Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[seafoid]

You do realise there is already a war in Syria? Do tell me all about your first hand knowledge of war Seafood. International warrior like you must have some stories. And then the mask slips, Israel is your main concern. Let's just eliminate Israel and all will be well in the middle East. You are a headcase.

Thanks Itchy.
Always a pleasure discussing the region with you.
Do I need firsthand experience of war? Don't you have newspapers where you live? 

[Itchy]

Its just you speak with such authority I assumed you must have been in a war zone, I even feared for your sister. At least you've confirmed now your authority comes from a newspaper, thanks for clearing that up.

[seafoid]

Its just you speak with such authority I assumed you must have been in a war zone, I even feared for your sister. At least you've confirmed now your authority comes from a newspaper, thanks for clearing that up.

FFS Itchy. give it a rest.
What's wrong with reading? Do you have to experience everything before you can understand anything?

Do you have to be American to have an opinion on the Republican party?

[Itchy]

No. I just found your previous condescending statement on whether I understood what happens in war to be something a hardened veteran of war would say, not an avid reader of the guardian. Of course you are entitled to be a condescending know all based on reading a few papers, no problem.

[seafoid]

Guess who is asking Obama to bomb the shit of Syria

http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/files/2013-08-27-Open%20letter%20to%20POTUS%20on%20Syria.pdf

The same people behind the war in Iraq

[johnneycool]

No. I just found your previous condescending statement on whether I understood what happens in war to be something a hardened veteran of war would say, not an avid reader of the guardian. Of course you are entitled to be a condescending know all based on reading a few papers, no problem.

Itchy, I can understand where you're coming from, it looks all too obvious that Assad gassed people in his own country, that can't be acceptable to anyone irrespective of who we believe carried it out.

The problem is we've been told too many lies in the past about weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc, and its proven to be untrue and the ulterior motives have come out later whilst 100's of thousands of Iraqis died in the pursuit of their own liberation at the hands of their so called liberators who've left the place in a sectarian blood bath but creamed off their oil and the American tax payer paying billions into the coffers of the american war machine on a yearly basis.
The "war on terror" in Afghanistan is a joke and the Taliban will be back in power and probably stronger than ever days after the Americans leave there, Libya is conveniently forgotten about after the mess the French and British left it in after arming via some middle east intermediary or another a group of extremists with heavy links to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well. Colonel Gadaffi was brought in from the cold when he opened up his oil fields to the french and British, then lo and behold be turfs out a French oil company and he's persona non grata again and the French couldn't get their jets over Libya quick enough.
These places are not simply baddies vrs goodies as we're led to believe, I don't know enough about it, but you can be sure there's outside influences like the Russians, Chinese, Americans, French and British want to have a friendly government in that region irrespective if they're democratically elected or not.

In the meantime innocent civilians die in their droves as usual.

[Count 10]

No. I just found your previous condescending statement on whether I understood what happens in war to be something a hardened veteran of war would say, not an avid reader of the guardian. Of course you are entitled to be a condescending know all based on reading a few papers, no problem.

Itchy, I can understand where you're coming from, it looks all too obvious that Assad gassed people in his own country, that can't be acceptable to anyone irrespective of who we believe carried it out.

The problem is we've been told too many lies in the past about weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc, and its proven to be untrue and the ulterior motives have come out later whilst 100's of thousands of Iraqis died in the pursuit of their own liberation at the hands of their so called liberators who've left the place in a sectarian blood bath but creamed off their oil and the American tax payer paying billions into the coffers of the american war machine on a yearly basis.
The "war on terror" in Afghanistan is a joke and the Taliban will be back in power and probably stronger than ever days after the Americans leave there, Libya is conveniently forgotten about after the mess the French and British left it in after arming via some middle east intermediary or another a group of extremists with heavy links to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well. Colonel Gadaffi was brought in from the cold when he opened up his oil fields to the french and British, then lo and behold be turfs out a French oil company and he's persona non grata again and the French couldn't get their jets over Libya quick enough.
These places are not simply baddies vrs goodies as we're led to believe, I don't know enough about it, but you can be sure there's outside influences like the Russians, Chinese, Americans, French and British want to have a friendly government in that region irrespective if they're democratically elected or not.

In the meantime innocent civilians die in their droves as usual.

People don't give a shit unless it's happening on their own doorstep!

[Arthur_Friend]

Does anyone here actually believe that the British, French or American governments actually give a shit about the people who were gassed in Syria? (regardless of who carried out the attack).

[johnneycool]

No. I just found your previous condescending statement on whether I understood what happens in war to be something a hardened veteran of war would say, not an avid reader of the guardian. Of course you are entitled to be a condescending know all based on reading a few papers, no problem.

Itchy, I can understand where you're coming from, it looks all too obvious that Assad gassed people in his own country, that can't be acceptable to anyone irrespective of who we believe carried it out.

The problem is we've been told too many lies in the past about weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc, and its proven to be untrue and the ulterior motives have come out later whilst 100's of thousands of Iraqis died in the pursuit of their own liberation at the hands of their so called liberators who've left the place in a sectarian blood bath but creamed off their oil and the American tax payer paying billions into the coffers of the american war machine on a yearly basis.
The "war on terror" in Afghanistan is a joke and the Taliban will be back in power and probably stronger than ever days after the Americans leave there, Libya is conveniently forgotten about after the mess the French and British left it in after arming via some middle east intermediary or another a group of extremists with heavy links to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well. Colonel Gadaffi was brought in from the cold when he opened up his oil fields to the french and British, then lo and behold be turfs out a French oil company and he's persona non grata again and the French couldn't get their jets over Libya quick enough.
These places are not simply baddies vrs goodies as we're led to believe, I don't know enough about it, but you can be sure there's outside influences like the Russians, Chinese, Americans, French and British want to have a friendly government in that region irrespective if they're democratically elected or not.

In the meantime innocent civilians die in their droves as usual.

People don't give a shit unless it's happening on their own doorstep!

True, hence the bombings on the London underground, twin towers, etc, etc.

The wrongs done in our name will come back to bite us at some time in the future.

[theskull1]

How many days has it been since this chemical attack now? In that time how many commentators/spokesmen have been heard pumping out the message that Assad is guilty before any evidence has been produced. Theres a machine at work here and right or wrong has got nothing to do with it.

[seafoid]

It isn't even clear that the Syrian regime used the chemical weapons. Hague cited Israeli intelligence.
No conflict of interest there.

Where was the UN  when Israel fired white phosphorous on Gaza or the Yanks and the Brits  used depleted uranium in Iraq ?   

[seafoid]

How many days has it been since this chemical attack now? In that time how many commentators/spokesmen have been heard pumping out the message that Assad is guilty before any evidence has been produced. Theres a machine at work here and right or wrong has got nothing to do with it.

This has been in the works for months.
Still no proof the Syrian government did it.


"Three months ago, the UN Syria human rights commission member Carla Del Ponte said there were "strong concrete suspicions" that rebel fighters had used the nerve gas sarin, and Turkish security forces were reported soon afterwards to have seized sarin from al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front units heading into Syria."


It's a proxy war between Iran and Saudi, Israel and the West
A bit like Belgium in the past being used as a pitch for Germany vs England

Syrians have no chance.

[haveaharp]

No. I just found your previous condescending statement on whether I understood what happens in war to be something a hardened veteran of war would say, not an avid reader of the guardian. Of course you are entitled to be a condescending know all based on reading a few papers, no problem.

Itchy, I can understand where you're coming from, it looks all too obvious that Assad gassed people in his own country, that can't be acceptable to anyone irrespective of who we believe carried it out.

The problem is we've been told too many lies in the past about weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc, and its proven to be untrue and the ulterior motives have come out later whilst 100's of thousands of Iraqis died in the pursuit of their own liberation at the hands of their so called liberators who've left the place in a sectarian blood bath but creamed off their oil and the American tax payer paying billions into the coffers of the american war machine on a yearly basis.
The "war on terror" in Afghanistan is a joke and the Taliban will be back in power and probably stronger than ever days after the Americans leave there, Libya is conveniently forgotten about after the mess the French and British left it in after arming via some middle east intermediary or another a group of extremists with heavy links to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well. Colonel Gadaffi was brought in from the cold when he opened up his oil fields to the french and British, then lo and behold be turfs out a French oil company and he's persona non grata again and the French couldn't get their jets over Libya quick enough.
These places are not simply baddies vrs goodies as we're led to believe, I don't know enough about it, but you can be sure there's outside influences like the Russians, Chinese, Americans, French and British want to have a friendly government in that region irrespective if they're democratically elected or not.

In the meantime innocent civilians die in their droves as usual.

People don't give a shit unless it's happening on their own doorstep!

True, hence the bombings on the London underground, twin towers, etc, etc.

The wrongs done in our name will come back to bite us at some time in the future.

Don't the locals have to bear the responsibility for a lot of that ? The West can't be blamed for the fact that these places are full of religious zealots.

[Declan]

The Prince: Meet the Man Who Co-Opted Democracy in the Middle East
by Robert Scheer
Now that the Arab Spring has been turned into a totally owned subsidiary of the Saudi royal family, it is time to honor Prince Bandar bin Sultan as the most effective Machiavellian politician of the modern era. How slick for this head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency to finance the Egyptian military's crushing of that nation's first-ever democratic election while being the main source of arms for pro-al-Qaida insurgents in Syria.

Just consider that a mere 12 years ago, this same Bandar was a beleaguered Saudi ambassador in Washington, a post he held from 1983 to 2005, attempting to explain his nation's connection to 15 Saudi nationals who had somehow secured legal documents to enter the U.S. and succeeded in hijacking planes that blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. How awkward given that the Saudi ambassador had been advocating that U.S. officials go easy on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where those attacks incubated.

The ties between Saudi Arabia and the alleged al-Qaida terrorist attacks were manifest. The terrorists were followers of the Saudi-financed branch of Wahhabi Islam and their top leader, Osama bin Laden, was a scion of one of the most powerful families in the Saudi kingdom, which, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, had been the only three nations in the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan that provided sanctuary to al-Qaida. Yet Bandar had no difficulty arranging safe passage out of Washington for many Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family that U.S. intelligence agents might have wanted to interrogate instead of escorting them to safety back in the kingdom.

But the U.S. war on terror quickly took a marvelous turn from the point of view of the Saudi monarchy. Instead of focusing on those who attacked us and their religious and financial ties to the Saudi royal family, the U.S. began a mad hunt to destroy those who had absolutely nothing to do with the assaults of 9/11.

Saddam Hussein in Iraq came quickly to mind, even though he had brutally crushed the al-Qaida efforts in his own country. But Hussein had earlier made the mistake of attacking the oil sheikdom of Kuwait, an acquiescent ally of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Suddenly, a second war against Iraq was in order. The result was to vastly increase the power of Iran in Iraq and the region, but mistakes happen.

Now Iran is once again firmly established as the main enemy of freedom, despite the annoying fact that the Shiite leadership had nothing to do with those 9/11 attacks. And even though many of the folks attempting to overthrow the government in Syria are sympathetic to al-Qaida, the Assad government's connection with Iran trumps that concern for U.S. hawks. The Saudis have the wherewithal to buy our very expensive war toys; need we say more?

It is now time for the Saudi Spring, and as The Wall Street Journal on Sunday detailed the monarchy's well-financed effort to shape the region's politics to its liking, "... Saudi Arabia's efforts in Syria are just one sign of its broader effort to expand its regional influence. The Saudis also have been outspoken supporters of the Egyptian military in its drive to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood, backing that up with big chunks of cash."

That big chunk of cash, $12 billion from the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, is not aimed at stopping terrorism, if by that we mean the sort of attacks associated with 9/11 and al-Qaida. As the Journal story reminded, "A generation ago, Prince Bandar, in a role foreshadowing his current one on behalf of Syrian opposition, helped the CIA arm the Afghan rebels who were resisting occupation by Soviet troops." That's how the Saudi bin Laden came to be in Afghanistan. Earlier, Bandar had been involved in the CIA's effort to deliver arms from Iran to the Contras in Nicaragua.

Can you imagine the blowback from the prince's current efforts to get the United States to once again meddle madly in a region that we don't care to comprehend? Why not ask Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham who, according to the Journal, met with Bandar in September to urge the Saudis to provide the Syrian rebels with more potent weapons.

Or ask Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who was among those courted by Bandar. As the Journal described the Saudi junket by members of the congressional intelligence committees, "They [the Saudis] arranged a trip for committee leaders to Riyadh, where Prince Bandar laid out the Saudi strategy. It was a reunion of sorts, officials said, with Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) warmly scolding Prince Bandar about his smoking."

How cozy. Perhaps next time they buddy up, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee can find time to chide the prince about his consistently bad advice to Americans on fighting terrorism.

[Declan]

Does Obama Know He's Fighting on al-Qa'ida's Side?
'All for one and one for all' should be the battle cry if the West goes to war against Assad's Syrian regime

by Robert Fisk

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa'ida.

Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted "All for one and one for all" each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.

The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.

This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa'ida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa'ida's affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.

Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa'ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with "boots on the ground", something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa'ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa'ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.

There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa'ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa'ida's enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa'ida or the Nusra front.

And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa'ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush  and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite  enough evidence to make it stick.

In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it's war by YouTube. This doesn't mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?

And while we're talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can't remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about "ending the cycle of violence". Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.

Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That's what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run.