U.N. Chemical Weapons Inspectors Leave Damascus, Syria

[silvershadow]

Source: Huffington Post/Reuters

By Steve Holland and Catherine Bremer

WASHINGTON/PARIS, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The United States made clear on Friday that it would punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the "brutal and flagrant" chemical weapons attack that it says killed more than 1,400 people in Damascus last week.

"We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale," President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House.

He said the United States was still in the planning process for a "limited, narrow" military response that would not involve "boots on the ground" or be open-ended. He set no timetable for action.

In a sign the United States may be preparing to act, a senior State Department official said Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Friday to the foreign ministers of Britain, Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as to the secretary general of the Arab League.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/31/un-inspectors-damascus-syria_n_3846837.html

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long article, much more at link.

[daschess1987]

1. Good Timing

and might I add that now would be the perfect time for a Sun-Tzu-type coup. The Syrian military should seriously overthrow al-Assad. We've got plenty of dough to help with that.

[Alamuti Lotus]

2. Not a lot of fanfare to the exit--I'm assuming they didn't find anything?

And shouldn't this fact be OF SOME INTEREST WHATSOEVER? I realize that "facts" will have a devastating effect on the war effort, but, um... oh sod it, rah-rah. I've heard this song before. For God and Country, here's a fetus, he's a Hitler, whatever you need. Let's go!

[Bosonic]

3. UN Syria weapons inspectors returning from Syria

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — U.N. chemical weapons inspectors are believed to have arrived in the Netherlands, where samples they collected in Syria are expected to be repackaged and sent to laboratories around Europe. The goal will be to check them for traces of poison gas that may have been unleashed in an Aug. 21 bombardment of a Damascus suburb.

The inspectors earlier left Syria and flew out of Lebanon early Saturday. An aircraft believed to have been chartered by the German government landed in Rotterdam on Saturday afternoon.

The team on Friday carried out a fourth and final day of inspection as they sought to determine precisely what happened in the Aug. 21 alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

Tests on the samples are expected to take days, but U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane is to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later Saturday on the investigation.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/un-syria-weapons-inspectors-returning-syria

[hughee99]

4. Is "the plan" to show them the PROPER way to kill innocent civilians? n/t