Iraqi troops suffer mass slaughter one mile from Baghdad: the general ISIS Chat thread

[janklow]

speaking of that moral equivalency:

Syria has secretly executed thousands of political prisoners, rights group says

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government secretly executed between 5,000 and 13,000 people in just one prison as part of its campaign to eliminate opposition to his rule, a new report by the watchdog group Amnesty International has found.

The killings took place over a four-year period between 2011 and 2015 in the notorious Sednaya facility outside Damascus, and the bodies were later disposed of in mass graves, according to the report released Monday by Amnesty.

Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of political prisoners have disappeared in the Syrian prison system since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in 2011, and they suspect that many of those have been tortured to death or secretly killed. The accounts of these killings are in addition to the figure of 17,000 that Amnesty counted in an earlier report on the extrajudicial killings issued last August, compounding an emerging picture of what Amnesty referred to as a policy of “extermination” against opponents of the government.

The majority of those executed at Sednaya were political prisoners, including many of the ordinary people who joined in the peaceful protests against Assad, the report says. Some were rebels who took up arms, and others were officers and soldiers who defected from government forces. But for the most part they were “doctors, engineers, protesters,” one former prison official is quoted as saying. “They were somehow understood to be linked to the revolution. Sednaya is the place to finish the revolutionaries. It’s the end for them.”

Syria rejected the report Wednesday as “baseless” and part of a campaign to discredit Assad’s government. A statement by Syria’s Justice Ministry, carried by Syria’s state-run news agency, said it “denies and condemns in the strongest terms what was reported because it is not based on correct evidence but on personal emotions that aim to achieve well-known political goals.”

The Amnesty report describes in chilling detail how the prisoners were taken out of their cells in batches, of up to 50 at a time, twice a week and in the middle of the night, typically on Mondays and Wednesdays.

They were given only cursory trials lasting one to three minutes at one of two military field courts that offered no semblance of judicial process, with sentences typically handed down on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. When the time came for their executions, the prisoners were handcuffed, blindfolded and led to a basement cell containing 10 stands and 10 nooses.

A former judge from the military court described the executions, saying it would often take up to 10 to 15 minutes for the prisoners to die. “Some didn’t die because they are light. For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks. Two officers’ assistants were in charge of this.”

Amnesty said it based its estimate of between 5,000 and 13,000 hangings conducted this way on testimony of 31 former prisoners, four prison officials and three judges familiar with specific instances of the executions and the frequency with which they appeared to occur. They are identified in the report only by their last names because of safety concerns.

Amnesty said the executions “amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity” and were authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut.

The allegations come at a sensitive time for Assad, who is in the process of crushing the nearly six-year-old rebellion against his rule but still lacks international legitimacy. The findings of the report are expected to be on the agenda for the next round of Syrian peace talks, scheduled to be held in Geneva on Feb. 20, Amnesty said. It also called for an independent United Nations investigation into the atrocities.

 

[kingblaze84]

I can't vouch much for his personal toughness-

but this is literally what we're talking about?

Assad has been through more personal hardship then Trump, so I think LIKELY, he's tougher then Trump. You have yet to give me any reason to think Trump would be tougher.

 

[kingblaze84]

Can someone please explain to me why Trump is banning visitation from Iran and Iraq but allowing visitation from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? I've spoken to Trump fans on this issue and never get a good answer.

 

[kingblaze84]

speaking of that moral equivalency:

Syria has secretly executed thousands of political prisoners, rights group says

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government secretly executed between 5,000 and 13,000 people in just one prison as part of its campaign to eliminate opposition to his rule, a new report by the watchdog group Amnesty International has found.

The killings took place over a four-year period between 2011 and 2015 in the notorious Sednaya facility outside Damascus, and the bodies were later disposed of in mass graves, according to the report released Monday by Amnesty.

Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of political prisoners have disappeared in the Syrian prison system since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in 2011, and they suspect that many of those have been tortured to death or secretly killed. The accounts of these killings are in addition to the figure of 17,000 that Amnesty counted in an earlier report on the extrajudicial killings issued last August, compounding an emerging picture of what Amnesty referred to as a policy of “extermination” against opponents of the government.

The majority of those executed at Sednaya were political prisoners, including many of the ordinary people who joined in the peaceful protests against Assad, the report says. Some were rebels who took up arms, and others were officers and soldiers who defected from government forces. But for the most part they were “doctors, engineers, protesters,” one former prison official is quoted as saying. “They were somehow understood to be linked to the revolution. Sednaya is the place to finish the revolutionaries. It’s the end for them.”

Syria rejected the report Wednesday as “baseless” and part of a campaign to discredit Assad’s government. A statement by Syria’s Justice Ministry, carried by Syria’s state-run news agency, said it “denies and condemns in the strongest terms what was reported because it is not based on correct evidence but on personal emotions that aim to achieve well-known political goals.”

The Amnesty report describes in chilling detail how the prisoners were taken out of their cells in batches, of up to 50 at a time, twice a week and in the middle of the night, typically on Mondays and Wednesdays.

They were given only cursory trials lasting one to three minutes at one of two military field courts that offered no semblance of judicial process, with sentences typically handed down on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. When the time came for their executions, the prisoners were handcuffed, blindfolded and led to a basement cell containing 10 stands and 10 nooses.

A former judge from the military court described the executions, saying it would often take up to 10 to 15 minutes for the prisoners to die. “Some didn’t die because they are light. For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks. Two officers’ assistants were in charge of this.”

Amnesty said it based its estimate of between 5,000 and 13,000 hangings conducted this way on testimony of 31 former prisoners, four prison officials and three judges familiar with specific instances of the executions and the frequency with which they appeared to occur. They are identified in the report only by their last names because of safety concerns.

Amnesty said the executions “amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity” and were authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut.

The allegations come at a sensitive time for Assad, who is in the process of crushing the nearly six-year-old rebellion against his rule but still lacks international legitimacy. The findings of the report are expected to be on the agenda for the next round of Syrian peace talks, scheduled to be held in Geneva on Feb. 20, Amnesty said. It also called for an independent United Nations investigation into the atrocities.

Godamn, pretty bad if this is true. But I can't think of anyone in this overall disastrous conflict who looks much better. No one in this godforsaken war looks good at this point.

 

[The_Jackal]

Can someone please explain to me why Trump is banning visitation from Iran and Iraq but allowing visitation from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? I've spoken to Trump fans on this issue and never get a good answer.

Conflict of interest for Trump.

 

[janklow]

Assad has been through more personal hardship then Trump, so I think LIKELY, he's tougher then Trump. You have yet to give me any reason to think Trump would be tougher.

pretty sure i'm calling them equally lame, really

 

[janklow]

Can someone please explain to me why Trump is banning visitation from Iran and Iraq but allowing visitation from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? I've spoken to Trump fans on this issue and never get a good answer.

there is no good reason. worst case: conflicts of interest for Trump. best case: those 7 countries sound the "scariest"

 

[janklow]

Godamn, pretty bad if this is true. But I can't think of anyone in this overall disastrous conflict who looks much better. No one in this godforsaken war looks good at this point.

just to be redundant, this is kind of what we've been saying about Assad the entire time

 

[kingblaze84]

Can someone please explain to me why Trump is banning visitation from Iran and Iraq but allowing visitation from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? I've spoken to Trump fans on this issue and never get a good answer.

Conflict of interest for Trump.

I agree, he probably has some business partners in either nation, maybe some hotels we don't know about. Bill O'Reilly tonight said Trump didn't ban Saudi Arabian and Pakistani visitors because "their governments are stable". Yet these same governments have supported Al-Qaeda and other groups for a bunch of years now.

 

[kingblaze84]

Assad has been through more personal hardship then Trump, so I think LIKELY, he's tougher then Trump. You have yet to give me any reason to think Trump would be tougher.

pretty sure i'm calling them equally lame, really

Equally lame? Hmm I don't know. Assad is no angel but I still have some sympathy for him because let's face it, outside nations helped fund the Al-Qaeda linked groups who caused massive mayhem for the Assad government and eventually the nation. Yes Assad has done some very foul shit, no doubt, but let's be honest, Assad had this problem forced on him.

His treatment of the peaceful protests were bad, but documents from American government agencies state very explicitly that Al-Qaeda and their allies were the chief supporters of the move to topple Assad. But who knows, maybe he will be toppled from power one day, and maybe you'll be happy about it. I doubt you would enjoy seeing the effects of that though.

 

[kingblaze84]

Can someone please explain to me why Trump is banning visitation from Iran and Iraq but allowing visitation from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? I've spoken to Trump fans on this issue and never get a good answer.

there is no good reason. worst case: conflicts of interest for Trump. best case: those 7 countries sound the "scariest"

I agree there is no good reason, except I would think Saudi Arabia sounds scarier then let's say, Iran or Libya to red state America. But then again I live in NYC, so maybe his supporters really are that scared of Iran. But the Saudis helped 9/11 happen, so this is still a big head scratcher for me.

 

[janklow]

Yes Assad has done some very foul shit, no doubt, but let's be honest, Assad had this problem forced on him.

false. his regime has tortured and murdered its own people for years. there are bad actors aligned against him... but they're also exploiting problems that Assad made. ISIS showing up in Syria to exploit protests that Assad's behavior caused is not a problem forced on him, or at the very least, he cannot say he's blameless.

 

[janklow]

I agree there is no good reason, except I would think Saudi Arabia sounds scarier then let's say, Iran or Libya to red state America. But then again I live in NYC, so maybe his supporters really are that scared of Iran. But the Saudis helped 9/11 happen, so this is still a big head scratcher for me.

no, no, Iran as a villain is a constant theme.

 

[kingblaze84]

Yes Assad has done some very foul shit, no doubt, but let's be honest, Assad had this problem forced on him.

false. his regime has tortured and murdered its own people for years. there are bad actors aligned against him... but they're also exploiting problems that Assad made. ISIS showing up in Syria to exploit protests that Assad's behavior caused is not a problem forced on him, or at the very least, he cannot say he's blameless.

He's not blameless in this, no one is. I doubt there is a good replacement for him though.

 

[kingblaze84]

I agree there is no good reason, except I would think Saudi Arabia sounds scarier then let's say, Iran or Libya to red state America. But then again I live in NYC, so maybe his supporters really are that scared of Iran. But the Saudis helped 9/11 happen, so this is still a big head scratcher for me.

no, no, Iran as a villain is a constant theme.

I know Iran has been a boogeyman for a long time in America and much of the Middle East, but considering Saudi govt officials helped fund ISIS and also helped fund the 9/11 attacks, I still don't get why Iran is hated more by Republicans then Saudi Arabia.

 

[janklow]

I know Iran has been a boogeyman for a long time in America and much of the Middle East, but considering Saudi govt officials helped fund ISIS and also helped fund the 9/11 attacks, I still don't get why Iran is hated more by Republicans then Saudi Arabia.

because Saudi Arabia has a friendly relationship with the US - all the crazy stuff aside - whereas Iran's image of itself has a massive "we're the enemies of the West" component.

there are things about all the countries involved that make this... weird.

 

[The_Jackal]

I just wish we could fuck off from the ME but that seems almost impossible. I understand why we can't but for fuck sake foreign policy regarding the ME has been one mistake after another.

 

[janklow]

I just wish we could fuck off from the ME but that seems almost impossible. I understand why we can't but for fuck sake foreign policy regarding the ME has been one mistake after another.

you're not wrong, but i don't see a scenario in which we can just fuck off

 

[kingblaze84]

I know Iran has been a boogeyman for a long time in America and much of the Middle East, but considering Saudi govt officials helped fund ISIS and also helped fund the 9/11 attacks, I still don't get why Iran is hated more by Republicans then Saudi Arabia.

because Saudi Arabia has a friendly relationship with the US - all the crazy stuff aside - whereas Iran's image of itself has a massive "we're the enemies of the West" component.

there are things about all the countries involved that make this... weird.

I understand that but for the love of god, the Saudis threw money and their resources to not only fund 9/11, but to help create ISIS and fund Al-Qaeda for as long as people can remember. The Saudis I guess are slick enough to put on a good face for Americans, while the Iranians are more blunt and public in their criticism of the USA and Israel.

The new travel ban is less harsh but still weird to me, for the above reason. Then again, this whole damn war has been weird from the beginning.

 

[kingblaze84]

I just wish we could fuck off from the ME but that seems almost impossible. I understand why we can't but for fuck sake foreign policy regarding the ME has been one mistake after another.

you're not wrong, but i don't see a scenario in which we can just fuck off

I see several scenarios in which America CAN leave the Middle East alone.

Let Iran, Syria's govt and the Russians handle the jihadis in the Middle East, and America can stop supporting Israel's terrorism in the region, and America should stop its own support of terrorism in the Middle East itself. It would save America a TON of money. Getting more involved in these overall failed wars is only going to unleash more homegrown terrorism and anger worldwide. But I guess Americans like spending 600 billion a year in defense, as homelessness and massive debt increases nationwide.