
Originally Posted by
boggart
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
Now, we have two chemical attacks in a short period of time, both have the spectre of Russia hanging over them, directly so with Salisbury, and as puppet master in Syria. So maybe the question is what the end goal was, knowing that strong condemnation and reaction would arise from both attacks.
Initially in Salisbury, I had presumed it was "pour encourager les autres". Given the rather limp response to the previous polonium attack against Litvinenko, maybe it was seen that May was an easy target, ably helped by Corbyn's stance, and that there wouldn't be an overly strong response. The propaganda machine (from all sides) raised a lot of questions and surprisingly people started to question HMG. The more time goes by, I think that maybe another part of this, was to weaken UK government. It certainly wasn't subtle, and I am sure that there are plenty of ways to kill someone without leaving such a calling card.
So Syria. What has Assad got to gain from a gas attack? He and his Russian and Iranian chums seem to be killing people quite effectively enough, without bringing down world condemnation for crossing a red line. Everyone knows that chemical attacks is going to bring more trouble on you, and surely it is on the face of it, more trouble than it is worth. So again, the various propaganda machines are in overdrive. It's the British which did it. There was no gas attack. It was the Russians. etc etc. Again Corbyn comes out and tries to destabilise the government. So the more time that goes by, the more I think that this was aimed at destabilising the West, and bringing divisions between a supposed weak Trump and weak May and weak Macron.
I think that we can see that that failed, even if the coalition only blew up some cattle sheds. It sent a message of unity and actually was quite clever in that there were no civilian casualties.
As I say, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.