Sean Spicer Was Right To Compare Assad With Hitler

Sean Spicer, the Trump Administration’s Press Secretary suggested that comparing Hitler with Assad sent the leftist media into a dither yesterday.

 

Why? Because he was correct.

 Assad, by comparison, would likely be considered far worse than Hitler if his actions were left unchecked. 

There is no way to contemplate how many more of his citizens he would have murdered.

The Nazi death gas so horrific even Hitler feared using it: How Sarin was accidentally created in 1938… and can lead to death in less than 10 seconds.

The cloud that brought such devastation to the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun had no smell and affected even those who came into contact with the dead, indicating it was sarin gas, a chemical compound developed by the Nazis and 26 times more deadly than cyanide.

Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres said its doctors treated victims with dilated pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – symptoms ‘consistent with exposure to neurotoxic agents such as sarin’. 

The World Health Organisation said the victims appeared to have been exposed to a ‘nerve agent.’

The symptoms all point to sarin – the chemical weapon accidentally created in 1938 by German scientists working on insecticides.

The chemist in charge of the project initially thought he had failed, because the compound he had created was too deadly to animal and human life to use in agriculture. But that is exactly what appealed to Adolf Hitler, whose weapons division took over the project.

Hitler was so pleased with his new weapon, he named it ‘sarin’ after the scientists who discovered it – Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans-Jürgen von der Linde. (Source)

WARNING !  GRAPHIC

By contrast, The brand of Zyklon-B used by the Nazis contained substances which gave the pellets a blue appearance and left blue stains inside gas chambers which can still be seen today in chambers that were left intact.

During the killing process, prisoners at Auschwitz and other killing centers were forced into the air-tight chambers that had been disguised by the Nazis to look like shower rooms.

 

The Zyklon pellets were then dumped into the chambers via special air shafts or openings in the ceiling.

The pellets would then vaporize, giving off a noticeable bitter almond odor.

Upon being breathed in, the vapors combined with red blood cells, depriving the human body of vital oxygen, causing unconsciousness, and then death through oxygen starvation. 

A stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets found at Majdanek death camp in 1944

 

NPR

Scott Horsley

April 12, 2017

Once, the daily White House press briefing was a pretty pedestrian affair.

It’s become more eventful under the Trump administration.

And today it was rather extraordinary.

White House Spokesman Sean Spicer tried to warn Russia that its alliance with Syria put that country quote, “on the wrong side of history.”

And today it was rather extraordinary.

White House Spokesman Sean Spicer tried to warn Russia that its alliance with Syria put that country quote, “on the wrong side of history.”

And that’s where Spicer found himself a moment later when he suggested wrongly that Hitler never used chemical weapons.

Of course, any argument that drags in Hitler is likely to be dangerous, and this time was no exception. Spicer later apologized, saying his remarks were insensitive.

NPR’s Scott Horsley was there in the briefing room.

He joins us now to talk more about this. Hey there, Scott.

 

See the entire article below.

 

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.

CORNISH: So Spicer was supposed to be talking about last week’s apparent sarin gas attack in Syria. Give us the context. How did he end up talking about Hitler?

HORSLEY: Yeah, Spicer was really trying to argue that Russia should rethink its alliance with Syria’s Assad regime after that regime went so far as to gas its own people in such a horrific way. But in trying to underscore the severity of last week’s attack, Spicer reached back for a historical yardstick, and it wasn’t a good one. Let’s take a listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SEAN SPICER: We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. You know, you had a – someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to the – to using chemical weapons. So…

HORSLEY: That left reporters in the room and certainly people watching on television scratching their heads because it seemed like Spicer was overlooking the millions who died in Nazi concentration camps.

CORNISH: Right. And a reporter did ask Spicer to clarify his remarks, right? What happened?

HORSLEY: Yeah. In fairness, I mean anybody can misspeak when they’re speaking extemporaneously for long periods of time, and that certainly includes Sean Spicer. So a reporter tried to give the press secretary a do-over, asking Spicer to clarify. And you know, it just made matters worse. Here’s Spicer trying to explain why Hitler’s murderous gas was somehow different than Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SPICER: I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no – he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. I mean there was clearly – I understand your point. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I understand your point.

SPICER: Thank you. I appreciate that. There was not – in the – he brought them into the – to the Holocaust center, and I understand that. But I’m saying, 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. I appreciate the clarification there. That was not the intent.

HORSLEY: You know, the reporter tried to give Spicer a lifeline, and he just used it to tie himself up in knots.

CORNISH: What’s been the reaction outside the briefing room?

SPICER: It was swift and pretty severe. The Holocaust Museum, which is not far from the White House here in Washington, took Spicer to task on Twitter. The museum posted some video of what U.S. troops discovered when they liberated the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect went further, saying Spicer ought to be fired for engaging what they called Holocaust denial. Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi also piled on, saying while Jewish families across the country were celebrating Passover, the chief spokesman of the White House was downplaying the horror of the Holocaust.

CORNISH: In the meantime, there have been some apologies out of the White House, right?

HORSLEY: That’s right, Audie. First, Spicer put out a written statement, which really didn’t diffuse the controversy. But later this evening, he went on CNN to try to make things right. He did apologize, and he said his comments in the briefing were a mistake.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SPICER: I’m not, you know, in any way standing by them. I was trying to draw a comparison for which there shouldn’t have been one. It was insensitive and inappropriate. I should have stayed focused on the Assad regime and the dangers that they have brought to their own people and the terrible atrocities they did. And to drag any other comparison into this was not appropriate.

HORSLEY: Now, Audie, I should say this is not the first time the White House has found itself in a pickle like this. The president put out a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day his first week in office where he somehow forgot to mention the Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis.

CORNISH: That’s NPR’s Scott Horsley from the White House. Scott, thank you.

 

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