Beaver Friday war edition or not

(Okay this isn't the usual sexy beaver and we know Canadians won't be sending anybody to war)

Getting serious about Syria.

 I've been scanning news reports on the situation in Syria from an up close and personal perspective. I like to dig through on the ground interviews from people who were actually there to piece together the facts. One man reported hearing the artillery shells at about 3 AM. I've watched these myself via Livestream one night last year. You hear the shot go off followed by the whiz of it traveling through the air then the explosion and smoke. In this man's case there was no explosion after hearing the shells. He reported smelling something like rotten eggs and said he ran with his family to a basement. He was one of the lucky ones and was later able to get away from the carnage that ensued. Such is the nature of chemical weapons and hazardous chemicals. It's a matter of how near you are to them and the space around you.

So from what I've read and my knowledge of such things (I am trained for such an attack believe it or not) I surmise that the weapons used were a combination. First there was the mustard gas which can produce a rotten egg smell. Also used was phosgene. I can't speculate on Sarin even though many of the symptoms were there. The reasoning behind these first two are that they are easily produced and therefore it would be easy to blame the other side. Do I think the rebels used the gas? No. It wouldn't make sense. The rebels were ill equipped to protect themselves having a limited supply of gas masks and very little in the way of protection. You will note the photo of the "cache" of chemical weapons discovered by the Syrian Army showed mostly gas masks and atropine which is an antidote to a chemical attack.

How will this end? That's anyone's guess. To attempt a strike on Syrian targets would do little to deter Assad and like striking a hornets nest could do more harm. Like or not we'll have to live with the current situation until a later time. There's too many players in this game with Russia China Iran and the U.S. playing the proxy war. Until all sides come to meet nothing will change. The only winners in this game at the moment are the arms dealers and even they will have a tough time when most of their customers are dead.

Bank fails later.
Update: No fails this week