Spicer Stumbles on Syria
via theatlantic.com
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer caused outrage this afternoon when he claimed that unlike Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” and then dug himself deeper in his attempts to recover from the gaffe. His comments seem to have been a series of fumbles rather than intentional Holocaust denial; still, they did little to clarify the Trump administration’s policy on Syria after last week’s airstrike. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis among Syrians continues. Trump’s military action could help—but his refugee policy is likely to make things worse. In Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is trying to convince the Russian government to break with Assad, though he isn’t likely to succeed.
Actually, Sean Spicer, Nazis Were the Masters of Poison Gas
via heatst.com
White House Press Secretary and noted buffoon Sean Spicer really fell into a swimming pool of pig shit this afternoon when remarking on Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
But don’t worry, he tried clarifying his comments by saying Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing” and that Hitler instead brought Jews to “the Holocaust center.” According to Spicer, Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons “in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent, into the middle of towns, it was brought — so the use of it.”
Here’s a quick history lesson: German scientists at the Nazi-linked chemical and pharmaceutical company IG Farben actually developed the notorious chemical weapon Sarin — the same weapon Assad likely used in his recent attack on innocent civilians. In fact, the highly lethal nerve agent is named after the last names of the scientists who discovered it: Schrader, Ambros, Ritter, and von der Linde.
Following its development, the Nazi government stockpiled Sarin as a potential weapon. While it’s true that the Nazis didn’t use chemical weapons against Allied forces, it wasn’t for humanitarian reasons. Nazis feared the retaliatory consequences if they broke international agreements barring the use of chemical weapons.
And yes, Mr. Spicer, Nazis did use chemical weapons on their own people — they spent quite some time thinking about the best ways to do it. At the beginning of the war, Nazis experimented with roving gas vans that were pumped full of carbon monoxide gas to quickly kill Jews and other undesirables. These mobile killing units gassed “hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Roma, and mentally ill people,” according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
At the so-called “Holocaust Centers,” presumably concentration camps, experts estimate that 6,000 Jews were gassed daily at sites like Auschwitz. The choice of gas at concentration camps was Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide also invented in Germany.
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