Thread: The crisis in Syria

New poll: Syria intervention even less popular than Congress

As this article states, only nine percent of Americans favor military intervention in Syria.

Despite that, it appears that the US government is already making plans to deploy troops and missiles. Obama is currently meeting with advisers who are requesting military action based on questionable reports that Assad has used chemical weapons on civilians. This flies in the face of UN findings that the US-backed rebels are actually the ones using the chemical weapons.

UN accuses Syrian rebels of chemical weapons use - Telegraph

As a pacifist, I am very much opposed to any kind of military intervention in the middle east right now. I would support sending food, medical aid and clothing or tents for the thousands of refugees left homeless in surrounding countries. America can not afford another war. The majority of us do not support this. And yet, it is happening despite everyone's protests.

Comments? Thoughts?

Russia warns U.S. not to repeat in Syria past mistakes in region | Reuters

Russia has warned the US against military intervention. However, these warnings seem to be falling on deaf ears. Anti-Russian sentiment in the west is as high as I can recall since cold war times.

Это уже было - так и не найденная атомная бомба в Ираке. И вот теперь "якобы найденное химическое оружие".

Originally Posted by Vladimir_S

Это уже было - так и не найденная атомная бомба в Ираке. И вот теперь "якобы найденное химическое оружие".

There is an American saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I imagine there is a similar поговорка in Russian.

This time, most of us are not fooled. We know it's a lie. But they are going to make the "WMD" claim anyway, even if no one believes it.

while i agree the WMD story regarding Irak was a lie; i do believe that chemical weapons in Syria have been used. In my mind that is not a fabrication, what is not clear though is who used them.

Originally Posted by eisenherz

while i agree the WMD story regarding Irak was a lie; i do believe that chemical weapons in Syria have been used. In my mind that is not a fabrication, what is not clear though is who used them.

There is no question that chemicals were used on thousands of people, so I agree that is fact. But who did it? Al-Assad or Al-Qaeda? And in the end, even if both of them did it, does it justify military intervention?

Originally Posted by Deborski

There is no question that chemicals were used on thousands of people, so I agree that is fact. But who did it? Al-Assad or Al-Qaeda? And in the end, even if both of them did it, does it justify military intervention?

hmm, Deborski (Deborah); я не знаю, что было бы правильно. трудный вопрос. in principle i would think interventions should be considered if there are undeniable human rights abuses on a large scale. for example, i think intervention in Lybia was justified due to Gaddafi's clear history of abuse; even in Irak intervention was defendable for Hussein proven and documented use of chemical weapons in Irak. the problem is the US intervened for the wrong reasons (=self-interest, oil, influence in the region, trumped up WMD stories) at the wrong time. it would really be nice if the big powers could act decisively and in unison and for the right reasons (=human right abuses). instead they try protect their own interests and ignore atrocities in countries where there is not much in it for them (eg Somalia, Sudan (Dafour), Liberia/Sierra Leone some time back, Rwanda some time back, DRC Congo, Zimbabwe (on a lesser scale)? did anybody help the Cambodians when the Khmer Rouge ran riot? who helped the Argentinians when the military junta made people disappear some 40 years ago? yip - no-one really. If Lybia had no oil reserves, would there have been an intervention? I doubt it. But should there have been one? Yes, i think so - but not for reasons of oil.

Originally Posted by Deborski

There is an American saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I imagine there is a similar поговорка in Russian.

This time, most of us are not fooled. We know it's a lie. But they are going to make the "WMD" claim anyway, even if no one believes it.

There's an aphorism by Kozma Prutkov (you can read Wikipedia article about that "author") based on russian proverbs: "Единожды солгавши, кто тебе поверит?" ("Thou who lied once, who will believe thou after?")

Сирия давно обречена, только чудо может её спасти.

А вот сидящие здесь американцы — что они делают, чтобы остановить эту агрессию? У вас есть перо, которое может быть сильнее меча — как оно будет использовано?

Originally Posted by Eledhwen

А вот сидящие здесь американцы — что они делают, чтобы остановить эту агрессию? У вас есть перо, которое может быть сильнее меча — как оно будет использовано?

Well, Eledhwen, we "сидящие американцы " vote for leaders who are sworn to represent us, and instead they represent the military/industrial sector. Our leaders do not represent our wishes. We protest. We try to vote out the bad leaders. We write news articles and editorials with our "перо" which are not picked up by the mainstream press. We do everything we can, as a matter of fact. Two years ago, I went to Washington DC, at great personal expense, to protest the evils in my country.



Just as I am sure that you "сидящие русские" do all that you can, when your government ceases to represent you.

I am not sure what you think we personally CAN do, other than that. Maybe you would like to enlighten us all with your idea? Please, be my guest. I would like to know how you think we can force our government to stop it's decades-old pattern of global aggression.

Давай. Просвети нас.

This article was deleted several hours after publishing more than half of a year ago:

U.S. 'planned to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad' | Mail Online

All this Syria issue smells very dirty to me.

Originally Posted by Basil77

This article was deleted several hours after publishing more than half of a year ago:

U.S. 'planned to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad' | Mail Online

All this Syria issue smells very dirty to me.

I saw that article as well. I agree, it smells very dirty.

Originally Posted by Basil77

This article was deleted several hours after publishing more than half of a year ago:

U.S. 'planned to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad' | Mail Online

All this Syria issue smells very dirty to me.

You are JOKING, is this for real!?!
It's totally outrageous. He's talking about actions that could start a war, as if it was a stroll in the park.

The guy exists, he is on LinkedIn and all, and they've got personnel in the Middle East and connections to Ukrainians. I didn't quite get why the people filming it had to speak Russian, but I get that the general idea was to plant false evidence villifying Assad.

And "David Goulding" for goodness sake. I wonder what religion he might be.

This smells to high heaven. I can hardly believe it's for real. This is the very worst fears I had about Syria, that this sort of stuff was happening.

And what a t-sser to mail something like this over the internet where it obviously got hacked or otherwise picked up by somebody who "shouldn't" have seen it.

Originally Posted by Hanna

You are JOKING, is this for real!?!
It's totally outrageous. He's talking about actions that could start a war, as if it was a stroll in the park.

That's ordinary American practice. They kill their own citizens for the political purposes, organize provocations all over the world etc, so don't you think they care about these nasty muslims somewhere in the hole like Syria? Even if those muslims are not religious fanatics? (There are a lot of Christians in Syria, by the way)

I didn't quite get why the people filming it had to speak Russian

Are you really so naive? It shocked me.
They want to produce kinda "evidence" that Russia supports Assad and helps him to kill people with the help of CW. Because they think it would take Russia out of the game, if they publish these "facts" in the US Media. Of course, these "facts" must be obvious even for the most stupid American lookers.

I hope we are watching the last burping of the stinking monster before it croaks. Amen.

Nobel Peace Prize laureste, Mairead Maguire, tells her account of her visit to Syria.

While Maguire was in Syria she discovered that the war in Syria is not as depicted a civil war but a proxy war with serious breaches of International laws and the Humanitarian International laws. The protection of the foreign fighters by some foreign countries among the most powerful gives them a kind of an unaccountability that pushes them with impunity to all kind of cruel deeds against innocent civilians. Even war conventions are not respected resulting in many war crimes and, even, crimes against humanity.

Originally Posted by Hanna

You are JOKING, is this for real!?!

This doesn't look like a joke for me at all. "Civil" war in Syria is fueled by Quatar and Saudi Arabia, "rebel" forces consist mainly from jihadist Al-Quaeda mercenaries hired by these two countries, if not for them, Assad would ended this long ago imho. And I believe those "nice" and "peace loving" countries can do ANY nasty thing if it suits their goals. Fortunately for them, USA (=NATO="democratic world") consider them allies, so they have some sort of indulgence and "free democratic" media is more likely to believe any bullsh!t they make up instead of obvious facts.

Originally Posted by Hanna

It's totally outrageous. He's talking about actions that could start a war, as if it was a stroll in the park.
The guy exists, he is on LinkedIn and all

Indeed -- someone who wanted to fake a "smoking gun" email between a high-level manager and the founder of this "Britam Defence" company would have an easy time finding out the two guy's names, 'cause they're publicly known and can easily be found on LinkedIn.

And "David Goulding" for goodness sake. I wonder what religion he might be.

Well, don't keep us all in suspense, darling -- why don't you share with us your interesting theories about what his religion might be?

(Personally, I wonder whether he likes having sex with other guys, as 98.07% of British men do...)

This smells to high heaven. I can hardly believe it's for real.

It's good that you can hardly believe it, because it's not for real -- and the only thing you smell is the stink of incompetent forgery. Apparently, someone hacked into the servers of Britam Defence, found a genuine email from Goulding to Doughty discussing "the Iranian issue", and then modified it to create the email discussing . (The most suspicious detail: the "Iran" email and the "Syria" email were both supposedly sent at exactly 23:57:18 Singapore Time, and both were received at exactly 23:57:27 London Time. I would also note the difference in tone between the "Iran" and "Syria" emails. The Iran one uses rather vague language describing "the Iranian issue" and "preparatory details" -- one would naturally expect the executives in a corporate-security firm to be pretty vague in an unencrypted email -- while the Syria message is like the villain in a movie explaining his evil-genius plan in complete detail, unaware that the hero has a tape-recorder in his jacket...)

And, incidentally, British courts agreed back in June that the emails were fake -- resulting in a £110,000 libel suit against the Daily Mail.

Though I suppose it's theoretically possible that the British courts were paid by the CIA to declare that the email (which was actually genuine) was a fake, as part of a complicated scheme to advance the interests of the US military-industrial complex, the Freemasons, and the Rothschilds, while creating a phony pretext for the future invasion of Iran, AND making innocent Russia look bad at the same time! However, I doubt it.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Indeed -- someone who wanted to fake an email between a high-level manager and the founder of this "Britam Defence" company would have an easy time finding out the two guy's names, 'cause they're publicly known and can easily be found on LinkedIn.



Well, don't keep us all in suspense, darling -- why don't you share with us your interesting theories about what his religion might be?

(Personally, I wonder whether he likes having sex with other guys, as 98.07% of British men do...)


It's good that you can hardly believe it, because it's not for real -- and the only thing you smell is the stink of incompetent forgery. Apparently, someone hacked into the servers of Britam Defence, found a genuine email from Goulding to Doughty discussing "the Iranian issue", and then modified it to create the email discussing . (The most suspicious detail: the "Iran" email and the "Syria" email were both supposedly sent at exactly 23:57:18 Singapore Time, and both were received at exactly 23:57:27 London Time.)

And, incidentally, British courts agreed back in June that the emails were fake -- resulting in a £110,000 libel suit against the Daily Mail.

Though I suppose it's theoretically possible that the British courts were paid by the CIA to declare that the email (which was actually genuine) was a fake, as part of a complicated scheme to advance the interests of the US military-industrial complex, the Freemasons, and the Rothschilds, while creating a phony pretext for the future invasion of Iran, AND making innocent Russia look bad at the same time! However, I doubt it.

From your gleeful response I'm assuming that you can't wait to "liberate" the poor Syrians and bring them some "democracy", huh?


.....and fake or not (haven't got the time to dig around online) Britain DOES do this type of stuff, and always has, sadly. It wouldn't be much out of character, just not something you normally see proof of. But after GCHQ, I am prepared to believe almost anything. The taste of money and power is so sweet that they spy on their own citizens and pass on the findings to a third country.

The UK has it's good sides as a country, but extremely dirty playing is unfortunately part of the way this country stays at the top of the pack.

If you think you're insulting me by insulting British men, you are wasting your time. I'm neither a man, nor British and I have no particular love for it.

I agree the timings would be suspicious. But hacking an account to pull the emails would be just how somebody would come across correspondence of that nature. The UK has some very sinister "security consultancy" firms and it certainly isn't inconceivable that someone would pull rank on a court or a judge if national security was at stake. We just don't know.
It's not like the legal system would just thank the hacker for revealing a scandal. Just look at how Assange is treated in this country. It's got s-d all to do with the "crime" he's suspected for.

Originally Posted by Hanna

From your spiteful response I'm assuming that you can't wait to "liberate" the poor Syrians and bring them some "democracy", huh?

No -- I supported the Iraq War at the time because I regarded it as a "rational gamble" in the post-9/11 environment to project American military power into the Muslim Arab world (to remind them that we COULD, and to show that we weren't deaf when Middle Easterners complained about our historic willingness to tolerate and prop up dictatorial regimes in the name of stability, and for other reasons).

I now admit that we disastrously underestimated the degree to which Saddam's oppression of Iraq had been a stabilizing force that PREVENTED a lot of deaths as a result of ethnic/religious conflict among Iraqis, and that we should not repeat this mistake by attacking Syria.