Member When the US Attacked Syria for A "Chemical Attack" and Then No Chemical Attack Actually Happened?

Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others, filming the frightened children.

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Ahmad Saur, an emergency paramedic with the Syrian Red Crescent, said that the ward he was working at did not receive any patients exposed to chemical weapons on the day of the alleged incident or after it. All the patients needed either general medical care or help with injuries, he said. Saur told journalists he came to speak at The Hague independently of the Red Crescent, and that he was testifying freely and without any pressure.

Six of the Douma witnesses brought to The Hague have already been interviewed by the OPCW technical experts, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, said.

“The others were ready too, but the experts are sticking to their own guidelines. They’ve picked six people, talked to them, and said they were 'completely satisfied' with their account and did not have any further questions,” Shulgin revealed. He added that the allegations by “certain Western countries” ahead of the briefing that Moscow and Damascus were seeking to “hide” the witnesses from the OPCW experts did not hold water.

The alleged chemical incident was only supported by the White Helmets’ video and social media reports from militant-linked groups

I guess i'm the only one these days that doesn't want to be in another war....

In related news:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of lying and cheating on the landmark 2015 nuclear deal from which President Trump has threatened to withdraw.

Netanyahu, who opposed the deal, made a presentation at the Israeli Defense Ministry, alongside oversize photographs of Iranian documents he described as secret. Israel obtained 100,000 Iranian documents a few weeks ago, and they had been corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies, he said.

The cache proved, he said, that Iran's role in the nuclear deal, which bans the country from producing nuclear weapons and includes other restrictions, was "based on lies."

Netanyahu said the documents revealed details of a clandestine program called Project Amad whose aim was to build nuclear weapons. Though it was shelved in 2003, Netanyahu said, Iran cheated by failing to disclose Project Amad when signing the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers.

Netanyahu's presentation, Trump told reporters, proves "I've been 100% right."

"I'm not telling you what I'm doing, but a lot of people think they know," Trump said. "And on or before the 12th we'll make a decision. That doesn't mean we won't negotiate a real agreement."

I was actually thinking about this the other day. We have grown adults now (and the entirety of Generation Z) that don't know what it was like to live in an America that wasn't at war. Now I understand that 'America at War' is hard to conceptualize because these are all 'foreign wars' and not actually on our shore. However, with just a few exceptions people simply stopped asking the fundamental question:

Why are we in the Middle East?

Do you know what's NOT hard to conceptualize? The fact that 50% of Americans have less than 10k saved for retirement!

Or the fact that Alaska owes 6 Billion in Pensions that we can't afford:

Alaska owes public workers $6.6 billion more in pensions than it has in assets.

The Legislature has passed a measure, Senate Bill 97, to lower the amount of bonds the state could sell to reduce this unfunded pension liability.

Current state law allows the Gov. Bill Walker’s administration to sell up to $5 billion in bonds, but the Legislature needs to appropriate that money. The bill would reduce that amount to $1.5 billion. But it signals that at least some lawmakers could support an appropriation in the future.