[noir]

BBC Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen

The poor Syrians, of course, have been caught in a 24-hour nightmare for seven years. The Assad regime is now secure, thanks to Russian intervention, as well as help from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah and various Shia militias. But the war is not ending. Instead it has changed shape. Big foreign powers are in Syria, with their own agendas that don’t include a quick peace. The biggest potential danger comes from the confrontation between Iran and its enemies, which include Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US. All four countries are players in the Syrian war. What’s brewing is no game.

[One Degree]

Because it is not as easy as you think. Any person, family or group of people equipped with state machine has to be removed by removing the state machine supporting them first. Assassination usually only works from inside that said state machine, like the case of John F. Kennedy, Ngo Dinh Diem or Park Chung-hee.

I disagree. Killing people is extremely easy. All the US needs is his location and we have the weapons to kill him. It may require civilian casualties, but this is a way to determine if our ‘outrage’ is real or not.
I am very skeptical of how easy everyone just agrees we are outraged. I don’t think most are. It is just another example of being told how ‘we should feel’ and us accepting it. Propaganda.

[Patrickov]

I am very skeptical of how easy everyone just agrees we are outraged. I don’t think most are. It is just another example of being told how ‘we should feel’ and us accepting it. Propaganda.

Nowadays Government action usually represents the Government but not necessarily the individual. As far as I see those in general public agreeing with Trump, May or Macron are minority, if ever exists.

I don't know much about this case, but nowadays the power difference between the Establishment and the people often mean the public do not have their views represented as well as what we believe. In History it is usually some kind of big war or disturbance which makes things right again (for a while at least). Maybe our societies have been in peace for too long?

[Rich]

Most voters care very little about foreign policy. They don't like casualties amongst their own troops and they don't like difficult, expensive, protracted interventions, but generally a little bombing, is a pretty risk free option electorally. And as Hilary would say there's nothing like a missile strike to distract from a "bimbo problem".

[annatar1914]

Most voters care very little about foreign policy. They don't like casualties amongst their own troops and they don't like difficult, expensive, protracted interventions, but generally a little bombing, is a pretty risk free option electorally. And as Hilary would say there's nothing like a missile strike to distract from a "bimbo problem".

This is the way of the world. Most people are too involved with their own complicated messy lives to think much about the complicated messy lives of other people who they likely will never see or know in the flesh. So, they abdicate the moral/political responsibility for dealing with such people to others because they kind of have to. Everybody is like this in the entire world. So it then behooves us all to have rulers who are wise and strong and good, and a population that is now longer wise or strong or good (good, which ensures the rest), cannot produce such representatives and rulers...

[annatar1914]

On another thread annatar1914 wrote a thoughtful post "This is the End of the Modern Age". WW3 looks exactly like that. What is matter is the destruction of the borders drawn by Sykes-Picot after WW1 and the creation of the fake nation states in the ME. The west has Eurocenteric world view.

Thanks Noir.

Yes, the borders drawn by Allied politicians from Britain and France 101 years ago during World War One, don't really exist any more, despite still being a formal reality. Even the USA gets that and is trying to fill some of that void ISIS created by supporting the Kurds in the region... All the Powers are rushing in to fill that void, before it grows and ends the whole system by which the ''civilized'' world has lived, the nation-state system of the ''Peace of Westphalia'' in 1648.

Even the ''collapse'' of the Soviet Bloc (which wasn't a ''collapse'' but an engineered dismantling and looting of the Soviet bloc) still managed to more or less organize these countries into a nation-state system although one could make the case that the Soviet system was itself a rebellion from 1917 to 1991 against this old 'New World Order', and so the rebellion will no doubt linger and perhaps flare up again in another way.... But the Middle Eastern collapse of Sykes Picot will not be ordered so, no matter how much blood and treasure is expended to vainly stop this. This is the end of the Modern Age.

Westerners, the Franks/Latins, they don't get any of this of course. I know I didn't for a long time myself. But as a Orthodox Christian I do. Every Pascha the Holy Fire comes from Christ's Tomb in Jerusalem....

[skinster]

This report concludes that the sarin in Ghouta came from chemical rockets. This does not square with the regime's allegations they struck a chemical weapons depot, and disproves them. There is also the report from German intelligence reporting that a Hezbollah liason stated that the regime used chemical weapons.

Yeah, but:

I am not familiar with the scientists who "confirmed" that the sarin in 2013 did not come from Syria.

They work for Porton Down.

Syria declared and destroyed a number of chemical weapons at that time. As a self-declaration, there is no way to enforce or conclude that they dismantled and destroyed their entire program and all stockpiles.

They shipped out of the country on boats and it was accepted by the West that the Syrians gave up their stockpiles.

He used them in the Al-Anfal campaign against his own people. The fact that they were Kurds, and an ethnically distinct, highly rebellious element of his state does not change the fact that they were Iraqi citizens at the time.

My point was that there was evidence for Saddam using chemical weapons. The same is disputed re: Syria, but thankfully, increasingly understood to be false-flag attacks, since it would be illogical for Assad to do so, at the times & places they were claimed, at a time when his army were winning territory / the war. We don't even know if the most recent false-flag even happened.

Countless people and organizations made these claims. The fact that one of these organizations were the White Helmets and that you don't like them does not automatically discredit all other reporting.

Thousands of people and organizations are serving the Western and Gulf States ideology in regime-changing Syria. How can you allow yourself to be repeatedly fooled? It could be understood in say, 2015, but today, there's really no excuse.

As for the White Helmets, yes, they're a terrorist group created by a British military guy, funded to the tune of 100+ million by the West and others, who have killed children on video. What's to like? They're the source for the claims the Syria government gassed its own people during a time when they were succeeding in the war, every time. These people were begging for further Western intervention. How can you trust them? An organization that is involved in the execution-on-tape of Syria civilians? Have you seen the film about them, Tapestry of Terror? It didn't quite make Netflix, like the film on the White Helmets that was created by propagandists, but it might teach you a lot.

The initial protests on the 15th were protests, and not at the time part of an armed uprising.

Nope, they were violent from the beginning.

This is paperwork. The United States has plans to do everything from nuke Russia to invade Canada and the fact that there have been plans drafted in the past to destabilize Syria does not mean that it was carried out. There is plenty of evidence that the United States had assisted the opposition: Congressional acts providing for the flow of arms and support to the rebels. There is no evidence of the vaster international conspiracy for which not a single piece of circumstantial evidence exists.

What "vaster international conspiracy" are you talking about? These are some facts:

*The US government reported they wanted to destabilize the country 25 years ago. Their own documents stated this.
*US officials reported in 2003 that there was a plan to regime-change a handful of Middle Eastern countries, which included Syria.
*The US held meetings with members of the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, beginning in 2006 - 5 years before the war on Syria began - forging an alliance to remove the Syrian government.
*US spent BILLIONS arming and funding "moderate rebels" to fight the Syrian government. BILLIONS.

And again: if they could pull off the insane feats of utterly undetected subterfuge that you allege, requiring powers bordering on the magical, they could have easily simply assassinated Assad and put an end to the whole thing.

Who said it was "utterly undetected"? I've been following the war on Syria for years, not the MSM mind (because it's just propaganda) but journalists and activists on the ground. They reported of foreigners coming into the country through Turkey, right at the beginning of the war. Turkish civilians reported video clips of these moderate head-chopping rebels traveling with weapons, into Syria. Many were rent-a-Jihadis, who had just destroyed Libya.

The notion that the fight is "majority foreign" does not add up.

The US state department itself reported on the thousands of foreign fighters in Syria, from "90 different countries".

Because the alternative, as you would prefer, would be to declare that no honest brokers exist and therefore researched reports and interviews carry the same evidentiary weight as unsourced allegations, conspiracy theories, and nothing at all.

Or, some of us know better not to trust organizations like the UN, when it comes to regime change wars.

[colliric]

Trump was pressured:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/15/poli ... index.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43778831

Macron says he pressured Trump to "do the right thing" and "stay put(for now)". May seems to have said the same thing earlier and put British Warships in first.

The other allies put pressure on you guys to tow the line.

SO... You are always wrong these days...

Hopefully one day you'll get one right.

[skinster]

Trump was pressured:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/15/poli ... index.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43778831

I feel like this almost-year-old article is still relevant:

Syria the Latest Case of US ‘Stumbling’ Into War
A recent headline in The Atlantic (6/9/17) earnestly pondered if the US was “Getting Sucked Into More War in Syria.” “Even as Washington potentially stumbles into war…” was how the article’s discussion began.

One of the most common tropes in US media is that the US military always goes to war reluctantly—and, if there are negative consequences, like civilian deaths, it’s simply a matter of bumbling around without much plan or purpose.

This framing serves to flatter two sensibilities: one right and one vaguely left. It satisfies the right-wing nationalist idea that America only goes to war because it’s compelled to by forces outside of its own control; the reluctant warrior, the gentle giant who will only attack when provoked to do so. But it also plays to a nominally liberal, hipster notion that the US military is actually incompetent and boobish, and is generally bad at war-making.

This is expressed most clearly in the idea that the US is “drawn into” war despite its otherwise unwarlike intentions. “Will US Be Drawn Further Into Syrian Civil War?” asked Fox News (4/7/17). “How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” disclosed The Atlantic (2/9/17), “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” speculated Quartz (4/29/17). “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate predicted (5/11/17). The US is “stumbling into a wider war” in Syria, the New York Times editorial board (5/2/15) warned. “A Flexing Contest in Syria May Trap the US in an Endless Conflict,” Vice News (6/19/17) added.

“Sliding,” “stumbling,” ”sucked into,” “dragged into,” ”drawn into”: The US is always reluctantly—and without a plan—falling backward into bombing and occupying. The US didn’t enter the conflict in Syria in September 2014 deliberately; it was forced into it by outside actors. The US didn’t arm and fund anti-Assad rebels for four years to the tune of $1 billion a year as part of a broader strategy for the region; it did so as a result of some unknown geopolitical dark matter.

Note that “self-defense” here means shooting down a plane flying over another country because it’s trying to bomb forces that you’re supporting to try to overthrow that country’s government. (Reuters, 6/19/17)

Syria especially evokes the media’s “reluctantly sucked into war” narrative. Four times in the past month, the Trump administration has attacked pro-regime forces in Syria, and in all four instances they’ve claimed “self-defense.” All four times, media accepted this justification without question (e.g., Reuters, 6/19/17), despite not a single instance of “self-defense” attacks occurring under two-and-a-half years of the Obama administration fighting in Syria. (The one time Obama directly attacked Syrian government forces, the US claimed it was an accident.)

Why the sudden uptick in “self-defense”? Could it be because, as with the bombing of ISIS (and nearby civilians), Trump has given a green light to his generals to adopt an itchy trigger finger? Could it be Trump and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has a decades-long grudge against Iran, want to blow up Iranian drones and kill Iranian troops? No such questions are entertained, much less interrogated. The US’s entirely defensive posture in Syria is presented as fact and serves as the premise for discussion.

When US empire isn’t reluctant, it’s benevolent. “Initially motivated by humanitarian impulse,” Foreign Policy‘s Emile Simpson (6/21/17) insisted, “the United States and its Western allies achieved regime change in Libya and attempted it in Syria, by backing rebels in each case.”

“At least in recent decades, American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy,” the New York Times editorial board (2/7/17) swooned.

“Every American president since at least the 1970s,” Washington Post’s Philip Rucker (5/2/17) declared, “has used his office to champion human rights and democratic values around the world.” Interpreting US policymakers’ motives is permitted, so long as the conclusion is never critical.
Vanity Fair: Is Putin’s Master Plan Only Beginning?

In contrast, foreign policy actions by Russia are painted in diabolical and near-omnipotent terms. “Is Putin’s Master Plan Only Beginning?” worried Vanity Fair (12/28/16). “Putin’s Aim Is to Make This the Russian Century,” insists Time magazine (10/1/16).

Russia isn’t “drawn into” Crimea; it has a secret “Crimea takeover plot” (BBC, 3/9/15). Putin doesn’t “stumble into” Syria; he has a “Long-Term Strategy” there (Foreign Affairs, 3/15/16). Military adventurism by other countries is part of a well-planned agenda, while US intervention is at best reluctant, and at worst bumfuzzled—Barney Fife with 8,000 Abrams tanks and 19 aircraft carriers.

Even liberals talk about war in this agency-free manner. Jon Stewart was fond of saying, for example, that the Iraq war was a “mistake”—implying a degree of “aw shucks” mucking up, rather than a years-long plan by ideologues in the government to assert US hegemony in the Middle East.

War, of course, isn’t a “mistake.” Nor, unless your country is invaded, is it carried out against one’s will. The act of marshalling tens of thousands of troops, scores of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and coordinating the mechanisms of soft and covert power by State and CIA officials, are deliberate acts by conscious, very powerful actors.

Media shouldn’t make broad, conspiratorial assumptions as to what the bigger designs are. But neither are they under any obligation to buy into this mythology that US foreign policy is an improvised peace mission carried out by good-hearted bureaucrats, who only engage in war because they’re “sucked into” doing so.
https://fair.org/home/syria-the-latest- ... -into-war/

[Albert]

Trump.... I'm mad, Alex Jones mad.....

[skinster]

But Albert, he's just a billionaire and actor who doesn't really care about anything besides...his businesses.

[noir]

An "evidence"

[noir]

Even after 7 years of war, the West still doesn't understand Syria

These happy people can be Alawites (Assad's people) and Christians. It doesn't prove anything about his popularity. Most of the Syrians are Sunni

[Albert]

But Albert, he's just a billionaire and actor who doesn't really care about anything besides...his businesses.

Why did you not tell me about this before Skinster.

@noir What is with you and Christians? Assad is the best option of Syrian Christians, I do not see how can anyone argue otherwise. Even Erdogan would probably be worse then him.

[redcarpet]

researched reports and interviews carry the same evidentiary weight as unsourced allegations, conspiracy theories, and nothing at all

Correct, everything should be treated as a grain of salt. Remember the press of most countries are unnoficial propaganda outlets. Either for the government of the day, or centre-right & centre-left political views.

Some outlets are brazen with their bias like FNC or Brietbart. The mainstream press is more subtle. But still basically propaganda! It's not just Rupert Murdoch that uses his outlets as propaganda outlets, other press barons do too!

[skinster]

Why did you not tell me about this before Skinster.

I dunno, I thought it was obvious he was a billionaire all about billionaire....ing and not caring about much beyond that...and being an attention whore.

Well, now you know. Better late than never.

[Rugoz]

Or, some of us know better not to trust organizations like the UN, when it comes to regime change wars.

What nonsense.

The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission under Hans Blix (2000-2003) found no WMDs in Iraq despite cooperation by Saddam. Everybody knew WMDs were just a pretense.

Guess what, there have been 3 chemical attacks now for which the West blamed Assad (2013,2017,2018). But Assad wasn't destroyed after any of those attacks, all he received was a little slap on the wrist by the Donald. How is that evidence for your precious false flag theory?

[layman]

Western False flag for a limited strike makes no sense. Assad launching the attack makes no sense.

Based purely on motive, I think a jihadi/rebell, Saudi/Turkish false flag could be plausible. The timing surely suggests it.

There are no neutrals in any of this and no possible independent investigation. Believing it even happened requires a level of trust.

[noir]

Western False flag for a limited strike makes no sense. Assad launching the attack makes no sense.

Based purely on motive, I think a jihadi/rebell, Saudi/Turkish false flag could be plausible. The timing surely suggests it.

There are no neutrals in any of this and no possible independent investigation. Believing it even happened requires a level of trust.

You think like Western. Period

[Rugoz]

Western False flag for a limited strike makes no sense. Assad launching the attack makes no sense.

You ignore the elephant in the room.

Assad's enemies were the target. Since when does it no make sense for Assad to terrorize his enemies.