Syria

[Mark]

It grieves me to see images of innocent people killed like we are seeing in Syria.

That does not change the fact that we SHOULD NOT get Militarily involved in other people's Civil Wars.

It is terribly sad, yet if they are not shocking themselves into a cease-fire, what hope is there and why should we be expected to be so shocked, that we must intervene?

None of it makes any sense. Why is Russia and others against, yet the West, seems torn by emotional conflict? I'd bet everyone of us here cares as much about the deaths we are seeing, yet some see it as our duty to control this kind of thing.

Obama will punish Dictator A,B and/C! Who made him or any Western leader, the Leader of the world? He who must be obeyed?

Wrist-slapped? A jolly good beating? A severe telling off? Give me a break. How self-righteous we must look to those very people we claim to be wanting to help. No wonder the rest of the world hate our very guts.

 

[Jim Rosenthal]

OK- so the Brits have voted not to get involved in disciplining Syria and al-Asshat. Evidently, the USA is forging ahead on this. So here's my question:

Are we forging ahead because our President said that the potential use of chemical WMDs by the Syrian government was a red line, and that if they crossed it, we would whack them? In other words, are we going to bomb Syria because Obama promised to?

Maybe promising to do this wasn't such a hot idea. Clearly, it didn't keep them from using poison gas on their own citizens, and now we are set up for what promises to be an ineffective "limited" response.

I'm a Democrat and an Obama supporter; but in this case, I think we have a case of alligator mouth and parakeet ass. Supposing he makes good on his promise. The Syrians will expect him to, and will protect themselves as much as they can, thereby reducing the effect of an American attack. The calculation will then change to "well, they threatened us, we used the WMDs anyway, they bombed us, it wasn't such a big deal, now we can use WMDs again and fuck the Americans. We know they are not coming over here, their people won't let them. So if they want to send missiles over here at a million dollars a pop, let them. It won't make a difference."

The person out front on the "attack Syria" idea is John Kerry, our current SoS. His global footprint and influence are approximately one-tenth the size of Clinton's. Maybe if she were still around, people would be listening more closely. As it is, Obama and Kerry seem to be listening to each other, as a mutual audience of one each. Everyone else seems to have tuned them out.

I'm not in favor of pointless responses employed to make a point. I don't believe that anyone can make a point with lightweight efforts like the ones discussed recently. I think if you are going to hit someone, you employ the same rule that we used decades ago when we had disputes on the street. Hit someone hard enough the first time and the fight's over. The time for that is long gone. If there was ever a window for it, we missed it. A better use of our time and money would be flying in medical supplies for Syrians to survive the next poison gas attack. Because there will be a next attack, and a next one after that.

 

[Keith]

**WARNING FROM HISTORY**

JIM CRAIK SAYS Quote:

"Luckily our President is a smart big picture guy, rest assured he along with the Joint Chiefs and other thinking leaders will not listen to polls, will not listen to focus groups and they will not listen to "Republicans" who would do exactly the same thing if they were in charge.

Our leaders, they will do the right thing, the only thing possible."

Unquote.

Please, you cannot possibly believe that can you? This is a mandate for Fascism.

Your "leaders" have so much done the right thing in the past 50 years and have sorted out so many of the world's problems with their tanks and drones, why is it I feel more unsafe now than ever before?

Are "Republicans" some kind of anti-American terrorist organisation? I do not understand why you say your President will not listen to Republicans. What do you mean by that?

Al mate. I guess you wasted all of our time with this poll. We have to Trust In Our Leaders.

Bullshit.

 

[Robert May Eng.]

My head hurts I am glad i am not the only undecided on the poll. I do firmly believe the world cannot stand by and ignore the fact that human beings are being gassed,poisoned and tortured by the Syrians in their thousands. I also respect the fact that the western world is nervous of the build of of these wmd. What really bothers me is putting our armed forces in a position whereby they are running with their boot laces tied together again while the powers that be play tip toe through the political minefields. This will end up a long drawn out headfuck of a situation that is going to cost more lives. If the military are to get involved they really need to be left alone till the job is done and I cant see that happening. Whats best to do ????????

Bob

 

[Steve]

Okay, sports fans, more to consider. Just found this and it is very interesting:

This article is a collaboration between Dale Gavlak reporting for Mint Press News and Yahya Ababneh.
Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.
Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.
The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”
However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”
Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.
“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”
“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.
“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.
Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.
The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.
More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.

Saudi involvement

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Jack, there's no way our President could be played for a fool. Absolutely no way. He's way too smart and just too darn good.....:thumbsup:

Yet another reason to stay out, very hard to be '' certain '' of anything in the middle-east. As I pointed out above, if you're going to do something, go in and get the WMD. Then at least you prevent it from getting into someone else's hands and, in turn, being used against us.

 

[Keith]

For us in the UK - it's completely different. We cannot even protect ourselves these days let alone another nations' citizens.

Discussions about our possible response, therefore should be based on our capabilities. (or lack of)

Let's face it, the US does not need any of our military capability. None. But they can claim it's a "Coalition of the Willing" if we sign their dotted line.

It would be nice to be able to act unilaterally but we cannot - we are too weak militarily and politically. (Edit: The last time we did that, and had the capability, with France was The Suez Crisis guess who stopped that one - yes, t'was the old 'special relationship' ploy .)

The only bargaining chip we might have is in the event of a nuclear war and that is entirely dependent on whether we upgrade Trident.

I believe that we have already made an impact by our Parliament voting 'NO' to military involvement - it might make people think and do some homework before firing off cruise missiles willy nilly. America has cried WOLF once too often and I don't recall any benefits in either humanitarian or financial terms in backing every call to arms their administrations have made to us in the past 30 years.

Gulf I was justified. After that? I'm not so sure....

And in this instance?

Something just doesn't feel right...........

Humanitarian aid? On the runway - now.

PS These type of events gain a momentum. It may already be too late....

 

[Jack]

Steve,
My point is what are you going to believe. Unless these WMD's are secured there is no point anyway.

 

[Al Wohlstrom]

I think we will find out in time that someone has made a very calculated pulling of our strings.

 

[Keith]

I think we will find out in time that someone has made a very calculated pulling of our strings.

There's no doubt in my mind....

 

[Jack]

Exactly Al!

 

[Steve]

Steve,
My point is what are you going to believe. Unless these WMD's are secured there is no point anyway.

Jack, I agree. The water is always muddy in the middle-east and we always seem to be an easy target to blame for their problems. My first paragraph was pure sarcasm and a dig at the blind naive faith Jim has in our Harvard educated commander in chief. Wonder if his Nobel Peace Prize is on prominent display....

 

[David Morton]

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.
Troodos is highly effective – the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways - not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.

Craig Murray
Former British Envoy/Minister in Cyprus

 

[Keith]

Fits.

Israel have been deafeningly quiet on this issue since the beginning ....

When it came to Syria, they were always very proactive (Golan?)

Stinks....

 

[Larry L.]

...This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children...

And all the rocket attacks and suicide bombings, et al, launched at/set off in Israel IS/ARE "legal"? Civilians and CHILDREN are THEEEEEEEE specific targets in those cases.

I'm not going to get into a knock down drag out debate about this, but, I quite frankly have never understood why Israel is always condemned for their surgically targeted strikes on military targets (wherein unintentional civilian 'colat. damage' does occasionally occur)...but SELDOM if ever is there any condemnation of the afore mentioned INTENTIONAL attacks on strictly CIVILIAN targets by terrorists.

 

[Keith]

I think you're right - best not go there...

But, I'll say this. Two wrongs have never made a right ...

 

[Jack]

But two Wrights made an airplane!

 

[Larry L.]

Well timed, sir! :thumbsup:

 

[Al Wohlstrom]

Let's see, I really want to teach Syria a lesson because I made a red line, and I don't need Congressional approval to do this, but, I'm going to let Congress debate and vote on this, in case................. I need someone to share the...........................or maybe I won't have to do it......................or...................sorry, lost my train of thought.

 

[Larry L.]

Yep. That's probably EXACTLY where he is right now - looking for an OUT he can lay at the feet of, who else(?), someone ELSE. Until yesterday(?) he hadn't mentioned getting the permission of congress!!!

 

[Jack]

Let's see, I really want to teach Syria a lesson because I made a red line, and I don't need Congressional approval to do this, but, I'm going to let Congress debate and vote on this, in case................. I need someone to share the...........................or maybe I won't have to do it......................or...................sorry, lost my train of thought.

His train has been derailed between his mickey mouse ears!