VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican ambassador to Syria said the international community must help find a political solution to the “serious crisis” continuing in the country.
Speaking to Vatican Radio Aug. 21 after reports of chemical attacks outside Damascus, Archbishop Mario Zenari described the images circulating on the Internet and television “truly shocking.”
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The images, which could not be immediately verified, triggered calls for an independent investigation. Syrian opposition forces said more than 1,000 people died in the attacks; other activists put the number in the hundreds. If confirmed, it would be the worst reported use of chemical arms in the civil war that started in March 2011.
Syrian state television denied government forces had used poison gas and said the accusations were intended to distract a team of U.N. chemical weapons experts in Syria. The United Nations scheduled a special meeting that afternoon to discuss the incident.
“People here are fed up” with the war, Archbishop Zenari told Vatican Radio. “They are crying out to the international community to say, ‘Help us so that this war would end immediately. We have had enough; we can’t take it anymore. We can’t continue like this.'”
In late July, U.S. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said more than 100,000 people had been killed in the Syrian civil war. More than 1.7 million have fled to neighboring countries.
Within a week in mid-August, authorities said more than 30,000 Syrians crossed the border into northern Iraq.
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Of course days later the evidence was overwhelming of a Sarin Nerve Agent attack killing 1529 souls.
The mountain of evidence against the Syria government was not enough to change the opinion of Americans loudly demanding the White House abandon millions of Syrians to a WMD-using madman Assad, who sure enough simply ramped up his Killing Machine, a shocking increase in the deaths of Syrians by other weapons followed shortly.
A dark stain on the nations able to take it to Assad, true cowardice usually leads to that.
No one denied this was a “chemical weapon attack” that is not disputed by even the murderous Assad regime. . They just deny doing it, daring anyone to call them out on it and take action.
The Syrian Army dozens of times lobbed gas shells into neighborhoods right before ground assaults. This time the Sarin Nerve Agent was not diluted at all, instant death.
This is a classic Sunni vs. Shiite Muslim conflict in Syria. The Sunnis represent the majority of the population while the Shiites control the government since Assad is an Alawite which is a sect of Shiite. The US is better off staying out of the conflict because whatever side we take, the other side will accuse us of something. I think the President is right to be cautious because if he arms the rebels, there is an excellent chance US weapons will wind up in the hands of our enemies and will ultimately be used against us just as was the case in Afganistan after the Soviets invaded that country.