OT: You knew it would happen...

Something the left and right should agree on - involvement in Syria is a bad idea.

I think they will agree.

And it gives Obama an out... escape from putting his foot in it. ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

The U.S. is already heavily involved in Syria, the next move is just to mak e it more effective. They could make a long story short by simply assassina ting Assad and his whole family. His government is one of those personality cult dictatorships, which shows just how effective propaganda can be becau se the individual is a pathetic reject of a human being. So just incinerate that garbage and it's over.

I wish all of you would just get over yourselves !!

This is not about Assad or gassing his people.

Its about about Iran's Nuclear Program.

Iran will deploy what ever they have if Israel starts bombing Iran. The US is trying to stop both Israel and Iran from making the cost of oil from going thru the roof.

Yes, its still about oil.

It's about oil alright but not the way you think. Iran is not going to nuke anyone, ever. In fact Iran has shown alot of restraint in light of Israel attacking them repeatedly and committing murder in their country. Iran want s the moral high ground and has a deal with Russia. Russia will back them a gainst the US if push comes to shove. You think that's a joke you should ha ve a look at a few facts.

The US miitary is stretched thin and getting thinner. Morale is not good wi th 30 % of them on anti-depressants and about one suicide per day. They are all over the world for various reasons, partly to protect governments the US favors or installed, which is how Saddam got into power a while back. Re member the Shah of Iran ? Remember the Iranian revolution ? The US put the Shah in power covertly deposing Mosaddeq, remember ? Then the Iranian Peopl e spoke and wanted the Shah's head for human rights abuses like torturing a nd all that shit which is perfectly fine if you are one of the US' boys, li ke our "Man in Bagdad" as Washington used to call Saddam. The US sold him t he chemical weapons they accused him of using you know.

Now the US and Britan have sold chemicals to both the Syrian government and the rebels,or more likely gave them to the rebels.

But that's all beside the point. There are two competing plans for the deli very of gas and oil through Eurasia, one is sponsored and more profitable f or the US and UK based oil companies and the other, incomaptible plan is mo re benficial to guess who - Russia.

Russia is just fine with letting this lukwarm war go on because they can af ford it. While the US scrambles to borrow and print more money to pay the e lectic bill, Russia enjoys a national debt less than 10 % of their GDP. The y have time. the US does not. Things are coming undone.

Partly because poeple can get the truth on the internet, public support for a war on Syria is not very high and is dropping like a rock. If they don't do something soon they won't be able to without severe political consequen ses in te next election. Once the shit starts they can say they found all s orts of shit, ala WW2. Like when the Germans supposedly committed the Katyn forest massacre. The Russians did it and the mistake they made was to leav e too many old people alive. The WMDs in Iraq are another example. Don't ge t me wrong, they had WMDs but they were in the banks in the form of US doll ars. Saddam switced to the euro and they had to attack right away before he flooded the market with his US dollars you see. That's why he became a thr eat all the sudden.

Syria is a stepping stone to Iran of course and Iran while might not be all that involved with the pipeline, they are quite involved in what goes thro ugh it. The problem with Iran is the profit potential and the fact that the y have independent banks. Of course the fact that they are aligned with Rus sia doesn't endear them to the axis powers either.

Let's take a look at nukes and geography. Why doesn't Israel nuke Iran and get it over with if they are such a threat ? (even though the CIA and their own Mossad say otherwise) Because they are too close, at the very least th ere would likely be fallout, AND, don't forget that the main objective is t o get their fingers in the pie of natural resouces. Ever try to dril for oi l in a glass parkin lot ? In the desert in radiation suits ? That would mak e it not cost effective.

Iran has no reason to nuke Israel and when they supposedly sa wipe them off the face of the Earth or history, they specifically referred to the regime that holds power there. That is the exact threat the axis is making to the m. You know there are Jews living in Iran right now right ? Figure that. It 's Irsael, not the people there.

Russia is not going to sit there and become surrounded by US/Israel satelli tes knowing their record of abuses.

Russia has learned their lesson. The are keeping their people happy now and things keep on getting better. There is more personal freedom there than i n the US now and there are jobs and good food. They wll have no problem rai sing an army, or paying for it. Their weapons are good enough, the US has m ore but not as supremely superior as the sheeple are led to believe.

And, contrary to popular belief induced by western media, the majority of S yrians support Assad, or at least that govenrment. There are many factions there and it's a little weird for westerners to understand. The factions do n't really like each other, like racists or separatists, but they got the i dea that if not for a strong government the fighting would tear the place u p. Most of the rebels are actually foreign mercenaries.

Most of the weapons came from the axis - US, US and Israel. Tell me, do you think all these people just had all these weapons and ammo just laying aro und for years, just waiting for whatever all the sudden to happen ?

And what did happen ? The US and Israel want Iran, Syria is a stepping ston e, in a fairly literal sense. There may have been some unrest in Syria, but it was amplifed by the axis via support.

The axis started supporting a revolution in a country that showed little or no outward signs of abuses or anything. They are up and down with 100,000 people dead as if Assad killed them singlehandedly. Well that was never tru e and it's not just rebels dying and it's not just the LAWFUL government's troops doing the killing.

What's more there is evidence that this was a false flag operation. Assad w asn't doing s bad in this conflict, he ws told that using chems would bring the US down on his ass. It would be incredibly stupid for Assad to use che ms, on the other hand it would benefit thr rebels quite a bit. Whoever they are.....

My sentiments exactly. I'd like to see the Congress authorize a SINGLE smart bomb for use in Syria.

Even if unused, that single munition delivers a far more compelling message than 200 Tomahawks could ever hope to send.

Yes, there is a lot of evidence pointing to the rebels doing the gas themselves. Even the footage of the citizenry's response to the gas emergency didn't 'look right'

To claim 'humanitarian' reasons for going in and bombing the regime seems a bit ....strange. Especially in view of the fact that Al-Qaeda rebels have been clearing the region north of Damascus by destroying every village on the path while slaughtering men, women, children by beheading and dismembering victims while they are still alive. Of less importance, but still important, is the destruction of a predominantly Christian region containing artefacts dating back to the 4th century. Assad has sent in govt troops to try and save the residents. So again, why would we wish to remove a regime that stands against inhumane treatment of civilians

*and* ultimately support an enemy that many of our soldiers have alread died and been maimed fighting against?

Is down suddenly up?

Reading an old Time magazine (like a 2009 issue :) while waiting for my wife at her hair dresser, it seems Assad has been regularly killing members of the Muslim Brotherhood. To me, that's good. Perhaps, to Obama, that's bad? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Problem is that it is almost impossible to trust any media source in the US.

Where?

Chemical weapons would bring the US down on his ass. It would be incredibly stupid for Assad to use chemical weapons, on the other hand it would benef it the rebels quite a bit. Whoever they are.....

Conspiracy theory. Assad had the sarin and the people trained to deliver it . Any other hypothesis is less plausible, and needs to be backed by at leas t a smidgin of evidence.

Where?

n't 'look right'.

Compared with what? The last sarin attack was on a subway in Japan.

s

I imagine that it would be supposed to discourage other people from doing i t. Nobody bombed Saddam Hussein when he used mustard gas on the Kurds, but at that stage Saddam Hussein was a US catspaw, and they probably told that it had been a bad idea, and threatened him with reduced support if he did i t again. No more handshakes from Rumsfeld ...

There isn't the same range of communications channels from Washington to As sad that there was to Saddam back in 1988. Bombs aren't subtle, but they ar e hard to ignore.

Is Jim saying that perhaps Obama has a moral sense? Since Obama happily aut horises drone assaults on people who might be Al Qeda members, as well as a nybody else who happens to be in their immediate vicinity, we can probably write that off.

In reality, Assad probably ought to be arresting members of the Muslim Brot herhood and sending them off to re-education camps, rather than going for t he cheaper option of having them killed - killing people does tend to irrit ate their nearest and dearest and makes for a rather intransigent oppositio n (some of whom now seem to be busy killing Assad's supporters, which rathe r tatters the fabric of Syrian society).

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

No one has pointed out that, since the use of chemical weapons is uncertain, the administration could easily have claimed the reports were false.

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Reply in group, but if emailing remove the last word.

s/in the US/anywhere

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"Design is the reverse of analysis" 
                   (R.D. Middlebrook)

The Cword. Now we know, you are a "patriot". Your PM nelieves it so you believe it, well about 100 countries don't. The UN doesn't.

Here's a smidgen forya :

That's just a smidgen now.

r it. ..."

elieve it, well about 100 countries don't. The UN doesn't.

I wonder what you mean by "patriot"? Meanwhile last night's Australian Prim e Minister just lost the election and a new one is about to be installed. I don't think much of the new oe - his capacity for getting his head around the evidence for anthropogenic climate change isn't great, and his capacity to process war crime evidence is probably no better.

It's not even a smidgin. What it comes down to is that the Assad regime is capable of concocting unverifiable tales about its opponents having stocks of materials which could be used to synthesise "kitchen sarin".

It makes a fuss about the immediate failure to detect the presence of sarin in and on the alleged victims, which is nonsense. Sarin is a nerve gas, ac tive at very low concentrations, and detecting it requires specialised and expensive equipment - not usually available in a hospital's emergency ward even in the US.

What you've come up with is pro-Assad spin.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

In those news videos supplied by ?? showing all the children being brought in for medical attention, dropped off from vans, did anybody else notice the ill-treatment those children received? It was like, Women, who normally would treat a child in distress with kindness was treating them more like, "You're still alive? You were supposed to die." Push, shove, go over there and 'look like you're suffering.'

Why weren't the matching parents WITH those children?

Have those children actually been identified? Or, are they really the kidnap victims from previous forays? [And, now can't talk because they died.]

Just how does one deal with a self-declared enemy that is willing to die as martyrs, or kill, or encourage to die, their women and children as martyrs? One cannot threaten such an 'enemy' with the normal outcome of a battle - death. Just how does one deal with such a suicidal enemy? Very serious question.

t

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Compared with what? Coping with a flood of sick and dying people isn't exac tly routine work - women who would normally take the time to treat individu al children with kindness might not feel that they had the time to pay atte ntion to one child when there was a queue of others behind them.

They were dead? They weren't sick enough need to be transported to the near est treatment centre? It's nice if healthy parents can tag along when thei r sick children are being taken in for treatment, but a mass gas attack gen erates a lot of sick people, and they do get priority over non-sick parents .

Most of that footage was taken on mobile phones and smuggled out. Syria isn 't exactly sympathetic territory for investigative reporting at the moment.

That's Al Qeda, and the evidence seems to be that their martyr candidates h ave a history of earlier suicide attempts. The rest of the Syrian rebel mov ement, which is to say the vast majority, don't seem to have a reputation f or suicidal gestures.

But irrelevant in this context.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney