or less intact? Hell they cruise at 55mph and have a ceiling of 19,500'. You could go up in a light aircraft and catch one with a big butterfly net. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 01:30
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Torpor posted:How does Iran seem to manage to keep capturing drones more or less intact? The first one wasn't intact and the pictures were fairly obviously of a mockup they built for propaganda purposes, and God only knows where/if they got this one from. Hell, it might have crashed in Afghanistan a while back and only now got smuggled across the border.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:33
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Hell they cruise at 55mph and have a ceiling of 19,500'. You could go up in a light aircraft and catch one with a big butterfly net. In my mind, this is now how they did it. This *has* to be how they did it.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:34
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Crasscrab posted:Iranian TV shows off 'captured US ScanEagle drone' ScanEagles are used by a variety of governments outside of the US. They clock in at a bit over $3 million, and IIRC we've been selling them to the Saudis and the UAE. It's quite possibly a CIA drone, but it's also possibly someone else's.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:36
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I'd think the CIA would use something better.
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Dec 5, 2012 01:52
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Best Friends posted:I think it's fair to say it can be considered a "WMD" in the context of a military capable of deploying it. Artillery, air force, etc. But a lot of the pushback on if it is a "WMD" exists in the context of justifications for invading Iraq in 2003. "What if terrorists had a nuclear weapon?" Well, obviously that would be terrible. "So what if they had a different Weapon of Mass Destruction?" Oh yeah, let's lock that poo poo down. But, in the context of terrorist deployment, the Madrid train bombings were far more deadly than the Tokyo sarin attacks. I think that folks really need to stop thinking that the Tokyo sarin attacks represent some stirring indictment on the efficacy of chemical warfare. Five guys each dropped a little baggy of sarin on the ground of a subway train, amounting to only 800 mL in total, and they still killed 13 people and hospitalized 1,000. The attack was bungled from the get-go, seeing as sarin is completely inappropriate for a attacking a confined target like a subway since it is quick acting and unstable. More than half of the fatalities occurred when passengers threw the baggies out of the train and out onto the platforms where they could catch the wind and spread. If they had used a different chemical, or released it in an open public area, they could have killed hundreds or even thousands with that small amount of material. Now I understand that there's pushback about NATO's position on chemical weapons as WMDs, but I think that people are only deluding themselves if they think that chemical weapons are anything except utterly terrifying and effective. And though the WMD accusations against Iraq turned out to be false, that does not mean they weren't extremely serious. The Iraq-Iran War saw widescale usage of chemical weapons by Iraq, with tens of thousands of civilians being killed between 1981 and 1991. In 1988, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in Halabja. He killed 5,000 civilians immediately and thousands more died later. And in spite of the massive casualties, in truth it was a relatively small attack (100 sorties; the USS Kitty Hawk alone generated that many sorties every day of the month-long invasion of Iraq) on a fairly small city of 80,000. quote:The five-hour attack began early in the evening of March 16, 1988, following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks, when Iraqi MiG and Mirage aircraft began dropping chemical bombs on Halabja's residential areas, far from the besieged Iraqi army base on the outskirts of the town. According to regional Kurdish rebel commanders, Iraqi aircraft conducted up to 14 bombings in sorties of seven to eight planes each; helicopters coordinating the operation were also seen. Eyewitnesses told of clouds of smoke billowing upward "white, black and then yellow"', rising as a column about 150 feet (46 m) in the air.[1] Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 01:58
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The picture of a Kurdish villager clutching a baby as they both lie dead after that attack is seared into my brain. Awful.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:01
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Kaal posted:I think that folks really need to stop thinking that the Tokyo sarin attacks represent some stirring indictment on the efficacy of chemical warfare. Five guys each dropped a little baggy of sarin on the ground of a subway train, amounting to only 800 mL in total, and they still killed 13 people and hospitalized 1,000. The attack was bungled from the get-go, seeing as sarin is completely inappropriate for a attacking a confined target like a subway since it is quick acting and unstable. More than half of the fatalities occurred when passengers threw the baggies out of the train and out onto the platforms where they could catch the wind and spread. If they had used a different chemical, or released it in an open public area, they could have killed hundreds or even thousands with that small amount of material. Explosives are also terrifying, and your description of the attack as somehow hopeless or underwhelming is not doing it credit. A highly coordinated attack featuring 10 attackers and a pretty reasonable plan. They caused an estimated 1000 casualties, though relatively few deaths. That is highly significant. But so are many of the terrorist attacks featuring explosives. Poison gas should obviously be controlled, its distribution is obviously a national security concern, I'm not saying it's nothing. But it's not some sort of terrorist game changer compared to the tools terrorists have already used. quote:The last time Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons, in Halabja 1988, he killed 5,000 civilians instantly and thousands more died later. And in spite of the massive casualties, in truth it was a relatively small attack (100 sorties; the USS Kitty Hawk generated that many sorties every day of the month-long invasion of Iraq) on a fairly small city of 80,000. That attack was conducted with artillery and air assault. That is how gas gets distributed over a city. Conflating poison gas deployed by military with poison gas deployed by terrorists is not meaningful. Best Friends fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 02:13
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Kaal posted:Poison gas dominated the WWI battlefield, and was so utterly terrifying that the world banned it for fear that every future battlefield would yield those kinds of casualty rates. The last serious chemical attack killed 5,000 Iraqi Kurds instantly. That said, there's a big difference in usage of gas against a military and usage of gas against civilians - but that's true for every type of weapon, I guess.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:24
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Exactly. Using chemcial weapons when you already have conventional weaponry is nothing more than a way to be even more evil about your killing. You do it because you want people to suffer. You do it to terrorize. They're about the cruelty.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:38
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Best Friends posted:Explosives are also terrifying, and your description of the attack as somehow hopeless or underwhelming is not doing it credit. A highly coordinated attack featuring 10 attackers and a pretty reasonable plan. They caused an estimated 1000 casualties, though relatively few deaths. That is highly significant. As I very patiently explained, they caused few deaths because the operation was conducted by amateurs and thoroughly bungled. I mean these attacks were done by the Japanese equivalent of the Charlie Manson cult. quote:Conflating poison gas deployed by military with poison gas deployed by terrorists is not meaningful. You're the one who started talking about Iraq 2003 in the first place. And while a terrorist cell might not have Mirage fighter-bombers, they can easily get their hands on a howitzer or artillery rockets. Or turn the shells and bombs into IEDs, for that matter.
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Dec 5, 2012 02:41
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R. Mute posted:Just to nitpick, but that bit about WWI is incorrect. Poison gas was used extensively, but barely made in impact on casualty rates throughout the war in comparison to other causes of death (artillery fire, machineguns and disease were the main killers). I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you here. Gas attacks in WWI had a low lethality rate, it's true, but they had a very high non-lethal casualty rate. More than a million soldiers came away with gas injuries. A survivor could count himself lucky if he were only blinded for a month - many of the injuries made for lifelong debilitation. There certainly was a major impact on casualty rates. Western nations recognized that if nothing were done then gas warfare would become an accepted part of conventional warfare, and casualties would simply increase all the way around. And this from the use of ineffective weapons like chlorine that could be protected against relatively easily (some required nothing more than a thick cloth around the mouth). When we look forward into WWII, the chemicals had been much improved and the lethality rate skyrocketed. The Eastern theater saw quite a bit of chemical and biological warfare, with commensurately high casualty rates. The Battle of Changde saw hundreds of thousands die in a little more than a month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Changde#Use_of_chemical_weapon_attack Install Gentoo posted:Exactly. Using chemcial weapons when you already have conventional weaponry is nothing more than a way to be even more evil about your killing. You do it because you want people to suffer. You do it to terrorize. They're about the cruelty. Like WWIs awkward and immature tanks developing into the blitzkrieg of WWII, chemical warfare has improved exponentially. We are very fortunate that it was stopped when it was. I just can't get behind the idea that it was simply another form of conventional warfare, not particularly different from introducing a new model bomb. Kaal fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 03:00
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quote:As I very patiently explained, they caused few deaths because the operation was conducted by amateurs and thoroughly bungled. I mean these attacks were done by the Japanese equivalent of the Charlie Manson cult. They're crazy but they weren't dumb. Several doctors and scientists were involved with the cult. Kaal posted:
If we're talking about launching artillery or rockets, I'm not sure who the terrorists are in this case. And we're not talking like one dude with a mortar - that is way less useful than what Aum Shinrikyo did. You need a battery. Per my previous posts in this thread, operating an artillery battery is not something just anyone can figure out, and additionally, I fail to see how a terrorist group is going to make that happen, as an artillery battery is also hard to transport and conceal. I am not really clear on what your overall point is, generally. Obviously poison gas is scary. In a military application, like you keep effectively pointing out, yes, it is a very effective weapon to kill people, especially civilians. Assad using poison gas would be terrible. I just don't think the idea of a terrorist getting their hands on any poison gas would be something worth freaking out over to an exceptional degree - I would be equally concerned with terrorists getting lots of high powered concealable explosives, and substantially more concerned than either with terrorists developing networks in target countries. If Aum Shinrikyo, a cult featuring doctors, scientists, and funding its own labs which operated largely in the open and undisturbed, was as you say so terrible at deploying poison gas effectively, then that is good news.
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Dec 5, 2012 03:02
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Violent street battles between leftists and Islamists took place today in Tunisia outside of the headquarters of the UGTT in Tunis. The Islamists are chanting for the "cleansing" of the union of supposed Ben Ali remnants, after the UGTT held protests against the poor performance of Ennahdha. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=475478585837128&set=vb.370684012973282&type=2&theater az jan jananam fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 04:34
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Zeroisanumber posted:ScanEagles are used by a variety of governments outside of the US. They clock in at a bit over $3 million, and IIRC we've been selling them to the Saudis and the UAE. It's quite possibly a CIA drone, but it's also possibly someone else's. I really doubt the UAE would want to bother pissing Iran off. Remember, they have to actually live next to Iran, the United States doesn't.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:37
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Crasscrab posted:I really doubt the UAE would want to bother pissing Iran off. Remember, they have to actually live next to Iran, the United States doesn't.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:47
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Then again Iran has never been shy about loving with other people in international water/airspace and then complaining to the UN about it. It's entirely possible that this was a maritime surveillance drone that simply malfunctioned and drifted over Iran. It's really difficult to tell when all that ever comes out of Iran is fantastical IRGC propaganda.  says this is exactly what happened. Scan Eagle operated by one of the Gulf states in international airspace malfunctioned and somehow wound up over Iran, and the IRGC did what they do best and manufactured some outrage.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:09
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iyaayas01 posted:
It wouldn't even have to get over Iran. I'm sure that the Iranian border guards are pretty keyed up about American/Israeli recon drones, so if they saw a drone they'd probably just assume the worst and down it on principle.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:22
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There are claims that Haitham AlMaleh claims that Omar Suleiman along with some other non-Syrian intelligence people were killed in the National Security bomb. I'm still calling it claims, because the source is Al-Watan newspaper in Egypt, and I haven't found any confirmation from Haitham AlMaleh himself. If the claims are true, then boy was that explosion bigger than any of us imagined. The link to the article by Al-Watan is here for those of you who can read Arabic. It basically says Suleiman was sent there by the Emir of Dubai to find a solution for the chemical weapons problem. The article also mentions Turkish, Saudi and Israeli intelligence chiefs attending the same meeting, which was held for that reason. Al-Maleh claims to have proof of this. The interview itself hasn't been published because of an on-going protest by 11 newspapers in Egypt against Mursi's constitutional declaration.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:40
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Crasscrab posted:I really doubt the UAE would want to bother pissing Iran off. Remember, they have to actually live next to Iran, the United States doesn't. Maybe, maybe not. The Revolutionary Guards aren't exactly Credibility Central, and there are reasons for a drone to have wandered into (or near) Iran's airspace innocently. It's really hard to say for certain unless the Iranians come up with some solid proof that it's a US drone, or the CIA decides to ask for it back.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:49
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Crasscrab posted:I really doubt the UAE would want to bother pissing Iran off. Remember, they have to actually live next to Iran, the United States doesn't. They're already in a pretty serious dispute over those islands, plus UAE has been buying up lots of weapons from the the West, presumably to look tough against Iran.
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Dec 5, 2012 07:25
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Xandu posted:They're already in a pretty serious dispute over those islands, plus UAE has been buying up lots of weapons from the the West, presumably to look tough against Iran. And what good would that do? UAE population: 5 million, Iran population: 125 million. UAE buys weapons from: USA - other side of the world, Iran buys weapons from: manufactures its own.
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Dec 5, 2012 07:36
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/\ Are you seriously comparing Western procured weapons like the Block 60 F-16 to Iranian indigenously produced weapons like the revolutionary ( ) twin-tailed F-5? Like I'm not trying to turn this into some  post but jesus christ, those aren't anywhere near comparable. /\Xandu posted:They're already in a pretty serious dispute over those islands, plus UAE has been buying up lots of weapons from the the West, presumably to look tough against Iran. Not to mention the UAE is host to one of the two major U.S. airbases in the region (Al Dhafra) as well as hosting U.S. Patriot batteries and also hosting some French aircraft.
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Dec 5, 2012 08:15
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Here's my piece on Foreign Policy about DIY weapons in Syria, How to Build an Army in Your Basement, which features videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC3DH2AWKrg
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Dec 5, 2012 08:55
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As far as I recall weren't the wikileaks diplomatic cables all filled with pages upon pages of Gulf Arabs howling for Iranian blood? I could very well see many of these drones and such beloning to Gulf states rather than the usual suspects Israel and America. Faked Edit: Iran population: 75 million Randarkman fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 10:56
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New update on the planned deployment of PAC-3 Patriot-missiles in Turkey: http://newsticker.sueddeutsche.de/list/id/1391748 The NATO has officially decided to deploy Patriot-batteries from Germany, the Netherlands and the USA at Turkey's border with Syria. The missiles will be deployed in January latest, the German parliament prepares its session to sanction the sending of German soldiers this week. The russian foreign minister Sergej Lawrow says Moscow is kind of OK with it now. But he warns nebulously against further "escalations". The rest of the article reiterates some of the things which have happened in the conflict.
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Dec 5, 2012 13:42
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He's a really great, if depressing, article about an opposition sniper, The Confessions of a Sniper: A Rebel Gunman in Aleppo and His Conscience.
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Dec 5, 2012 14:12
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az jan jananam posted:Violent street battles between leftists and Islamists took place today in Tunisia outside of the headquarters of the UGTT in Tunis. The Islamists are chanting for the "cleansing" of the union of supposed Ben Ali remnants, after the UGTT held protests against the poor performance of Ennahdha. Do you have more information about this? Is the Islamist action in any way justified, or are they trying to do an Iran and purge the leftist elements of the revolution?
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Dec 5, 2012 14:20
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