Britain is right in its efforts to strip Asma al-Assad, wife of the butcher Bashar, of her British citizenship because of her support of her husband, regime and crimes against humanity. Russia is wrong in vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions to indict al-Assad for his war crimes. The International Criminal Court is wrong for not indicting al-Assad because Syria is not a signatory to the ICC convention.
The evidence is overwhelming. Tons of captured Syrian government documents providing irrefutable evidence of war crimes. Photographs taken by Syrian police officers of more than 6,000 dead torture victims that have been smuggled out of the country and released to the world. People held in government “extermination” camps according to a U.N. Commission – a crime against humanity.
America and the civilized world are finally coming to terms with the fact that Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal that should be indicted, tried and jailed – if not executed like Saddam Hussein – for his latest chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, northern Syria. The town has no factories, warehouses or even rebel fighters. Only civilians.
The Iraqi dictator used sarin against Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1998 that instantly killed 5,000 people and a reported 12,000 in the ensuing days and months.
Sarin was officially banned by the United Nations chemical weapons convention in 1997.
Former President Barack Obama claimed in 2013 that Syria had “crossed a red line” by using up to 1,000kg of sarin on a rebel-held area in Damascus that killed up to 1,400 people. U.S. military intervention was averted after Russia brokered a deal under which Syria agreed to destroy all stockpiles of sarin and other chemical weapons. Even if Assad did give up his stocks of factory made sarin, he clearly did not give up the knowledge of how to make it or use it.
Russia has clearly “failed” to live up to its obligations under the 2013 agreement. “Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has simply been incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.
Sarin was developed by the Nazis and is far deadlier than either chlorine or mustard gas and 26 times more deadly than cyanide. Hitler was so pleased with his new weapon he named it after the scientists who discovered it. Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter and Hans-Jurgen von der Linde.
Victims exposed to sarin gas die an instant excruciating death. Less than a minute after exposure the victim’s nervous system is under sustained attack, making the body unable to breath. Lungs secrete fluid to try and repel the gas, making victims foam at the mouth with blood-flecked discharges. Many suffer from a medical condition known as SLUDGE – Salivation, Lacrimation (tears), Urination, Defecation, Gastrointestinal distress and Emesis (vomiting). In other words, the body loses the ability to control its functions. Those lucky enough to survive, due to receiving minimal exposure, such as touching a contaminated person, often suffer permanent nerve and brain damage.
Medical charity Medicins San Frontieres and the World Health Organization have said that the victims of the gas attack in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun appeared to have been exposed to a “nerve agent.”
The firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles by the U.S. Navy against the Shayrat Syrian air base from which the planes that dropped the sarin came from was long overdue!
President Trump is right when he said al-Assad has “crossed a lot of lines” and the U.S. does have a “responsibility” to act. I echoed those sentiments in 2012 in my book Custom Maid Revolution for New World Disorder. “The U.S. ineptitude in responding to the brutal, bloody Syrian regime’s putdown of protests baffles me. The excuses given are that the collapse of Syria could lead to an external explosion that would affect Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and even Iraq, foreign policy experts say, particularly if it dissolves into an Iraq-style civil war,” I wrote.
I went on to say, “The fact that Syria is Iran’s closest ally in the Middle East, hosts terrorists in Damascus, champions Hezbollah in Lebanon which it sees as a part of ‘Greater Syria’ and has funneled al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq to kill American soldiers is conveniently overlooked. The U.S. analysis of the Syrian regime’s beliefs, intentions and capacity for change is flawed. Run by an Alawite minority, the regime was never going to break with its Shiite benefactors in Tehran and join the Arab Sunni orbit. A regime that builds its legitimacy on hostility to Israel is also unlikely ever to make peace.”
“The road to Damascus is a road to peace.” That is what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during her 2007 visit to Syria.
“The pictures of Syrian protesters, civilians and children being brutalized by baton-swinging goons, felled by snipers as tanks brazenly fired on them for good measure, and planes drop barrel bombs and chemical weapons, without serious criticism from the U.S. administration was mind boggling and unbelievable,” I concluded.
Getting rid of ISIS and the Bashar al-Assad regime are not mutually exclusive. The time to do so is long overdue. Indicting al-Assad as a war criminal will be a good start to achieve the end goal of ridding Syria of his illegitimate regime and getting the country and region on the road to peace and resettlement of its displaced refugees.