Hard News: This time it's Syria
224 Responses
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
How did the US know Iraq had chemical weapons? They kept the receipts.
Indeed, and you could've filled a library with the vocal denials from the US political mainstream about this around 2003.
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Gareth Swain, in reply to
On a lighter note, you can test yourself against the rest of the internet in this find Damascus on a map game.
Oops, sorry Lebanon.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Military, Industrial, Complex....
Indeed
Do as I say
rhymes
with d' USA
not as they do
crimes
as they please -
Sourced from What Really Happened site...
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Here's a thing:
A brief post about a study looking at the effects of intervening in a civil war on casualty rates. There's a link the full study there, but limited interventions on the side of rebels tend to increase casualty rates by about 40% for the rebels, as the govt military is degraded, loses c&c discipline and becomes more desperate. Recommends that if you are going to do it, you need to establish safe zones etc.
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And this :http://t.co/6j6gKrMFwM from the European Council on Foreign Relations outlines the paramters of what the debate should be to my mind, and is almost exactly the sort of thing we didn't see before Iraq.
I think the real lessons of Iraq were about how the decision was made. If politicians lie their way into a war, if they aren't up front about what the risks and expected costs and likely length of the war are, then their people won't support it. And the war will be fought based on what the people will accept rather than on what is needed to achieve the war aims. Which means you will lose. So getting the consent for the war that will be actually fought is crucial.
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Kevin McCready, in reply to
They don't necessarily disagree. It just presents another option for the industrial military complex to use/sell their stuff.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Chris: my point is that fear of nuclear escalation stopped the US or USSR taking any action that would put their troops into direct conflict on a any scale. Deniable gangs of mercenaries, blockades, but nothing that might wind up with a division of American troops shooting at a division of Russian ones.
As documented in this recently released history, Eisenhower wouldn't even allow U2 overflights of the USSR without the aircraft being unmarked, unarmed and flown by a nominal civilian.
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BenWilson, in reply to
wouldn’t even allow U2 overflights of the USSR without the aircraft being unmarked, unarmed and flown by a nominal civilian.
Yes, I consider Bono a weapon of mass destruction, frankly.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
...wouldn’t even allow U2 overflights of the USSR without the aircraft being unmarked, unarmed and flown by a nominal civilian.
Yes, I consider Bono a weapon of mass destruction, frankly.
Anything to get the Edge...
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Sacha, in reply to
Raj against the machine
noice
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cognitive dissonance...
American use of 'chem de guerre', lest we forget......and I really don't see how Kerry leaps from identifying that Sarin was used, to claiming that agents of the Syrian Government filled and fired the rocket (or whatever dipersal system was used), with no further proof of that offered - he looks awful desperate and lame...
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
with no further proof of that offered
To be fair they have said they saw rockets launched from govt positions that landed where the gas was released. Not proof no. But at this point only lawyers are arguing.
The reason everyone wants proof good enough to satisfy a lawyer is that everyone is certain that any intervention is going to go pear shaped really fast. When it goes bad it will help if the proof was absolute and also if the decision could be seen to have been a consensus, something that won't be reached without lawyer-worthy proof.
My guess is they have such proof but are reluctant to release it because it would give away just how much spying they are doing in the region.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Al Jazeera interview, 11/9/2011
I’ll see your white powder and raise you one Gulf of Tonkin
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
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Russell Brown, in reply to
To be fair they have said they saw rockets launched from govt positions that landed where the gas was released. Not proof no. But at this point only lawyers are arguing.
I'm in no doubt that the Syrian government has been using chemical weapons in populated areas -- there are multiple eyewitness reports, some of them from people who paid with their lives.
It's possible that some rebel forces are using such weapons, but the evidence for that seems sketchy.
That doesn't necessarily mean any kind of military intervention is a good idea, but it seems clear that this isn't Iraq in 2003. There were no unconventional weapons anywhere there and hadn't been for years. In Syria, there are, and they're being used.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Those who live by the Saud...
I’m in no doubt that the Syrian government
has been using chemical weapons…I see nothing that gives me that kind of confidence.
I’m with Chris Trotter and the Wall Street Journal on this one…
That region is a puppeteer’s paradise.
Time will out, perhaps…. -
Bart Janssen, in reply to
That doesn’t necessarily mean any kind of military intervention is a good idea
Yeah that's the problem for everyone I think, even the normally gung-ho US are moving slowly. There are a lot of players in the region that would love to manipulate intervention in Syria. There really are not clear simple targets. And nobody knows what the ideal outcome looks like let alone how to achieve it.
Add that to the (unlikely in my opinion) possibility that Ian raises that everything we think we know is wrong about the use of chemical weapons, it really makes intervention (dropping bombs on people) a terrible option.
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Given that much of this is driven by supposed Mossad intel, make of this what you will:
Israel has granted a U.S. company the first licence to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports.
A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. -
BenWilson, in reply to
it really makes intervention (dropping bombs on people) a terrible option.
Yes, even a more targeted and purely military attack, like destroying Syria's air-force, doesn't have a clear purpose or end-game.
It's a terrible situation there. Despite my brain telling me that intervention is only likely to escalate the conflict, upon seeing the victims of the chemical weapons, I found tears on my cheeks, a purely visceral response that had completely bypassed rational thought. I tell myself that any death by violence is equally bad, that being hacked to death with a machete or blown up by a cluster bomb is not less disgusting than being gassed, and yet somehow, it really does feel worse. Perhaps it's that we use gas to kill vermin, that it's a tool for extermination, rather than fighting. It is not very effective against troops. Or more likely, it was the way that it was disproportionately affecting children, whose death throes we were actually witnessing. It's very difficult to use reason in the situation.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
It’s very difficult to use reason in the situation.
...and that is the palette, the powers-that-be (and want-to-be) use to paint the picture and evoke the required responses - turmoil never dries, it just get worked over and pushed around.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Yes, even a more targeted and purely military attack, like destroying Syria’s air-force, doesn’t have a clear purpose or end-game.
Even that's hard. A mixture of force dispersion and rotating aircraft into the air means that this is unlikely to happen. And the very, very, last thing Obama needs are dogfights over Damascus with the possibility of a US Navy FA-18 going down. Assad has some 400 Migs and Sukhois with the most recent being easily a match for anything the US could throw at them.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I see nothing that gives me that kind of confidence.
I thought the Le Monde reporting, based on two months spent on the ground alongside rebels, was pretty compelling.
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