Obama has Failed at Everything

[pat]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

You cannot buy chlorine gas at a store…lol. You seriously think the poison chlorine gas is just bleach?
Oh brother!
You can make chlorine gas out of household chemicals, but you cannot buy it. And the weapons were hardly crude.
[/quote]

Why do you keep making stuff up pat? Google “Syria + chlorine + crude” and you’ll find every major news source and expert on the planet describing them as “crude weapons.” That’s why they stopped using chlorine gas in 1915 and switched to things like mustard gas - which is, you know 2000-3000 times more toxic.[/quote]

Well the first instance of chlorine gas use was in 1915, it’s not when they stopped. Yes, mustard gas is more effective, but how does that affect anything of the current facts.
Now the barrels used were accompanied with crude explosive devices to blow them up, but the containers of gas were quite professional.

What it doesn’t change is that despite the removal of chemical weapons from Syria, Syria continued to use chemical weapons, even if crude a clear violation CWC.

Let’s look at it this way. If we say it’s bad to poison people with chemicals, and somebody continues to poison with chemicals, albeit less effective ones, what does that say? Compliance? It’s working?

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
No that’s not what you said, you said this exactly:
"“2,000,000 pounds of nerve and blister agents + Syrian accession to the CWC, at no cost to the United States? Mishandled. Failure. Why? Because here are a few people who died from a crude chlorine bomb. Yes, chlorine, the stuff you can buy at the store.”

They didn’t buy it at the store[/quote]

I didn’t say they did.

[quote]
and it wasn’t crude.[/quote]

Again, stop making shit up.

[quote]
I was the one who told you can make it in the sink, but at your own peril. Don’t clean your shower with Clorox and ammonia. Now you expect me to believe after you said the above that you knew all along chlorine bleach wasn’t chlorine gas?

Who’s being dishonest now?[/quote]

What are you talking about?

Where in my post is there anything about bleach being chlorine gas?

Post the excerpt, verbatim, wherein I called chlorine gas bleach. Verbatim. Or, once again, retract yet another load of arrant bullshit.

Edited[/quote]

You said ‘crude chlorine bomb’, ‘yes the stuff you can buy in the store’. You cannot buy chlorine gas in a store.

This idea that you can make it out of stuff you can buy in a store is horse shit, you cannot make it in those quantities. By that logic, you can buy a bomb in a store because you can buy the raw materials to make one.[/quote]

I said yes, [b]chlorine[/b], the stuff you can buy at the store. (Nice try, erasing the operative term.)

As in, chlorine can be bought at the store. (Fact.)

As in, you are pretending that the killing of a few Syrian civilians by way of a crude and relatively ineffective weapon made from a widely available, not banned, dual-use industrial and domestic chemical is some kind of grave American foreign policy failure.

This point has now been made by at the very least 3 posters, multiple times each.[/quote]

“Chlorine, a so-called dual-use chemical that has industrial uses, is not on the list of chemical weapons submitted to the OPCW but was produced in Syria before the war. It should have been declared if the government has it, an OPCW spokesman said.”

What’s that? The OPCW says it should have been declared.
I posted this article twice. Should I listen to the OPCW, or 3 posters?[/quote]

There is a threshold measurement above which chlorine must be declared. 30 tons in a given facility, or something. If you want to know exactly, you go look it up.

So, [u]if[/u] the threshold was passed, the spokesman is correct. In which case…what? The deal was imperfect in its execution? 2,000,000 pounds of schedule 1 nerve and blister agents were seized, but some industrial and domestic chemicals that can be made into ineffective and crude chemical weapons slipped through the cracks*…

…Whoop-dee-fuckin-do. That doesn’t change the cost-benefit ratios of the higher diplomacy, the rationality of each particular decision in the process. Those points were meticulously laid out for you by multiple posters in long arguments which you then utterly ignored.

---

*And wouldn’t have been confiscated anyway: The CWC requires declaration of high amounts, not surrender, which means that, even if the chlorine had been declared, these attacks could not have been stopped.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

I never said they were comparable. Show where I said they were?
I said they used it to kill people which is the violation of the CWC they joined. Do you dispute this?

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
No that’s not what you said, you said this exactly:
"“2,000,000 pounds of nerve and blister agents + Syrian accession to the CWC, at no cost to the United States? Mishandled. Failure. Why? Because here are a few people who died from a crude chlorine bomb. Yes, chlorine, the stuff you can buy at the store.”

They didn’t buy it at the store[/quote]

I didn’t say they did.

[quote]
and it wasn’t crude.[/quote]

Again, stop making shit up.

[quote]
I was the one who told you can make it in the sink, but at your own peril. Don’t clean your shower with Clorox and ammonia. Now you expect me to believe after you said the above that you knew all along chlorine bleach wasn’t chlorine gas?

Who’s being dishonest now?[/quote]

What are you talking about?

Where in my post is there anything about bleach being chlorine gas?

Post the excerpt, verbatim, wherein I called chlorine gas bleach. Verbatim. Or, once again, retract yet another load of arrant bullshit.

Edited[/quote]

You said ‘crude chlorine bomb’, ‘yes the stuff you can buy in the store’. You cannot buy chlorine gas in a store.

This idea that you can make it out of stuff you can buy in a store is horse shit, you cannot make it in those quantities. By that logic, you can buy a bomb in a store because you can buy the raw materials to make one.[/quote]

I said yes, [b]chlorine[/b], the stuff you can buy at the store. (Nice try, erasing the operative term.)

As in, chlorine can be bought at the store. (Fact.)

As in, you are pretending that the killing of a few Syrian civilians by way of a crude and relatively ineffective weapon made from a widely available, not banned, dual-use industrial and domestic chemical is some kind of grave American foreign policy failure.

This point has now been made by at the very least 3 posters, multiple times each.[/quote]

“Chlorine, a so-called dual-use chemical that has industrial uses, is not on the list of chemical weapons submitted to the OPCW but was produced in Syria before the war. It should have been declared if the government has it, an OPCW spokesman said.”

What’s that? The OPCW says it should have been declared.
I posted this article twice. Should I listen to the OPCW, or 3 posters?[/quote]

There is a threshold measurement above which chlorine must be declared. 30 tons in a given facility, or something. If you want to know exactly, you go look it up.

So, [u]if[/u] the threshold was passed, the spokesman is correct. In which case…what? The deal was imperfect in its execution? 2,000,000 pounds of schedule 1 nerve and blister agents were seized, but some industrial and domestic chemicals that can be made into ineffective and crude chemical weapons slipped through the cracks*…

…Whoop-dee-fuckin-do. That doesn’t change the cost-benefit ratios of the higher diplomacy, the rationality of each particular decision in the process. Those points were meticulously laid out for you by multiple posters in long arguments which you then utterly ignored.

---

*And wouldn’t have been confiscated anyway: The CWC requires declaration of high amounts, not surrender, which means that, even if the chlorine had been declared, these attacks could not have been stopped.[/quote]

Use of chlorine gas is a violation of CWC, do you dispute this?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/22/us-syria-crisis-chlorine-idUSBREA3L11I20140422

“Chlorine, a so-called dual-use chemical that has industrial uses, is not on the list of chemical weapons submitted to the OPCW but was produced in Syria before the war. It should have been declared if the government has it, an OPCW spokesman said.”

"This makes it a grey area, he said, as industrial-use chlorine in canisters - which is what these bombs appear to be - is not strictly a chemical weapon until it is used as one.

Nevertheless, he says, “the OPCW and others have been frankly naive.”
Yes, indeed. Naive.

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

You cannot buy chlorine gas at a store…lol. You seriously think the poison chlorine gas is just bleach?
Oh brother!
You can make chlorine gas out of household chemicals, but you cannot buy it. And the weapons were hardly crude.
[/quote]

Why do you keep making stuff up pat? Google “Syria + chlorine + crude” and you’ll find every major news source and expert on the planet describing them as “crude weapons.” That’s why they stopped using chlorine gas in 1915 and switched to things like mustard gas - which is, you know 2000-3000 times more toxic.[/quote]

Well the first instance of chlorine gas use was in 1915, it’s not when they stopped. Yes, mustard gas is more effective, but how does that affect anything of the current facts.
Now the barrels used were accompanied with crude explosive devices to blow them up, but the containers of gas were quite professional.

What it doesn’t change is that despite the removal of chemical weapons from Syria, Syria continued to use chemical weapons, even if crude a clear violation CWC.

Let’s look at it this way. If we say it’s bad to poison people with chemicals, and somebody continues to poison with chemicals, albeit less effective ones, what does that say? Compliance? It’s working? [/quote]

Stop.

Just stop it.

I said “crude chlorine bombs”–because that’s how professionals and experts describe them (a fact which I evidenced.)

You said “the weapons were hardly crude.” Because you felt like making some more shit up and offering it up as if you were correcting the boorish misconceptions of someone who knows less about these things than you do.

When, in fact, you were just showing off a little bit more of that dazzling ability to talk before knowing.

Stop waffling.

No more “deliberately dismissive” statements.

Just stop.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
this was a deliberate chemical attack? What is so hard to understand about it.[/quote]

Nothing.

And no one has ever had any trouble understanding it.

And it has nothing to do with the arguments that you have pathologically gone out of your way to ignore.

Why are you taking the time to ask what’s hard to understand about something that nobody contests and that furthermore has nothing to do with the argument at hand?[/quote]

Do these ‘arguments’:

• Dispute that Assad used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon?
• Dispute that using chlorine gas as a weapon is a violation of the CWC?
• Dispute that despite losing more effective chemical weapons, that he used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon?
• Dispute the fact that chlorine gas is listed as a chemical weapon?
• Dispute the fact that Assad used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon, after joining the CWC and declaring (supposedly) all his weapons cache?

Or is the claim, because it is not as devastating a weapon, it really doesn’t count?

I swear if I say the sky is blue, you will claim it’s green just because.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

You cannot buy chlorine gas at a store…lol. You seriously think the poison chlorine gas is just bleach?
Oh brother!
You can make chlorine gas out of household chemicals, but you cannot buy it. And the weapons were hardly crude.
[/quote]

Why do you keep making stuff up pat? Google “Syria + chlorine + crude” and you’ll find every major news source and expert on the planet describing them as “crude weapons.” That’s why they stopped using chlorine gas in 1915 and switched to things like mustard gas - which is, you know 2000-3000 times more toxic.[/quote]

Well the first instance of chlorine gas use was in 1915, it’s not when they stopped. Yes, mustard gas is more effective, but how does that affect anything of the current facts.
Now the barrels used were accompanied with crude explosive devices to blow them up, but the containers of gas were quite professional.

What it doesn’t change is that despite the removal of chemical weapons from Syria, Syria continued to use chemical weapons, even if crude a clear violation CWC.

Let’s look at it this way. If we say it’s bad to poison people with chemicals, and somebody continues to poison with chemicals, albeit less effective ones, what does that say? Compliance? It’s working? [/quote]

Stop.

Just stop it.

I said “crude chlorine bombs”–because that’s how professionals and experts describe them (a fact which I evidenced.)

You said “the weapons were hardly crude.” Because you felt like making some more shit up and offering it up as if you were correcting the boorish misconceptions of someone who knows less about these things than you do.

When, in fact, you were just showing off a little bit more of that dazzling ability to talk before knowing.

Stop waffling.

No more “deliberately dismissive” statements.

Just stop.[/quote]

If I read it correctly, the industrial canisters of chlorine gas were set off by ‘crude’ explosive devices. That doesn’t mean the chlorine gas was made in a bathtub, I.E. crude. The chlorine gas canisters are quite professional, which is why they needed mutations to release the gas because the containers are drop proof and won’t go off without some assistance.

The delivery may have been crude, but the chemical used was far from it.

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

I never said they were comparable. Show where I said they were?[/quote]

You need to read more carefully. I didn’t say you said they were, I simply said they weren’t. Which served to introduce my criticism of what you actually have been doing, which is trying to cling to one small and relatively insignificant point–the details of which you are fabricating and getting wrong anyway–because you can’t respond to the relevant, substantive points that constitute the actual argument against you.

I said they used it to kill people which is the violation of the CWC they joined. Do you dispute this?[/quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Use of chlorine gas is a violation of CWC, do you dispute this?

I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
As for chlorine bombs, this has been addressed by at least three separate posters, including me, over the course of this discussion. That you are trying to use Assad’s probable use of chlorine gas as a one-line argument against my detailed posts on the rationality and relative beneficence of the chemical weapons deal is evidence only that you are biased or uninformed. Chlorine gas is a common industrial (and, indeed, domestic) agent and is not itself banned under the CWC to which Syria was compelled to accede in September 2013. Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations. Everything I’ve written here has been in the pages of international news publications for months now.
[/quote]

Rhetorical questions that have been answered already and that don’t refute any of your opponent’s points either way–not a good way to argue.

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:

If I read it correctly, the industrial canisters of chlorine gas were set off by ‘crude’ explosive devices. That doesn’t mean the chlorine gas was made in a bathtub, I.E. crude. The chlorine gas canisters are quite professional, which is why they needed mutations to release the gas because the containers are drop proof and won’t go off without some assistance.

The delivery may have been crude, but the chemical used was far from it. [/quote]

The chlorine gas having been made in the bathtub is not the sine qua non of a crude weapon.

I said the weapons were crude.

You said the weapons weren’t.

You were wrong. Googling some irrelevant trivia and pulling it from the penumbra does not change this.

Stop doing this.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

It is a foreign policy failure. I have already explained precisely why.
Despite the fact that not all chemical weapons are created equal. The very, very simple fact is that despite giving up a large portion of chemical weapons, Assad again used chemical weapons. After the treaty to disarm him from chemical munitions, after the ‘red line’ threat, after the negotiated disarmament, after forcing Syria to join the CWC which prohibits the use of chemical weapons including chlorine gas.
It does not have to be as ‘powerful’ as Sarin or Mustard gas. It simply has to be used as a weapon to kill people.

If the foreign policy initiative were successful, then the chlorine gas attack would not have occurred.

• Assad signed a treaty to desist using chemical weapons via CWC.
• Assad uses chlorine gas as a weapon, reportedly 5 times.
• Chlorine gas is considered a banned weapon by the OPCW.
• Assad violated the CWC.

How is this a success? How many dead bodies do you need to convince you that using chlorine gas is a chemical attack in violation of the CWC?
I don’t get your argument.
Are you asserting that:

• Using chlorine gas as a chemical weapon is no big deal?
• Using chlorine gas does not violate the CWC?
• It only counts if he used something more damaging?

[Varqanir]

[quote]pat wrote:
You realize that these were not homemade bomb, but pressurized canisters. I said the very same thing about making chlorine gas in the sink a few pages ago.
The fact that you can make ‘a little’ chlorine gas, perhaps enough to poison yourself. Does not equate to high pressure canisters filled with tons of the stuff being dropped out of helicopters on people.[/quote]

Surely you don’t think I was implying that Bashir-al-Assad concocted his entire chlorine gas stockpile in his bathroom sink. I was simply demonstrating how simple it is to concoct a “chemical weapon” from easily-available materials. As a point of interest, there was exactly one chlorine gas production facility in Syria, but its entire stockpile of 400 tons of chlorine gas was seized last August by Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant opposition group.

So even if Assad didn’t have another convenient stockpile somewhere else, he wouldn’t have needed to, as chlorine gas is readily available in convenient pressurised canisters from dozens of suppliers, mostly in China, but several in India.

I could go onto Alibaba.com, find a supplier, plunk down eight thousand dollars plus a few bucks in shipping, and I will be the proud owner of ten tons of industrial-grade (which is to say, weapons-grade) chlorine gas. Not as easy as picking up a few six-packs at Wal-Mart, but about as close to “buying chlorine gas at the store” as it gets.

Further, it is considered a chemical weapon.

So is tear gas. We use it on civilians all the time.

It is banned for use as a weapon. And Assad is using it as a weapon, despite the moratorium on chemical weapons.

Yeah, well, funny thing about the Geneva Protocols of 1925, in which tear gas and chlorine gas are banned: they forbid the use of these agents in “international armed conflicts”, but say nothing about gassing your own people. Which is why all governments have always employed CS, CN and other tear agents for domestic “riot control” on “dissidents” when they have needed to wage war on their own populations, in war zones such as Johannesburg, Seoul, Damascus, Belfast, Grosny, New York and Waco, Texas.

Ever been gassed? I have. CS gas is supposed to be non-lethal, and it is, in an open space where there’s a breeze. Just like chlorine gas. And also like chlorine gas, tear gas is a powerful irritant that is extremely damaging to the respiratory system, which can cause death by asphyxiation in enclosed spaces or after prolonged exposure. Believe me, you feel like you’re drowning in battery acid.

So no, there is no “moratorium” on chlorine gas, and it has never been “banned”, if all you want to do is kill your own people.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

I never said they were comparable. Show where I said they were?[/quote]

You need to read more carefully. I didn’t say you said they were, I simply said they weren’t. Which served to introduce my criticism of what you actually have been doing, which is trying to cling to one small and relatively insignificant point–the details of which you are fabricating and getting wrong anyway–because you can’t respond to the relevant, substantive points that constitute the actual argument against you.

I said they used it to kill people which is the violation of the CWC they joined. Do you dispute this?[/quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Use of chlorine gas is a violation of CWC, do you dispute this?

I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
As for chlorine bombs, this has been addressed by at least three separate posters, including me, over the course of this discussion. That you are trying to use Assad’s probable use of chlorine gas as a one-line argument against my detailed posts on the rationality and relative beneficence of the chemical weapons deal is evidence only that you are biased or uninformed. Chlorine gas is a common industrial (and, indeed, domestic) agent and is not itself banned under the CWC to which Syria was compelled to accede in September 2013. Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations. Everything I’ve written here has been in the pages of international news publications for months now.
[/quote]

Rhetorical questions that have been answered already and that don’t refute any of your opponent’s points either way–not a good way to argue.[/quote]

Chlorine gas is not a banned agent for use as a chemical weapon? Are you serious?
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons

It’s is not banned for use as an industrial agent, but it most certainly is banned for use against people. Assad used the banned method.

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

I never said they were comparable. Show where I said they were?[/quote]

You need to read more carefully. I didn’t say you said they were, I simply said they weren’t. Which served to introduce my criticism of what you actually have been doing, which is trying to cling to one small and relatively insignificant point–the details of which you are fabricating and getting wrong anyway–because you can’t respond to the relevant, substantive points that constitute the actual argument against you.

I said they used it to kill people which is the violation of the CWC they joined. Do you dispute this?[/quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Use of chlorine gas is a violation of CWC, do you dispute this?

I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
As for chlorine bombs, this has been addressed by at least three separate posters, including me, over the course of this discussion. That you are trying to use Assad’s probable use of chlorine gas as a one-line argument against my detailed posts on the rationality and relative beneficence of the chemical weapons deal is evidence only that you are biased or uninformed. Chlorine gas is a common industrial (and, indeed, domestic) agent and is not itself banned under the CWC to which Syria was compelled to accede in September 2013. Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations. Everything I’ve written here has been in the pages of international news publications for months now.
[/quote]

Rhetorical questions that have been answered already and that don’t refute any of your opponent’s points either way–not a good way to argue.[/quote]

Chlorine gas is not a banned agent for use as a chemical weapon? Are you serious?

[/quote]

“…to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon.”

Jesus.

How are you fucking this up so badly?

You are literally devolving as time goes on.

[pat]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

You realize that these were not homemade bomb, but pressurized canisters. I said the very same thing about making chlorine gas in the sink a few pages ago.
The fact that you can make ‘a little’ chlorine gas, perhaps enough to poison yourself. Does not equate to high pressure canisters filled with tons of the stuff being dropped out of helicopters on people.[/quote]

Surely you don’t think I was implying that Bashir-al-Assad concocted his entire chlorine gas stockpile in his bathroom sink. I was simply demonstrating how simple it is to concoct a “chemical weapon” from easily-available materials. As a point of interest, there was exactly one chlorine gas production facility in Syria, but its entire stockpile of 400 tons of chlorine gas was seized last August by Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant opposition group.

So even if Assad didn’t have another convenient stockpile somewhere else, he wouldn’t have needed to, as chlorine gas is readily available in convenient pressurised canisters from dozens of suppliers, mostly in China, but several in India.

I could go onto Alibaba.com, find a supplier, plunk down eight thousand dollars plus a few bucks in shipping, and I will be the proud owner of ten tons of industrial-grade (which is to say, weapons-grade) chlorine gas. Not as easy as picking up a few six-packs at Wal-Mart, but about as close to “buying chlorine gas at the store” as it gets.[/quote]

Further, it is considered a chemical weapon.

So is tear gas. We use it on civilians all the time.

It is banned for use as a weapon. And Assad is using it as a weapon, despite the moratorium on chemical weapons.

Yeah, well, funny thing about the Geneva Protocols of 1925, in which tear gas and chlorine gas are banned: they forbid the use of these agents in “international armed conflicts”, but say nothing about gassing your own people. Which is why all governments have always employed CS, CN and other tear agents for domestic “riot control” on “dissidents” when they have needed to wage war on their own populations, in war zones such as Johannesburg, Seoul, Damascus, Belfast, Grosny, New York and Waco, Texas.

Ever been gassed? I have. CS gas is supposed to be non-lethal, and it is, in an open space where there’s a breeze. Just like chlorine gas. And also like chlorine gas, tear gas is a powerful irritant that is extremely damaging to the respiratory system, which can cause death by asphyxiation in enclosed spaces or after prolonged exposure. Believe me, you feel like you’re drowning in battery acid.

So no, there is no “moratorium” on chlorine gas, and it has never been “banned”, if all you want to do is kill your own people.[/quote]

That’s an interesting loophole. So Assad is well within his right to use chlorine gas on his own people so long as within his own borders?

I know chlorine gas as a weapon is banned by the cwc. But are you saying in the 5 cases in Syria was legal use of chlorine gas?

[Varqanir]

[quote]pat wrote:
Chlorine gas is not a banned agent for use as a chemical weapon? Are you serious?
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons

It’s is not banned for use as an industrial agent, but it most certainly is banned for use against people. Assad used the banned method.
[/quote]

CWC.pdf

This is the full text of the CWC, which your link contained. Please find the page and paragraph on which “chlorine gas” or “Cl2” appears, as I seem to be unable to do so.

[pat]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Pat:

You do know how easy it is to synthesise chlorine gas, right?

Just mix chlorine bleach with clear ammonia. Presto. Chlorine gas.

That’s the amateur method, though. If you’re serious about this, get out of the household cleaning aisle and head over to pool supplies, where you will pick up some chlorine crystals and hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. Mix until crystals are dissolved, and enjoy!

Note: I do not advocate use of chlorine gas on civilians.

[/quote]

Yes, I know it’s easy to synthesize chlorine gas. Are you really thinking that this is something they synthesized in their sink? Home made weapons? No, there were high pressure containers of industrial chlorine gas.
[/quote]

The point is not how they made or got it.

The point is that Chlorine weapons are not comparable to the kinds of weapons that we’ve just finished taking from Assad. You are pretending that it is some kind of American foreign policy failure that some guys in Syria killed a few people with a weapon whose primary ingredient is sitting in a factory a few miles from your house, and which can be made at home with pool supplies. You are pretending that this crude and ineffective method of killing is a big fucking deal while at the very same time downplaying the worth of the removal of 2,000,000 pounds of much more toxic, not dual-use, banned chemical weapons like Sarin and Mustard.

That’s the point.[/quote]

I never said they were comparable. Show where I said they were?[/quote]

You need to read more carefully. I didn’t say you said they were, I simply said they weren’t. Which served to introduce my criticism of what you actually have been doing, which is trying to cling to one small and relatively insignificant point–the details of which you are fabricating and getting wrong anyway–because you can’t respond to the relevant, substantive points that constitute the actual argument against you.

I said they used it to kill people which is the violation of the CWC they joined. Do you dispute this?[/quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Use of chlorine gas is a violation of CWC, do you dispute this?

I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
As for chlorine bombs, this has been addressed by at least three separate posters, including me, over the course of this discussion. That you are trying to use Assad’s probable use of chlorine gas as a one-line argument against my detailed posts on the rationality and relative beneficence of the chemical weapons deal is evidence only that you are biased or uninformed. Chlorine gas is a common industrial (and, indeed, domestic) agent and is not itself banned under the CWC to which Syria was compelled to accede in September 2013. Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations. Everything I’ve written here has been in the pages of international news publications for months now.
[/quote]

Rhetorical questions that have been answered already and that don’t refute any of your opponent’s points either way–not a good way to argue.[/quote]

Chlorine gas is not a banned agent for use as a chemical weapon? Are you serious?

[/quote]

“…to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon.”

Jesus.

How are you fucking this up so badly?

You are literally devolving as time goes on.[/quote]

I misread that line, my bad.

[smh_23]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

I could go onto Alibaba.com, find a supplier, plunk down eight thousand dollars plus a few bucks in shipping, and I will be the proud owner of ten tons of industrial-grade (which is to say, weapons-grade) chlorine gas. Not as easy as picking up a few six-packs at Wal-Mart, but about as close to “buying chlorine gas at the store” as it gets.
[/quote]

I found myself on Alibaba just yesterday, looking at some canisters of chlorine.

I bet you we’re all on a few lists as of this conversation (if we weren’t already).

[Varqanir]

[quote]pat wrote:
That’s an interesting loophole. [/quote]

Yes, it is, isn’t it.

So Assad is well within his right to use chlorine gas on his own people so long as within his own borders?

He had at least as much “right” to gas his own people as we did at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

I know chlorine gas as a weapon is banned by the cwc.

You do, do you?

Is chlorine gas listed in schedule 1, schedule 2 or schedule 3? On which page of the CWC?

But are you saying in the 5 cases in Syria was legal use of chlorine gas?

Not moral, not ethical, and not a very nice thing to do, but yes, just like abortion, entirely legal.

[smh_23]

[quote]pat wrote:
How many dead bodies do you need to convince you that using chlorine gas is a chemical attack in violation of the CWC?
[/quote]

As I just proved to you, I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
As for chlorine bombs, this has been addressed by at least three separate posters, including me, over the course of this discussion. That you are trying to use Assad’s probable use of chlorine gas as a one-line argument against my detailed posts on the rationality and relative beneficence of the chemical weapons deal is evidence only that you are biased or uninformed. Chlorine gas is a common industrial (and, indeed, domestic) agent and is not itself banned under the CWC to which Syria was compelled to accede in September 2013. Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations. Everything I’ve written here has been in the pages of international news publications for months now.
[/quote]

I repeat myself in the hope that you absorb what’s being written to you: I have just proved that I wrote this four days ago:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Its impact on this debate is imperceptible, except insofar as Syria’s having acceded to the CWC, which does ban chlorine’s use as a weapon, makes it much easier for the OPCW to investigate and deal with the allegations.
[/quote]

…the point being that you are wasting even your own time. You asked, “How many dead bodies do you need to convince you that using chlorine gas is a chemical attack in violation of the CWC?” The necessary implication of this sentence is that I do not acknowledge that the use of chlorine gas is a chemical attack in violation of the CWC. And yet you asked this question literally less than an hour after I showed you a four-day-old post wherein I wrote that the use of chlorine gas as a weapon is banned under the CWC.

You did this because you are not reading the arguments that are being put forth by those of us who have taken the time to participate in this debate. I understand that you misread it just now, which is obviously just a human mistake and not something to be criticized, but you should know, at this stage, just what the arguments of your opponents are. If you think that maybe we are simply denying that chlorine was used, or that chlorine can be used to kill people, then you have not done us the courtesy of reading the posts that we have written to you.

And, of course, that’s what they call a “deal-breaker.”

[pat]

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Chlorine gas is not a banned agent for use as a chemical weapon? Are you serious?
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/4582-chemical-weapons

It’s is not banned for use as an industrial agent, but it most certainly is banned for use against people. Assad used the banned method.
[/quote]

CWC.pdf

This is the full text of the CWC, which your link contained. Please find the page and paragraph on which “chlorine gas” or “Cl2” appears, as I seem to be unable to do so.[/quote]

You’re referring to the a link with in a link. That’s not the link I posted. The link I posted included Chlorine as a chemical.