Thus, any analyses and conclusions coming out of those agencies are now suspect or, perhaps, I should say, more suspect than they had been before.

So, how do you verify that a chemical attack has taken place, and who the attacker was?

Well, first you need people on the ground.

Have we been able to get neutral, trained, and competent investigators in to examine what is supposedly the “scene of the crime”?

Have they been able to confirm that CW agents were used, which ones they were (and did they have any particular chemical signatures that could reveal who manufactured them and their origins), and were they used in the places, aimed at the targets, and in the way that “witnesses” say they were?

Has a careful examination been made of the claimed victims, and their stories and backgrounds checked?

Who were the “witnesses” to this attack, what is their credibility, and what agendas might they have?

If they are members of some Muslim political organization, or group of Muslim fighters, have they ever been involved in a prior claim of CW attack, and what were the conclusions about their claims about that attack?

If those involved, as is most likely, are all Muslims, I would be very skeptical of anything that they might relate to non-Muslims, and if they were partisans in the fighting going on in the area, I would be even more skeptical.

As Muhammad famously said “(All) war is deception.”

Then, how were these chemical weapons delivered, and by whom?

Is there any video evidence, that is backed up by radar and even satellite imagery, showing aircraft leaving a Syrian military base believed or known to contain chemical weapons, flying to the alleged site of the attack, and dropping the CW weapons on the target?

Finding out what really happened here and who was responsible while under, what I am sure, are very tight time constraints is, it seems to me, going to be a vary iffy and arduous process.

So, I would be very wary of just accepting at face value that this attack was carried out by Assad’s regime, and would want some very careful boots on the ground analysis–preferably by U.S. military personnel experienced in investigating possible CW attacks–before accepting the truth of the claim that “Assad did it,” because maybe the Russians “did it,” or maybe one of the Muslim groups involved in this conflict staged it, for some perceived harm to their enemies, or benefit to themselves.

Here’s something of great–actually critical importance–that you probably have not heard anything about. It might have been mentioned in passing in the news, but I remember hearing nothing substantial about this project at all.

Just attended a lecture yesterday outlining the immense scope of China’s multi-Trillion dollar, ambitious, grandiose, aggressive, and very threatening “One Belt, One Road” project–already we’ll under way–that is intended to immensely expand China’s trade, presence in regions outside of China, and their influence in the World by linking China to more than 65 other countries through a myriad of new roads, railways, pipelines, airports, seaports, and trade routes that they are buying/building/establishing all over Asia, the Pacific, and into Europe.

From this, it was quite obvious that they are a far more aggressive, dangerous, and capable threat to the U.S. than Russia.

One small part of this project is China’s gaining control of the sea lanes, of trade routes, of key coastal facilities–like their current ownership of facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal, for instance–and ports covering all the major choke points around the world, through which passes the vast majority of sea borne traffic, especially that in petroleum, which are obviously of great strategic/military importance.

China very obviously wants to be “the Middle Kingdom” again–the dominant nation and the Center of the World–with all the other “barbarian” nations in the world playing the ancient role of suppliants, paying homage and tribute to her.

In the context of this thread, and thinking of “false flag” operations, wouldn’t it be, for instance, to China’s very great benefit to see the U.S. more deeply involved in and bogged down in the war in Syria, and elsewhere around the world?

And then there’s the business of how this Russia investigation started: opposition research that turned out to be specious was used as evidence to wire-tap a Trump associate who had ticked off the number two at the FBI, Andrew McCabe

The George Papadopoulos incident is how the Russia investigation started. You can find this of all places in the last paragraph of the Nunes Memo, oddly enough.

The answers do not need to be absolutely correct, but the ability to question Authority must remain unsullied for the process to unify.

Yes, we are being shown videos purporting to show that somebody attacked civilians in Syria, including children, possibly with a Chemical Weapon.

I am certainly no fan of the Syrian government, and can also well believe that they might have done this.

But, how do we know that any of the things we are being told about this video are true, when this footage is no different than the scenes and situations we see created for any number of U.S. TV shows?

How is this any different from the play on emotion of “it’s for the children”–that the Democrats and the Left always very successfully employ to get us to rely on emotion rather than intellect, as a way to get all sorts of bad policies put in place?

Who took the video? Who transmitted it to Western news sources? Are we seeing the entire video that was sent to some news organization here in the West? Who was it that asserted that this video showed the aftermath of a Chemical attack. What is the scientific evidence that a CW agent was used? Who came to the conclusion that the Syrian government was behind this attack?

Could this be an example of a “false flag” attack, a ploy to get us ever more enmeshed in the fighting in Syria?

Knowing what we now know of the actions of the CIA and NSA over the last couple of years, can we trust in the truth of any analysis they might make, and any conclusions they might come to?

It’s a shame, but right now I, and I expect a lot of other people, have very little faith in what many of our Executive agencies and the MSM are telling us is the “truth.”

What I see on this Syria CW attack issue is far too much emotion–they gassed children!!!–and far too little analysis and cold calculation of the type that we always ought to employ before committing U.S. blood and treasure to a cause, especially since President Trump is apparently trying to extricate U.S. forces from Syria, not to get them more deeply involved in that country and the fighting there.

My main problem with this is that we apparently have no/cannot obtain any definitive proof that the Syrian government was responsible for this CW attack.

There are weapons floating all around the Middle East, and I would imaging those weapons include chemical weapons.

There are Muslim factions fighting each other here, and also involved are the Syrian government, the Russians, and the Iranians, with military actions swirling around in a very chaotic area that is surrounded, and–according to one news report yesterday–the U.S is having trouble getting anyone into that area, on the ground, to inspect the “scene of the crime.”

Then, there is the fact that Muslims are very adept at disinformation and staging provocations.

So, given all these circumstances, can the U.S. really determine, with any great deal of certainty, just who carried out this attack?

I wonder, and I wonder if an educated guess is sufficient for us to stage a major attack against the Syrian government, and get sucked back into a war that President Trump is trying to extract U.S. forces from?

That is what humans advise but what does the Holy Ghost and Godhead advise?

RE Pine: that is incorrect. The feds did something similar before with Nixon and Nixon fell for the trap.

Our democratic Republic, the Constitution, and our rights laid out in the Bill of Rights are in fact meaningless, dead, here in America.

The US Republic has been dead for quite some time now. About time for people to wake up from their utopian fantasies.

GB’s analysis is similar to what I had in 2010. But given recent revelations and additional sources, I have changed that analysis given the number of factions that I know now have their hands in the pot.

There may still be a coup de tat or emergency martial law ruling, but it won’t necessarily come from the Leftist alliance.

This “news” isn’t new to me: OP topic.