Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[Itchy]

Horseshit. I'm exposing the hypocrisy of Dixie and Seafood that slag every western country yet ask them what should be done and have absolutely nothing whatsoever to say. Its easy to bitch and moan and pick holes in everything but if you can't present a credible alternative then what is the point.

Blowing up syria is constructive is it, itchy? I am still waiting for you to tell us who the good guys are.

How does one blow up Syria? Targeted states on military targets is possible. I asked you questions you answered one of them with the brain dead idea that everyone should have a conference, that's real practical life saving action right there. Sure we'll all go, I'll bring the banjo. Here is another one for you to answer (or ignore as no doubt you will), have the Palestinians ever done any wrong to Israel or were the suicide bombing and random rocket attacks on civilians justified?

[muppet]

A betting man would put money on Saudi Qatari operatives being involved in that gas attack.

I'd put it at 50/50.

Here is what the White House published:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-assessment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21

From:

"...Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation..."

Depending on where you get your news headlines this could (hypothetically) be represented as either:

"White House says evidence states 'strongest position' that Assad gassed Syria"

or

"White unable to give any confirmation in Syria attacks"

Both headlines would loosely reflect the White Statement and yet give completely different impressions of what it says. Depending on your leaning you could jump completely one way or the other. Some of us prefer to keep looking before we are convinced though.

I think it is fair to say though that the assessment (as published) wouldn't stand up in any normal court.

[give her dixie]

What should the US have done when Israel attacked Gaza? Hold a peace conference? How come Syria's gassed children, shown on the TV, don't demand a similar response from you. You should take a step back Dixie and look at what your hate of Israel has turned you into.

Itchy, the US supplied the White Phosphorus that was used in Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. I saw the shells still burning 3 weeks after they were fired. Under international law White Phosphorus is banned from been used in a civilian area. What the US should have done after the attacks on Gaza was say, hey, that was wrong and we are going to cut of your funding. How dare you kill 1,400 people, 400 of whom where children. But, no. they didn't say a word. They just replaced the bullets bombs and White Phosphorus. Plus, when it came to the UN taking action against Israel for the crimes, the US used their veto and protected them from prosecution.

This week Obama and Kerry are trying to convince the world that because of the same number of deaths, they need to go to war. Is that not hypocrisy at the highest level?

[muppet]

No comment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY37l4PDsao

[give her dixie]

Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria


WASHINGTON—As President Obama continues to push for a plan of limited military intervention in Syria, a new poll of Americans has found that though the nation remains wary over the prospect of becoming involved in another Middle Eastern war, the vast majority of U.S. citizens strongly approve of sending Congress to Syria.

The New York Times/CBS News poll showed that though just 1 in 4 Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian conflict, more than 90 percent of the public is convinced that putting all 535 representatives of the United States Congress on the ground in Syria—including Senate pro tempore Patrick Leahy, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and, in fact, all current members of the House and Senate—is the best course of action at this time.

"I believe it is in the best interest of the United States, and the global community as a whole, to move forward with the deployment of all U.S. congressional leaders to Syria immediately," respondent Carol Abare, 50, said in the nationwide telephone survey, echoing the thoughts of an estimated 9 in 10 Americans who said they "strongly support" any plan of action that involves putting the U.S. House and Senate on the ground in the war-torn Middle Eastern state. "With violence intensifying every day, now is absolutely the right moment—the perfect moment, really—for the United States to send our legislators to the region."

"In fact, my preference would have been for Congress to be deployed months ago," she added.

Citing overwhelming support from the international community—including that of the Arab League, Turkey, and France, as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada, all of whom are reported to be unilaterally in favor of sending the U.S. Congress to Syria—the majority of survey respondents said they believe the United States should refocus its entire approach to Syria's civil war on the ground deployment of U.S. senators and representatives, regardless of whether the Assad regime used chemical weapons or not.

In fact, 91 percent of those surveyed agreed that the active use of sarin gas attacks by the Syrian government would, if anything, only increase poll respondents' desire to send Congress to Syria.

Public opinion was essentially unchanged when survey respondents were asked about a broader range of attacks, with more than 79 percent of Americans saying they would strongly support sending Congress to Syria in cases of bomb and missile attacks, 78 percent supporting intervention in cases of kidnappings and executions, and 75 percent saying representatives should be deployed in cases where government forces were found to have used torture.

When asked if they believe that Sen. Rand Paul should be deployed to Syria, 100 percent of respondents said yes.

"There's no doubt in my mind that sending Congress to Syria—or, at the very least, sending the major congressional leaders in both parties—is the correct course of action," survey respondent and Iraq war veteran Maj. Gen. John Mill said, noting that his opinion was informed by four tours of duty in which he saw dozens of close friends sustain physical as well as emotional injury and post-traumatic stress. "There is a clear solution to our problems staring us right in the face here, and we need to take action."

"Sooner rather than later, too," Mill added. "This war isn't going to last forever."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-majority-of-americans-approve-of-sending-cong,33752/

[give her dixie]

On a serious note, this is compulsive reading by Ralph Nader

Stopping Barry O'Bomber's Rush to War

By Ralph Nader

September 07, 2013 "Information Clearing House -

Dear President Obama:

Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up and down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you "Barry O'Bomber".

Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime.

Nor would many of the voters who elected you in 2008 have conceived that your foreign policy would rely so much on brute military force at the expense of systemically waging peace. Certainly, voters who knew your background as a child of third world countries, a community organizer, a scholar of constitutional law and a critic of the Bush/Cheney years, never would have expected you to favor the giant warfare state so pleasing to the military industrial complex.

Now, as if having learned nothing from the devastating and costly aftermaths of the military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you're beating the combustible drums to attack Syria – a country that is no threat to the U.S. and is embroiled in complex civil wars under a brutal regime.

This time, however, you may have pushed for too many acts of War. Public opinion and sizable numbers of members of both parties in Congress are opposed. These lawmakers oppose bombing Syria in spite of your corralling the cowardly leaders of both parties in the Congress.

Thus far, your chief achievement on the Syrian front has been support for your position from al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in Syria, the pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC, your chief nemesis in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, and Dick Cheney. This is quite a gathering and a telling commentary on your ecumenical talents. Assuming the veracity of your declarations regarding the regime's resort to chemical warfare (first introduced into the Middle East by Winston Churchill's Royal Air Force's plastering of Iraqi tribesmen in the nineteen twenties), your motley support group is oblivious to the uncontrollable consequences that might stem from bombing Syria. One domestic consequence may be that Speaker Boehner expects to exact concessions from you on domestic issues before Congress in return for giving you such high visibility bipartisan cover.

Your argument for shelling Syria is to maintain "international credibility" in drawing that "red line" regardless, it seems, of the loss of innocent Syrian civilian life, causalities to our foreign service and armed forces in that wider region, and retaliation against the fearful Christian population in Syria (one in seven Syrians are Christian). But the more fundamental credibilities are to our Constitution, to the neglected necessities of the American people, and to the red line of observing international law and the UN Charter (which prohibit unilateral bombing in this situation).

There is another burgeoning cost – that of the militarization of the State Department whose original charter invests it with the responsibility of diplomacy. Instead, Mr. Obama you have shaped the State Department into a belligerent "force projector" first under Generalissima Clinton and now under Generalissimo Kerry. The sidelined foreign service officers, who have knowledge and conflict avoidance experience, are left with reinforced fortress-like embassies as befits our Empire reputation abroad.

Secretary John Kerry descended to gibberish when, under questioning this week by a House Committee member, he asserted that your proposed attack was "not war" because there would be "no boots on the ground." In Kerry's view, bombing a country with missiles and air force bombers is not an act of war.

It is instructive to note how government autocracy feeds on itself. Start with unjustified government secrecy garnished by the words "national security." That leads to secret laws, secret evidence, secret courts, secret prisons, secret prisoners, secret relationships with selected members of Congress, denial of standing for any citizen to file suit, secret drone strikes, secret incursions into other nations and all this directed by a President who alone decides when to be secret prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. What a Republic, what a democracy, what a passive people we have become!

Voices of reason and experience have urged the proper path away from the metastasizing war that is plaguing Syria. As proposed by former president, Jimmy Carter, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and other seasoned diplomats and retired military, vigorous leadership by you is needed for an international peace conference with all parties at the table, including the countries supplying weapons to the various adversaries in Syria.

Mr. Obama, you may benefit from reading the writings of Colman McCarthy, a leading advocate of peace studies in our schools and universities. He gives numerous examples of how waging peace avoided war and civil strife over the past 100 years.

Crowding out attention to America's serious domestic problems by yet another military adventure (opposed by many military officials), yet another attack on another small, non-threatening Muslim country by the powerful Christian nation (as many Muslims see it) is aggression camouflaging sheer madness.

Please, before you recklessly flout Congress, absorb the wisdom of the World Peace Foundation's Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. Writing in the New York Times, they strongly condemn the use of nerve gas in Syria, brand the perpetrators as war criminals to be tried by an international war crimes tribunal and then declare:

"But it is folly to think that airstrikes can be limited: they are ill-conceived as punishment, fail to protect civilians and, most important, hinder peacemaking.... Punishment, protection and peace must be joined... An American assault on Syria would be an act of desperation with incalculable consequences. To borrow once more from Sir William Harcourt [the British parliamentarian who argued against British intervention in our Civil War (which cost 750,000 American lives)]: 'We are asked to go we know not whither, in order to do we know not what.'"

If and when the people and Congress turn you down this month, there will be one silver lining. Only a Right/Left coalition can stop this warring. Such convergence is strengthening monthly in the House of Representatives to stop future war crimes and the injurious blowback against America of the wreckages from Empire.

History teaches that Empires always devour themselves.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36152.htm

[Mike Sheehy]

What should the US have done when Israel attacked Gaza? Hold a peace conference? How come Syria's gassed children, shown on the TV, don't demand a similar response from you. You should take a step back Dixie and look at what your hate of Israel has turned you into.

Itchy, the US supplied the White Phosphorus that was used in Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. I saw the shells still burning 3 weeks after they were fired. Under international law White Phosphorus is banned from been used in a civilian area. What the US should have done after the attacks on Gaza was say, hey, that was wrong and we are going to cut of your funding. How dare you kill 1,400 people, 400 of whom where children. But, no. they didn't say a word. They just replaced the bullets bombs and White Phosphorus. Plus, when it came to the UN taking action against Israel for the crimes, the US used their veto and protected them from prosecution.

This week Obama and Kerry are trying to convince the world that because of the same number of deaths, they need to go to war. Is that not hypocrisy at the highest level?

Clearly the use of white phosphorous in Gaza was the work of Saudi Qutari operatives to frame the Israelis. Any fool can see that.

[theskull1]

I'll try again
A betting man would not put money on the Assad regime being guilty of gassing those 1400 people.

[seafoid]

Jimmy Carter has proposed a peace conference but Itchy still wants the war.
And who are the good guys?

[Itchy]

What should the US have done when Israel attacked Gaza? Hold a peace conference? How come Syria's gassed children, shown on the TV, don't demand a similar response from you. You should take a step back Dixie and look at what your hate of Israel has turned you into.

Itchy, the US supplied the White Phosphorus that was used in Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. I saw the shells still burning 3 weeks after they were fired. Under international law White Phosphorus is banned from been used in a civilian area. What the US should have done after the attacks on Gaza was say, hey, that was wrong and we are going to cut of your funding. How dare you kill 1,400 people, 400 of whom where children. But, no. they didn't say a word. They just replaced the bullets bombs and White Phosphorus. Plus, when it came to the UN taking action against Israel for the crimes, the US used their veto and protected them from prosecution.

This week Obama and Kerry are trying to convince the world that because of the same number of deaths, they need to go to war. Is that not hypocrisy at the highest level?

Yes it is hypocrisy, I never said that the yanks were anything but or the Israelis for that matter. But you ranting on about the Americans as children die in Syria is also hypocrisy. The matter at hand is Syria so what should be done.

[muppet]

What should the US have done when Israel attacked Gaza? Hold a peace conference? How come Syria's gassed children, shown on the TV, don't demand a similar response from you. You should take a step back Dixie and look at what your hate of Israel has turned you into.

Itchy, the US supplied the White Phosphorus that was used in Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. I saw the shells still burning 3 weeks after they were fired. Under international law White Phosphorus is banned from been used in a civilian area. What the US should have done after the attacks on Gaza was say, hey, that was wrong and we are going to cut of your funding. How dare you kill 1,400 people, 400 of whom where children. But, no. they didn't say a word. They just replaced the bullets bombs and White Phosphorus. Plus, when it came to the UN taking action against Israel for the crimes, the US used their veto and protected them from prosecution.

This week Obama and Kerry are trying to convince the world that because of the same number of deaths, they need to go to war. Is that not hypocrisy at the highest level?

Yes it is hypocrisy, I never said that the yanks were anything but or the Israelis for that matter. But you ranting on about the Americans as children die in Syria is also hypocrisy. The matter at hand is Syria so what should be done.

Now here is the real question.

Is the matter really children dying? Because children have been dying since we all started cheering on the various 'Spring Rising' revolutions. I include myself in that 'we' so I am not pointing any fingers. Lots of children died or were maimed across North Africa, Palestine, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan etc. Why wasn't children the issue then?

Is the issue that Assad stooped to a terrible level of dirty war? (Note, no one is claiming they can confirm this, yet.) Because war is a dirty business. There is no clean war and those that promise such a thing are deluded or conmen. Those who see war as always the first option are in my eyes as bad as any other warmonger.

The proxy war is ending. The evil Russians supplies to Assad appear to have won out against the coalition of good supplies to the rebels.

The next phase is starting.

[seafoid]

Why does war have to be the only way to deal with the middle east?  Has it ever brought stability? Has it ever helped the people of the region? Can Itchy tell us how Libya went after the cameras left?
And what about the soldiers?
67% of British veterans of Iraq drink to hazardous levels and 13% are estimated to have a serious alcohol misuse problem. Many veterans suffer depression, anxiety, paranoia, nightmares and flashbacks. For veterans with mental health problems, holding down a job or even leaving the house may be too difficult. Often their families leave.

[Itchy]

Seafood. I have news for you. Syria is at war right now before any physical intervention. Thanks for googling those stats for us, I'm sure you are very concerned with us serviceman alcoholism.

[seafoid]

Seafood. I have news for you. Syria is at war right now before any physical intervention. Thanks for googling those stats for us, I'm sure you are very concerned with us serviceman alcoholism.

I used to work in a homeless shelter in London. Veteran homelessness is great craic, itchy, but you won't read about it in the Sun.

[muppet]

Seafood. I have news for you. Syria is at war right now before any physical intervention. Thanks for googling those stats for us, I'm sure you are very concerned with us serviceman alcoholism.

Itchy, you want the US and other to bomb the crap out of parts of Syria to depose Assad.

Fine.

Then what?