It's not the gun laws, it's the Islamists!

[rowan]

I believe I alread answered that. Do you actually read anything other people write, or do you just go on assumption?

Sure, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Qatar and a whole bunch of other longstanding US allies. But perhaps you prefer puppet governments subservient to US interests, such as those installed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Assad was sipping tea with the queen of England and meeting with the pope not so long ago. How quicky he was turned into the latest Hilter-of-the-month by a proxy war instigated by foreign powers and employing terrorist methods! There is about a million times more reason to lynch Obomber, Hillary, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield et al, and don't try to tell me America has democracy and that there is no brutality toward its own citizens.

[Sandydragon]

Another interesting article which mentions the role of outsiders (without specifics) whilst highlighting the mismanagement, and brutality of the regime.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ad/281989/

[Sandydragon]

I believe I alread answered that. Do you actually read anything other people write, or do you just go on assumption?

Sure, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Qatar and a whole bunch of other longstanding US allies. But perhaps you prefer puppet governments subservient to US interests, such as those installed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Assad was sipping tea with the queen of England and meeting with the pope not so long ago. How quicky he was turned into the latest Hilter-of-the-month by a proxy war instigated by foreign powers and employing terrorist methods! There is about a million times more reason to lynch Obomber, Hillary, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield et al, and don't try to tell me America has democracy and that there is no brutality toward its own citizens.

You seem very keen to blame the west exclusively for the civil war, yet not acknowledge the deep divides in the country and the brutality of the regime in maintaining order.

Combined with your acceptance of war crimes by Assad (you seem to think hat its OK to indiscriminately bomb civilians because they are his own people) and your position become increasingly curious.

[rowan]

I believe I alread answered that. Do you actually read anything other people write, or do you just go on assumption?

Sure, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Qatar and a whole bunch of other longstanding US allies. But perhaps you prefer puppet governments subservient to US interests, such as those installed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Assad was sipping tea with the queen of England and meeting with the pope not so long ago. How quicky he was turned into the latest Hilter-of-the-month by a proxy war instigated by foreign powers and employing terrorist methods! There is about a million times more reason to lynch Obomber, Hillary, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield et al, and don't try to tell me America has democracy and that there is no brutality toward its own citizens.

You seem very keen to blame the west exclusively for the civil war, yet not acknowledge the deep divides in the country and the brutality of the regime in maintaining order.

Combined with your acceptance of war crimes by Assad (you seem to think hat its OK to indiscriminately bomb civilians because they are his own people) and your position become increasingly curious.

You're still not reading what I've written, Sandy. & that is because you're mind is obviously made up. You yourself seem very keen to blame everything on Middle Eastern terrorist networks, ignoring the fact they were created by the selfsame West you are so defensive of; the West that has killed an estimated 8 million Muslims with its wars across the Middle East, and turned millions more into refugees. I actually live in the region and have done so for a long time, the people here know what's going on a lot better than you do, and I was in Syria a few years before the rebels were sent in to destabilize the country with a view to regime change. But you're not listening to any of that, and you're probably not bothering to read this through either...

[Sandydragon]

I believe I alread answered that. Do you actually read anything other people write, or do you just go on assumption?

Sure, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Qatar and a whole bunch of other longstanding US allies. But perhaps you prefer puppet governments subservient to US interests, such as those installed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Assad was sipping tea with the queen of England and meeting with the pope not so long ago. How quicky he was turned into the latest Hilter-of-the-month by a proxy war instigated by foreign powers and employing terrorist methods! There is about a million times more reason to lynch Obomber, Hillary, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield et al, and don't try to tell me America has democracy and that there is no brutality toward its own citizens.

You seem very keen to blame the west exclusively for the civil war, yet not acknowledge the deep divides in the country and the brutality of the regime in maintaining order.

Combined with your acceptance of war crimes by Assad (you seem to think hat its OK to indiscriminately bomb civilians because they are his own people) and your position become increasingly curious.

You're still not reading what I've written, Sandy. & that is because you're mind is obviously made up. You yourself seem very keen to blame everything on Middle Eastern terrorist networks, ignoring the fact they were created by the selfsame West you are so defensive of; the West that has killed an estimated 8 million Muslims with its wars across the Middle East, and turned millions more into refugees. I actually live in the region and have done so for a long time, the people here know what's going on a lot better than you do, and I was in Syria a few years before the rebels were sent in to destabilize the country with a view to regime change. But you're not listening to any of that, and you're probably not bothering to read this through either...

How many posts on here excusing Syrian government atrocities?

[Sandydragon]

The Civil War Breaks Out

Four years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands, according to the Center for Climate & Security. In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others, crop failures reached 75 percent. And generally as much as 85 percent of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms, and fled to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies. Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”

As they flocked into the cities and towns seeking work and food, the “economic” or “climate” refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water, and jobs, but also with the existing foreign refugee population. Syria was already a refuge for a quarter of a million Palestinians and about 100,000 Iraqis who had fled the war and occupation. Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers. And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.

Survival was the key issue. The senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Syria turned to the USAID program for help. Terming the situation “a perfect storm,” in November 2008 he warned that Syria faced “social destruction.” He noted that the Syrian minister of agriculture had “stated publicly that [the] economic and social fallout from the drought was ‘beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.’” His appeal fell on deaf ears: the USAID director commented that “we question whether limited USG resources should be directed toward this appeal at this time,” according to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks.

Whether or not USAID made a wise decision, we now know that the Syrian government had set itself up for catastrophe. Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, it had sold its strategic reserves in 2006. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2008 and for the rest of the drought years it had to import enough wheat to keep its citizens alive.

The senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Syria termed the situation “a perfect storm.”
And so tens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry, and impoverished former farmers were jammed into Syria’s towns and cities, where they constituted tinder ready to catch fire. The spark was struck on March 15, 2011, when a relatively small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them. Instead of meeting with the protesters and at least hearing their complaints, the government saw them as subversives. The lesson of Hama must have been at the front of the mind of every member of the Assad regime. Failure to act decisively, Hama had shown, inevitably led to insurrection. Compromise could come only after order was assured. So Bashar followed the lead of his father. He ordered a crackdown. And the army, long frustrated by inaction and humiliated by its successive defeats in confrontation with Israel, responded violently. Its action backfired. Riots broke out all over the country. As they did, the government attempted to quell them with military force. It failed. So, during the next two years, what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.

Of course, its all still the fault of the west.

[Sandydragon]

But equally the brutality of the Assad regime and the actions of other regional players have contributed to ISIS existence as well.

On this occasion Assad is only defending his country as any leader would, as any leader has the right to do, and in fact as any leader has an obligation to do. That's not to say he hasn't done nasty things in the past, but probably nothing that compares with the crimes of America's allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Israel & elsewhere, and certainly not to its former buddies in Latin America during the Dirty War, Indonesia during the communist & Timorese genocides, and South Africa during the Apartheid era. & then there are the various genocidal Afrikan leaders they have supported, such as the recently convicted Hissene Habre of Chad, and let's not even get started on the crimes of America and various NATO members themselves.

Here it is. Assad war crimes excused.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-11/d ... war-crimes

Don't bother guys, apparently the laws on discrimination and proportionality don't apply if its your own people you are killing.

[rowan]

You've just described your own nation there, Sandy, and many others besides, but - in reality - it was your country which helped start this war and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths, just as it did to Libya, and just as it did to Iraq and Afghanistan. It's ongoing imperialism, only now your country is riding along on America's coat-tails.

Since at least as far back as 2005, the US has been financing and training anti-government opposition in Syria with a view toward regime-change. When members of these US-funded groups complain about their connections to America, concerned over serving foreign interests rather than the national cause, evidence from Egypt shows that they are quickly ousted from membership. [1]

The ostensible justification for this funding is ‘democracy promotion,’ however we should remember what International Relations scholar John J. Mearsheimer said about Washington’s democracy promotion activities abroad.

Referring to the crisis in Ukraine, he stated, “and when you talk about promoting democracy, what you’re really talking about is putting in power leaders who are pro-Western and anti-Russian … promoting democracy, which was all about putting in power pro-Western leaders.”

However, Syria was in the crosshairs of the empire long before 2005. In a 2007 speech, General Wesley Clark recounts a conversation he had with then Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in 1991 regarding Operation Desert Storm.

He quotes Wolfowitz as saying “one thing that we learned is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us, and we got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes, Syria, Iran, Iraq, before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

In the same speech, Clark recounts another conversation he had 6 weeks after 9/11 with an officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The officer he quoted refered to a classified memo received from the Secretary of Defense’s office which stated that it was US policy to attack and destroy the governments of 7 different countries in the next 5 years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran.

Long before any outrage was generated at Assad’s crackdown of protesters, and long before any pretexts or justifications were concocted, it was already decided that the US would attack and topple the Syrian government, going at least as far back as 1991. The intention of regime change came first, propaganda and pretexts came later.

Further adding to this evidence is the testimony of former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, who stated on television that, roughly 2 years before hostilities began in Syria, British officials admitted to him that they were ‘preparing something’ in the country.

“England was preparing the invasion of the rebels in Syria,” he said, stating that the officials had asked him to participate, to which he refused. “This is to say that this operation comes from far away. It was prepared, conceived, and organized … in the simple purpose of removing the Syrian government, because, in the region, it is important to know that this Syrian regime has anti-Israel remarks … I’m judging the confidence of the Israeli Prime Minister who had told me a while ago: ‘We will try to get along with the neighboring states, and those who don’t get along, we will take them down.’ It is a policy. It is a conception of history.”



http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-who- ... tion/24591

http://www.mintpressnews.com/MyMPN/the- ... civil-war/

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/324992-nato- ... syria-war/

But of course it's all ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and Al Nusra, and Ali Baba, and Ali Islamophobia, bla bla . . .

[rowan]

To give you a basic outline of the problems in the region, the powder keg was created by Britain & France who carved up the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, which actually brought an end to several centuries of relative peace.

Naturally they did this without any consideration at all for tribal, religious and ethnic groups - kind of like Africa, the Americas and everywhere else they colonized.

The only real solution is to redraw that map, but it is not for Westerners to determine, let alone control. They've done more than enough damage already. But guess what: Syrians generally do not want their country to be carved up. Not even the Arab Springers not the Muslim Brotherhood appear to want that. They (Syria) were already deprived of vital ports by the creation of Lebanon.

It would also be an incredibly complicated process, & impossible to please everyone. So you'd inevitably finish up with resistance groups and likely terrorism. The Kurds would want their chunk of terrain, to merge with their autonomous region of Iraq, which would horrify the Turks.

Give the Sunni majority control and the minorities will be persecuted relentlessly. The door would be wide open to Saudi Wahhabism to spread like wildfire across the Levant and into Iraq. Indeed, this has already occurred through the destabilization of Syria brought about by the proxy war.

What is for certain is that bombing countries into democracy doesn't work. That's only designed to pave the way for Western control and exploitation of resources. We've seen this time and again, and anyone who is calling for Assad's head is simply advocating that. The man is no saint, granted, but he's been left sitting on a powder keg of the West's creation,

[belgarion]

To give you a basic outline of the problems in the region, the powder keg was created by Britain & France who carved up the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, which actually brought an end to several centuries of relative peace.

Naturally they did this without any consideration at all for tribal, religious and ethnic groups - kind of like Africa, the Americas and everywhere else they colonized.

The only real solution is to redraw that map, but it is not for Westerners to determine, let alone control. They've done more than enough damage already. But guess what: Syrians generally do not want their country to be carved up. Not even the Arab Springers not the Muslim Brotherhood appear to want that. They (Syria) were already deprived of vital ports by the creation of Lebanon.

It would also be an incredibly complicated process, & impossible to please everyone. So you'd inevitably finish up with resistance groups and likely terrorism. The Kurds would want their chunk of terrain, to merge with their autonomous region of Iraq, which would horrify the Turks.

Give the Sunni majority control and the minorities will be persecuted relentlessly. The door would be wide open to Saudi Wahhabism to spread like wildfire across the Levant and into Iraq. Indeed, this has already occurred through the destabilization of Syria brought about by the proxy war.

What is for certain is that bombing countries into democracy doesn't work. That's only designed to pave the way for Western control and exploitation of resources. We've seen this time and again, and anyone who is calling for Assad's head is simply advocating that. The man is no saint, granted, but he's been left sitting on a powder keg of the West's creation,

Though I agree with most of what you say here think you'll find the Americas were mostly colonised by Spain with Britain & France
only really colonising N. America as far south as Mexico & most of the W. Indies. From Mexico south it was all Spain.

Edit: Sorry forgot Belize colonised by Britain, French Guiana obviously France & Brazil by Portugal

[Donny osmond]

To give you a basic outline of the problems in the region, the powder keg was created by Britain & France who carved up the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, which actually brought an end to several centuries of relative peace.

,

The problem with sounding off so often is that people will start checking on your "facts". Without commenting on the rest of your post, most of which seems sensible tbh, your opening paragraph made me wonder... According to Wikipedia, the latter years of the Ottoman Empire were distinctly not spent in peace, ending in several massacres of civilian populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

[UGagain]

The vast majority? Or does that discount those in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan,Egypt...?

Nonetheless most politicians come under pressure if there's not a stable society that sees economic growth of 3-5% per annum. Putin's puppet presides (sort of) over a country in utter turmoil, one where with Russian support they're barrel bombing their own population, just about all the industry that was has gone, and there's no recovery on the horizon. This isn't a popular man, though like Putin he understands something of state controlled media and rigged elections.

Clearly it doesn't discount them.

Putin's puppet, barrel bombs, state controlled media,rigged elections.

You've hit 4 of your talking point targets.

You haven't addressed the issue. Bashar Al-Assad has the overwhelming support of the Syrian people because they understand that Syria's turmoil is the direct result of western proxy forces attacking their country.

To call it overwhelming is a bit misleading. He has support in the areas he controls where he polls well. In other areas, he is less popular. His support base is tribal as much as anything so perhaps not surprising that he has natural supporters who would prefer him. Assad has a power base, if he didn't then he, and his father, would not have lasted as long as they have. Equally, its clearly apparent that significant parts of the country are far less supportive of him, exacerbated by the regimes use of extreme violence against them. The use of indiscriminate aerial bombardment against civilian areas which is a war crime.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bashar-al- ... ll/5495643

You only made that post to get your western talking point in.

You saying these things doesn't make them true.

[UGagain]

But equally the brutality of the Assad regime and the actions of other regional players have contributed to ISIS existence as well.

On this occasion Assad is only defending his country as any leader would, as any leader has the right to do, and in fact as any leader has an obligation to do. That's not to say he hasn't done nasty things in the past, but probably nothing that compares with the crimes of America's allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Israel & elsewhere, and certainly not to its former buddies in Latin America during the Dirty War, Indonesia during the communist & Timorese genocides, and South Africa during the Apartheid era. & then there are the various genocidal Afrikan leaders they have supported, such as the recently convicted Hissene Habre of Chad, and let's not even get started on the crimes of America and various NATO members themselves.

Here it is. Assad war crimes excused.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-11/d ... war-crimes

Don't bother guys, apparently the laws on discrimination and proportionality don't apply if its your own people you are killing.

On another thread a few days ago you and your clique were arguing that there is no such thing as international law.

The Syrian Arab Army is defending Syria.

You can quote nonsense articles from Washington think tanks all you like. It will not make it a civil war and it will not make it a popular uprising.

[rowan]

Though I agree with most of what you say here think you'll find the Americas were mostly colonised by Spain with Britain & France
only really colonising N. America as far south as Mexico & most of the W. Indies. From Mexico south it was all Spain.

Edit: Sorry forgot Belize colonised by Britain, French Guiana obviously France & Brazil by Portugal

Sure, I was thinking of Europe in general. & don't forget the Dutch. That's where some of their greatest footballers have been from - along with some fine tobacco and a certain brand of liqueur.

To give you a basic outline of the problems in the region, the powder keg was created by Britain & France who carved up the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, which actually brought an end to several centuries of relative peace.

,

The problem with sounding off so often is that people will start checking on your "facts". Without commenting on the rest of your post, most of which seems sensible tbh, your opening paragraph made me wonder... According to Wikipedia, the latter years of the Ottoman Empire were distinctly not spent in peace, ending in several massacres of civilian populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

I said RELATIVE peace - compared to Europe, for instance. The latter years, by which time Europeans were already attempting to destabilize the empire (encouraging the rise of Wahhabism for the purpose) were not the best example of what is widely referred to as the 'Pax Ottomanica.'

[UGagain]

This is also interesting. Adds a bit more depth to why the problem exists, rather than just blame the West.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttn ... 4oQpFcmH8s

The Jamestown Foundation?

Any other CIA fronts you want to quote?

[UGagain]

So Bashar followed the lead of his father. He ordered a crackdown. And the army, long frustrated by inaction and humiliated by its successive defeats in confrontation with Israel, responded violently. Its action backfired. Riots broke out all over the country. As they did, the government attempted to quell them with military force. It failed. So, during the next two years, what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause[/b].

Of course, its all still the fault of the west.

That's patently false. The violence in Daraa was not instigated by the army or the police. A protest rally was fired on by snipers who'd infiltrated from a CIA/Blackwater run training base in Jordan.

They killed protestors and unarmed police alike, then a SAA troop convoy who were called to the scene was ambushed killing 20 odd soldiers.

It is estimated that there are 80,000 foreign mercenaries in Syria, making up the overwhelming majority of the insurgents.

[rowan]

The case for removing Assad is only slightly more subtle than those made for removing Saddam & Gaddafi. You'd have to be either extremely naive or a totally right wing advocate for imperialism to continue supporting Western interventions in the Middle East - especially while the US continues to bankroll both Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship and maintain such close relations with Saudi.

[rowan]

The use of indiscriminate aerial bombardment against civilian areas which is a war crime.



The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ ... ans-report

In five months, Russia was able to turn the tables in Syria and implement a ceasefire. It took Russia less than half a year to accomplish what the United States and its allies couldn't achieve in five years. Putin's decision to get involved in Syria was a gamble -- but an incredibly successful one. Don't believe us?
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/a ... ia/ri13199

Syria’s war isn’t civil as widely misreported. It’s Obama’s war, naked aggression, launched in March 2011 using ISIS and likeminded groups – supported by US air power and special forces, waging phony war on terrorism.
https://southfront.org/us-waging-naked- ... un-praise/

[rowan]

The use of indiscriminate aerial bombardment against civilian areas which is a war crime.



The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ ... ans-report

In five months, Russia was able to turn the tables in Syria and implement a ceasefire. It took Russia less than half a year to accomplish what the United States and its allies couldn't achieve in five years. Putin's decision to get involved in Syria was a gamble -- but an incredibly successful one. Don't believe us?
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/a ... ia/ri13199

The United States still refuses to coordinate airstrikes against ISIS with Russia — but it doesn’t even matter at this point: Russia has gone full beast mode. Over the last 48 hours, Russia has destroyed a fleet of 500 ISIS trucks used to smuggle oil out of Syria. But that’s just a fraction of the world of pain that Putin has rained down on them:

“The Russian air force, in cooperation with the Syrian air force, carried out 186 sorties against ISIS sites in Syria,” Syria news agency reported.
http://www.makewarshistory.co.uk/?p=2646

Syria’s war isn’t civil as widely misreported. It’s Obama’s war, naked aggression, launched in March 2011 using ISIS and likeminded groups – supported by US air power and special forces, waging phony war on terrorism.
https://southfront.org/us-waging-naked- ... un-praise/

[Sandydragon]

How many civilians have the Syrian government and Russians killed?

In 2014 a report attributed over 100000 deaths of civilians to the Syrian regime. Nautrally this will now be higher.

Those reports you highlight seem to largely ignore the point that in order to kill more Isis fighters the trussing have been flattening areas where the us has been less inclined to attack. The laws of armed conflict require proportionality and discrimination in the use of military force. It's perfectly feasibly for people to die in a war despite the best efforts of the attackers, yet they are required t minimise civilian casualties.

Russia has a history of not giving a toss about civilian casualties. It's that simple.

[Sandydragon]

But equally the brutality of the Assad regime and the actions of other regional players have contributed to ISIS existence as well.

On this occasion Assad is only defending his country as any leader would, as any leader has the right to do, and in fact as any leader has an obligation to do. That's not to say he hasn't done nasty things in the past, but probably nothing that compares with the crimes of America's allies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Israel & elsewhere, and certainly not to its former buddies in Latin America during the Dirty War, Indonesia during the communist & Timorese genocides, and South Africa during the Apartheid era. & then there are the various genocidal Afrikan leaders they have supported, such as the recently convicted Hissene Habre of Chad, and let's not even get started on the crimes of America and various NATO members themselves.

Here it is. Assad war crimes excused.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-11/d ... war-crimes

Don't bother guys, apparently the laws on discrimination and proportionality don't apply if its your own people you are killing.

On another thread a few days ago you and your clique were arguing that there is no such thing as international law.

The Syrian Arab Army is defending Syria.

You can quote nonsense articles from Washington think tanks all you like. It will not make it a civil war and it will not make it a popular uprising.

Strange that I have been mentioning the laws of armed conflict more than a few times so your argument doesn't hold water.

If you think that only non-Syrians are fighting against Assad despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary then it's a bit pointless discussing this with you any further. You clearly aren't prepared to consider any evidence that doesn't suit your agenda and just want to dismiss it as CIA fronts regardless.

[rowan]

The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths.

More than 5,700 air strikes have been launched in the campaign, which nears its first anniversary this Saturday, with its impact on civilians largely unknown.

Now Airwars, a project by a team of independent journalists, is publishing details of 52 strikes with what it believes are credible reports of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including those of more than 100 children.

It says there is a “worrying gulf between public and coalition positions” on the campaign’s toll on civilians.

& remember that, unlike the Russians, the Americans were never invited to fight in Syria. So what are they doing there? Is it America's job to interfere in every conflict in every part of the world, even when uninvited - and unwanted.

"The US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changing – from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government.

The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition.

There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical." – Christopher Stokes, General Director, Médecins Sans Frontières

http://www.msf.org/en/topics/kunduz-hospital-airstrike

(Sanaa) – Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes using United States-supplied bombs killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15, 2016, Human Rights Watch said today. The two strikes, on a crowded market in the village of Mastaba that may have also killed about 10 Houthi fighters, caused indiscriminate or foreseeably disproportionate loss of civilian life, in violation of the laws of war. Such unlawful attacks when carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/07/yem ... ket-strike

The United States exported to Israel a substantial amount of the same types of weapons Israel is using to kill Gazans, a new analysis of US Census Bureau export data reveals. For example, in 2013, the United States sent Israel at least $196 million in parts for military airplanes and helicopters, a category that includes F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, both of which Israel is currently using to attack Gazan homes, offices and farmland. Between January and May 2014, the United States had already exported $92 million in parts for military airplanes and helicopters.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2510 ... ed-on-gaza

It could go on and on - and on . . .

[Digby]

I don't recall anyone arguing international law doesn't exist, I suspect the point being referred to is one that I made being that most of international law doesn't exist which even with a tiny allowance for nuance isn't remotely the same thing.

[Donny osmond]

Though I agree with most of what you say here think you'll find the Americas were mostly colonised by Spain with Britain & France
only really colonising N. America as far south as Mexico & most of the W. Indies. From Mexico south it was all Spain.

Edit: Sorry forgot Belize colonised by Britain, French Guiana obviously France & Brazil by Portugal

Sure, I was thinking of Europe in general. & don't forget the Dutch. That's where some of their greatest footballers have been from - along with some fine tobacco and a certain brand of liqueur.

To give you a basic outline of the problems in the region, the powder keg was created by Britain & France who carved up the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of WWI, which actually brought an end to several centuries of relative peace.

,

The problem with sounding off so often is that people will start checking on your "facts". Without commenting on the rest of your post, most of which seems sensible tbh, your opening paragraph made me wonder... According to Wikipedia, the latter years of the Ottoman Empire were distinctly not spent in peace, ending in several massacres of civilian populations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

I said RELATIVE peace - compared to Europe, for instance. The latter years, by which time Europeans were already attempting to destabilize the empire (encouraging the rise of Wahhabism for the purpose) were not the best example of what is widely referred to as the 'Pax Ottomanica.'

Pax ottomanica seems to refer solely to the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent 1520-1566. And refers to conditions inside the ottoman empire and not the fact that he was at almost constant war expanding the borders of his empire.

It's all interesting and he does seem to have been quite the dude, but not really "several centuries of relative peace".

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ent ... agnificent

I realize using the " New World " encyclopedia undermines my point somewhat, written as it obviously is by the evil scum of the US military industrial complex.

Sent from my XT1052 using Tapatalk

[UGagain]

Here it is. Assad war crimes excused.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-11/d ... war-crimes

Don't bother guys, apparently the laws on discrimination and proportionality don't apply if its your own people you are killing.

On another thread a few days ago you and your clique were arguing that there is no such thing as international law.

The Syrian Arab Army is defending Syria.

You can quote nonsense articles from Washington think tanks all you like. It will not make it a civil war and it will not make it a popular uprising.

Strange that I have been mentioning the laws of armed conflict more than a few times so your argument doesn't hold water.

If you think that only non-Syrians are fighting against Assad despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary then it's a bit pointless discussing this with you any further. You clearly aren't prepared to consider any evidence that doesn't suit your agenda and just want to dismiss it as CIA fronts regardless.

That makes no sense.