Houla Massacre, Syria: What If?

[WildCat]

Yeah, that's the point when the victims usually start slaughtering children.

Predictable blowback, the Assad regime has been torturing and murdering children for years.

Did you support the apartheid regime in South Africa?

 

[Darth Rotor]

China vetoed together with Russia the last two times. There will be no UN legitimized intervention, period.

Probably right. Syria's political leadership has been a bit more clever than Libya's, in terms of keeping a few friends among important nations and Powers.

But Susan "Viagra" Rice (liked that, CL) already said that the US might be willing to put together a coalition of the coerced like with Iraq. Hopefully she's just running her unwashed war criminal mouth

You just can't help yourself, can you? How is Susan Rice a war criminal? I am dying to find out.

- the consequences for international relationships would be dire. Not to speak of the Syrians.

Care to explain what "dire" means for international relationships in this case, CE? Or am I listening to the chirping of Chicken Little yet again?

The SCO is not only Russia and China, btw, and you can add ALBA, which is much of South America and has their TeleSur reporters on the ground, to the undeceived as well.

Undeceived by what, I wonder.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

So you mean to say that, after frantically scouring the internet for any cherry picked item- no matter how dubious the source- that agree's with your pre-selected conclusion, you have now been convinced of something you would have "believed" no matter what the evidence?

I'm surprised. This is so out of character for you.

lol

pretty much every major news outlet is running the same story

but check on their sources

and it always comes back to one or two interviews with 'activitsts' over the phone

sometimes from london

why are you mad taht she's digging around a bit?

 

[Caustic Logic]

Predictable blowback, the Assad regime has been torturing and murdering children for years.

Did you support the apartheid regime in South Africa?

You acknowledge the opposition people are doing this family-killing and call it "predictable?" They're blaming the regime and its ethnic supporters along the way, sowing the seeds for major retaliation (blowback) against the victims of their own crimes. The Alwaite community, names already listed, will be punished for the murder of these Alawite families, in reaction to... whatever the real repression has been until recently (I'm not denying it, just unfamiliar)

Predictable, perhaps. Acceptable, no. Stopped with whatever force is necessary (and no more)? I hope soon. Syria could use some help though instead of more strategic hinderance.

And we'll need to stop getting our "news" strictly from "activist" sources. That's a recipe for disaster we've been following too long.

 

[Toontown]

Yeah, that's the point when the victims usually start slaughtering children. Come back when you have a clue about the topic.

angrysoba, I hope you noticed that one side provides evidence from a variety of sources while the other side provides nothing but slanderous little remarks and doesn't even begin to touch any evidence.

All you have to do is watch CNN, which has a crew led by a far better, more reliable, and more trustworthy reporter than you or any of your sources. They're right in the middle of things. You can hear the boom-boom. See people flinching. See casualties being treated. Hear interviews. Is it really necessary to provide links to CNN?

But of course you would be reminded that all this started with nonviolent protests, which were met with bullets, tanks, and artillery - also seen in living color on TV.

Ah. There's the rub. To be reminded. Perhaps to know.

Don't start. We know your controllers have no choice except to try to pry people away from what you call the "corporate media", to drain their skulls and replace the contents with indoctrination. But that's their problem, and yours, not ours. We don't even want to hear about your problems. Your problems bore us.

 

[Childlike Empress]

All you have to do is watch CNN, which has a crew led by a far better, more reliable, and more trustworthy reporter than you or any of your sources. They're right in the middle of things.

Name that reporter and his crew on the ground. Where are they reporting from?

 

[Virus]

Name that reporter and his crew on the ground. Where are they reporting from?

Marie Colvin did until she was killed by your favourite Nazi.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Marie Colvin did until she was killed by your favourite Nazi.

What about the journalist set up by the rebels to die, cited above, or the Arab League monitors' assertion that journalists had been killed by a rebel mortar?

It's possible Colvin was deliberately targetted by Assad's forces but there are grounds for reasonable doubt.

 

[angrysoba]

Hey, here's a radical thought...

Could it be that:

a) Assad is brutal dictator

and

b) The rebel ranks are infiltrated with violent agitators

The two statements are not mutually exclusive and yet some of the shrill back and forth that's going on suggests it is.

On Peter Hitchens' blog:

I have been contacted by a group of Western women who live in Syria and who believe that most of what the world is being told about that country is false.

As far as I can discover, they are not stooges of what they agree to be a rather nasty government in Damascus, but exactly what they say they are: normal human beings caught up in a political tornado. For obvious reasons, I have promised to protect their identities.

I urge you to read what follows, because it is important, because our emotional interventions in other countries never do any good, and because it is vital that people resist attempts to drag us into Syria, too, by feeding us one-sided atrocity propaganda.

This sort of propaganda has a price. I hope you have noticed the continuing tally of deaths of selfless British soldiers in Afghanistan, in a cause long ago abandoned.

And I hope you have also noticed that Libya, 'rescued' by us a few months ago, is now a failed state whose main international airport was recently taken over by gangsters, and where unjustly arrested prisoners are starved and tortured in secret dungeons.

One of my informants from Syria writes of the 'activists' we hear so much about: 'These protesters are not peaceful, flower-carrying people wanting freedom. No, they are weapon-toting killers who snipe, who ambush, who fire upon the army with the sole purpose of inciting riot and mayhem.'

She blames Salafis, ultra-puritan Muslims influenced by Saudi teachings, who loathe and threaten Syria's minorities of Alawites and Christians. She says many of the 'activists' are foreigners, a view shared by all my informants. Many of the 'activists' are armed.

Armed intervention is in fact well under way, uncondemned by the UN, which readily attacks the Syrian government for defending itself. Another writes: 'I have seen reports of opposition rallies which showed pictures of pro-government rallies, and reports purporting to be from the north Syrian countryside, where it has been an incredibly wet year, which appear to have been taken in some desert. The news being accepted as truth by BBC World News is so biased these days that I no longer believe what they say about anything any more, after more than 60 years of crediting them with the truth.'

She says she has spoken to a man who took part in a march at Hama last summer. He 'was worried for his safety, but was given a red rose to carry and assured the whole thing would be calm and orderly, and seeing many other men from the mosque joining in with their small sons, he agreed. They walked for a very few minutes, the unarmed police watching them from the wayside, then a man next to him pulled out a gun and shot the nearest policeman dead.'

A riot followed, reported by foreign TV stations as a police attack on peaceful marchers.

 

[Caustic Logic]

A riot followed, reported by foreign TV stations as a police attack on peaceful marchers.

I hope those police are punished for their brutal attack on the protesters.

Sorry if I missed any context, I'm speed-reading today.

 

[angrysoba]

I hope those police are punished for their brutal attack on the protesters.

Sorry if I missed any context, I'm speed-reading today.

You certainly seem to be speed-quoting.

 

[Caustic Logic]

You certainly seem to be speed-quoting.

Yeah, but I spent eight minutes picking the right smiley.

 

[JihadJane]

Marie Colvin did until she was killed by your favourite Nazi.

Who's your favorite Nazi, Virus?

 

[Virus]

Who's your favorite Nazi, Virus?

You.

 

[DC]

So there will soon be a mass slaughter between genocidal fascist Assad and his genocidal fascist following (supported, apparently, by genocidal fascist supporting supporters CE and CL) against extreme Wahabist Islamist Jihadis supported by Virus, trust but verify and Toontown.


The situation sounds quite horrible and I wish I could see through the mess as clearly as they obviously can.

yeah indeed

 

[geni]

Hey, here's a radical thought...

Could it be that:

a) Assad is brutal dictator

and

b) The rebel ranks are infiltrated with violent agitators

The two statements are not mutually exclusive and yet some of the shrill back and forth that's going on suggests it is.

However the second one isn't true. The rebel ranks are not infiltrated. The rebels are violent agitators thats why they are rebels.

The only real questions are:
1)What will the death toll be if Assad stays in power?
2)What will the death toll be if the rebels win?
3)What will the death toll be if the kurds decide to join in?

Suggestions of western intervention are I feel unrealistic. Neither Obama, Hollande or Cameron need a war at the moment. As for the rest Isreal probably favors the status quo, the arab states probably aren't up to getting involved and Turkey appears to be happy with keeping things contained.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

However the second one isn't true. The rebel ranks are not infiltrated. The rebels are violent agitators thats why they are rebels.

The only real questions are:
1)What will the death toll be if Assad stays in power?
2)What will the death toll be if the rebels win?
3)What will the death toll be if the kurds decide to join in?

Suggestions of western intervention are I feel unrealistic. Neither Obama, Hollande or Cameron need a war at the moment. As for the rest Isreal probably favors the status quo, the arab states probably aren't up to getting involved and Turkey appears to be happy with keeping things contained.

Reminds me of that Far Side cartoon "On the other hand gentlemen, what if we threw a war and everybody came?"

I don't think a western intervention is out of the question (and by this I mean overt, not the covert stuff like helping weapons into the country and possibly putting some special ops in).

When the cards are on the table, I don't think Russia will go to bat for Syria. I mean, Russia didn't want the Kosovo campaign either, and Serbia was pretty close with Russia, but Russia stayed out.

Now maybe things have changed.

(After all, even less than astute Ivan watchers know the well used maxim "the only thing more dangerous than a strong Russia is a weakened Russia".)

Iran might ante up, but even this is iffy (at least full out).

Still it's a risk.

As for death tolls, I went onto Wikipedia and the IDF says they killed 300 Gazan civilians in three weeks of fighting in Operation Cast Lead.

So let's say that of the 14k dead so far in Syria (commonly bandied about figure) that 4k were Syrian soldiers / state. That leaves 10k in other casualties, give or take.

Supposing every one of these has been a civilian.

That means civilians in Syria have been killed at a rate of around 166 a week [(10K/15 months)/4]

Now I say that both Syria and Israel committed war crimes by using disproportionate force against their opponents, but I don't think Israel was aiming for a wholesale slaughter of the Gazans.

But these death rates are not dissimilar
I mean the Syrian rate is higher
but not orders of magnitude higher

Is this consistent with Syria aiming for a wholesale slaughter of civilians in restive cities?

And also, this is assuming that every single non-soldier death is a civilian

"Those killed since March last year comprised 9,862 civilians, 3,470 soldiers and 783 army deserters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based watchdog counts rebel fighters who are not military deserters as civilians."

Hmm...
http://dawn.com/2012/06/10/syria-violence-kills-12-as-death-toll-tops-14100/

nb usual caveats: assad a dink, definitely a torturous and repressive dictator


So let's talk diplomacy.

What the hell is the problem in bringing Iran in on the discussions? Crazy not to.


Let's talk media.

Anyone else notice that mentions of Russia and Iran are often prefaced with 'a longtime ally of Syria' while mentions of the US are rarely prefaced with 'a longtime enemy of Syria'?

 

[geni]

Reminds me of that Far Side cartoon "On the other hand gentlemen, what if we threw a war and everybody came?"

That would be the Second Congo War.

I don't think a western intervention is out of the question (and by this I mean overt, not the covert stuff like helping weapons into the country and possibly putting some special ops in).

Again who's going to do it? US wasn't exactly keen in terms of Libya, France is lead by a different person who doesn't need a war and David Cameron doesn't want anything to get in the way of his defence cuts.

Is this consistent with Syria aiming for a wholesale slaughter of civilians in restive cities?

They aren't aiming for that. The goverment is aiming to win. Wholesale slaughter isn't a significant factor in their plans. If it happens it happens if it doesn't it doesn.

So let's talk diplomacy.

What the hell is the problem in bringing Iran in on the discussions? Crazy not to.

We don't have any significant interests in common in this area so both sides would default to trying to hurt the other which would be a bit of a distraction.

Let's talk media.

Anyone else notice that mentions of Russia and Iran are often prefaced with 'a longtime ally of Syria' while mentions of the US are rarely prefaced with 'a longtime enemy of Syria'?

It isn't really. Sure there have been issues. US tried to organise a coup at one point. Syria has been to war with Isreal but its not clear they actualy count as enemies for much of the 21st century.

 

[JihadJane]

We don't have any significant interests in common in this area so both sides would default to trying to hurt the other which would be a bit of a distraction.

Except OIL....

It isn't really. Sure there have been issues. US tried to organise a coup at one point. Syria has been to war with Isreal but its not clear they actualy count as enemies for much of the 21st century.

The lovely John Bolton disagrees with you, unless you also classify Cuba and Libya as friends of the mighty USA, long-term ally of the Iranian dictatorship.

'Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction'

- John R. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security [LOL - JJ] - May 6, 2002

 

[Captain.Sassy]

We don't have any significant interests in common in this area so both sides would default to trying to hurt the other which would be a bit of a distraction.

I think some common ground could be found on the 'stability' interest, assuming the US doesn't want war and isn't dead set on regime change at this point.

It isn't really. Sure there have been issues. US tried to organise a coup at one point. Syria has been to war with Isreal but its not clear they actualy count as enemies for much of the 21st century.

Well they jumped on the Gulf War I bandwagon and helped with some torture here and there, but I can't think of too many examples of a cooperative relationship existing between the two.