The Syrian Civil War Thread - part 2

[Principe Alessandro]

There is something fallacious bringing the argument that a military intervention against the Syrian regime will help the Gulf backed jihadists. Not that I'm ruling out this possibility, but taking in comparison the WWII by fighting Hitler the US helped Stalin to occupy Eastern Europe and to establish the rule of oppressive regimes. Keeping yourself out of the major events in a globalized world it isn't a guarantee that you are making the safest choice.

[Vanoi]

That's kind of my point. We put forward a resolution. We didn't get them involved in making such a resolution in the first place. It was a case of, "oh hey, here is a resolution against your ally. Yay or nay?" If we publicly got Russia and China involved in the resolution making process we might have more success.

What possible kind of resolution could the UN pass on Syria that Russia and China would agree to?EDIT: Germany's BND intelligence agency says Assad is behind the latest chemical attack.http://ca.news.yahoo.com/german-spy-...154308631.html

[white-wolf]

@Kitsunegari: It is interesting. Erdoğan just said yesterday "limited intervention is not good enough for us". I believe the writer the article you post is not much awere of realities of Turkey.

[Azog 150]

What possible kind of resolution could the UN pass on Syria that Russia and China would agree to?[/url]

One that they have been involved in creating, which takes their considerations into account and which they can publicly say they had a hand in. As it stands we have a Western response, a Russian response and a Chinese response rather then a unanimous response, which is why nothing ever gets passed. If you want the UNSC to function you have to involve everyone or else whats the point?

[Vanoi]

One that they have been involved in creating, which takes their considerations into account and which they can publicly say they had a hand in. As it stands we have a Western response, a Russian response and a Chinese response rather then a unanimous response, which is why nothing ever gets passed. If you want the UNSC to function you have to involve everyone or else whats the point?

You didn't really answer my question. What kind of resolution could the UN pass that Russia and Syria wouldn't veto? What kind of action can the UN take on Syria that all five members can agree to? Because i can't think of anything.

[Azog 150]

I just answered you're question, one that everyone has been involved and had a say in. Much of Russia and China's response to Western resolutions is down to just that, the fact they are Western resolutions. That doesn't make it easy to sell to their people or to their allies. If everyone got their heads together I am sure we could have pumped out a resolution in which Russia and China do more to pressure Assad, and in which they can claim they were involved, that they are not ignoring the worlds problems and that they helped prevent military action against an ally. The key is getting them involved in the actual resolution making process rather then excluding them from it. Do you really think they would agree to resolution they had no say in making? Why would they? I don't really know how anyone could possibly argue against getting them involved in the process. If it fails, fine. But at least then we can say we tried.

[Vanoi]

I just answered you're question, one that everyone has been involved and had a say in. Much of Russia and China's response to Western resolutions is down to just that, the fact they are Western resolutions. That doesn't make it easy to sell to their people or to their allies. If everyone got their heads together I am sure we could have pumped out a resolution in which Russia and China do more to pressure Assad, and in which they can claim they were involved, that they are not ignoring the worlds problems and that they helped prevent military action against an ally. The key is getting them involved in the actual resolution making process rather then excluding them from it. Do you really think they would agree to resolution they had no say in making? Why would they? I don't really know how anyone could possibly argue against getting them involved in the process. If it fails, fine. But at least then we can say we tried.

No, you didn't answer my question. I asked what kind of resolution could be passed, and all you keep saying is one were they are involved. Thats not telling me what the resolution is going to be about or how it effects the civil war. Russia and China are not going to agree to a resolution to pressure Assad. It would be horribly one-sided and thus Russia isn't just going to leave its ally Syria on its own here. This means the resolution won't be able to unilaterally target one side of the war, its going to have to be for both. Russia nor the West are going to accept that. The only real meaningful resolution we can [pass now is an arms embargo no side is going to agree to.What action can be taken on Syria that all sides will agree to?

[Thorn777]

What possible kind of resolution could the UN pass on Syria that Russia and China would agree to?EDIT: Germany's BND intelligence agency says Assad is behind the latest chemical attack.http://ca.news.yahoo.com/german-spy-...154308631.html

I wonder where news.yahoo.com etc is when the BND had to explain German parliament about their assesments of a vast majority of rebels being jihadist, and the Houla massacre among countless other atrocities probably being them as well. In the time when the hipster skinny jeans rebel was still photoshopped and people bought it and the time all massacres and the like where part of the evil Assad build up.

[Vanoi]

I wonder where news.yahoo.com etc is when the BND had to explain German parliament about their assesments of a vast majority of rebels being jihadist, and the Houla massacre among countless other atrocities probably being them as well. In the time when the hipster skinny jeans rebel was still photoshopped and people bought it and the time all massacres and the like where part of the evil Assad build up.

When have the BND claimed most of the rebels are islamists and that the Houla massacre was conducted by the rebels?

[Durnaug]

The Syrian War What You're Not Being Told...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=dkamZg68jpk

Any evidence we do have (as opposed to politicians saying "trust me") suggests the rebels are behind the chemical attacks. And yes, the dominant groups amongst the rebels are Islamist.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate hearing Tuesday that Syria’s rebel forces are increasingly dominated by secular groups.

France’s Media Admits that the Syrian “Opposition” is Al Qaida.

I hate these debates because no-one can be persuaded - not by logic, evidence or any other authoritative link. However, I cannot stand lies and propaganda which is what the "democratic bombers" are propagating.

[YuriVII]

More reports supporting the claim that rebels have access to chemical weapons
http://intellihub.com/2013/08/29/syr...ss-border-may/

[Carpathian Wolf]

@ Vanoi, wow if I needed anymore convincing that the chemical weapons were not used by Assad but by the rebels, the German BND provided it. Not the first war they manipulated and fabricated to the west. The BND is a disgusting organization.

[PointOfViewGun]

The Syrian War What You're Not Being Told...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=dkamZg68jpk

Any evidence we do have (as opposed to politicians saying "trust me") suggests the rebels are behind the chemical attacks. And yes, the dominant groups amongst the rebels are Islamist.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate hearing Tuesday that Syria’s rebel forces are increasingly dominated by secular groups.

France’s Media Admits that the Syrian “Opposition” is Al Qaida.

I hate these debates because no-one can be persuaded - not by logic, evidence or any other authoritative link. However, I cannot stand lies and propaganda which is what the "democratic bombers" are propagating.

You keep talking about evidence but all you provided so far are hearsay. Is there actual evidence such as samples tested for Sarin gas, caught orders, or satellite images?

[hellheaven1987]

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.[/URL][/B][/U]
[COLOR=#0000ff]

I like his words.

“It’s our judgment that — and the judgment of our good friends who actually know a lot of this in many ways better than we do because it’s their region, their neighborhood — … [that] the secular component of Syria will re-emerge” once the Syrian government is deposed, Kerry claimed in the hearing.

Those “good friends” are officials from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which are all religious and political enemies of Syria’s embattled dictatorship.

“I’m talking about the Saudis, the Emirates, the Qataris, the Turks, the Jordanians,” he said.

The only dude he mentioned that convince me is Qatar, and in some level Jordan (although I remember King of Jordan went back his words of reform).

[Thorn777]

When have the BND claimed most of the rebels are islamists and that the Houla massacre was conducted by the rebels?

I posted this article around a year ago, and brought it up several times later again. No reactions whatsoever.

German intelligence: al-Qaeda all over Syria

By John Rosenthal

German intelligence estimates that
"around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are
close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end
of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) [1]. This was revealed






by the
German government in a response to a parliamentary question.

In response
to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received
several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the
May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of
these reports was to remain classified "by reason of national interest", Like
many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria's ambassador in the
immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible
for the violence.

Meanwhile, at least three major German newspapers -
Die Welt, the FAZ, and the mass-market tabloid Bild - have published reports
attributing responsibility for the massacre to anti-government rebel forces or
treating this as the most probable scenario.

Writing in Bild, [2]
longtime German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels of
"deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of the
government". He described this "massacre-marketing strategy" as being "among the
most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict".
Todenhofer had recently been to Damascus, where he interviewed Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad for Germany's ARD public television.

Wring in Die Welt
[3], Alfred Hackensberger noted that Taldo, the sub-district of Houla where the
massacre occurred, has been under rebel control since December 2011 and is in an
open plain, making it unlikely that "hundreds of soldiers and Assad supporters"
could have entered the village to commit the massacre. (An abridged version of
Hackenberger's report also appeared in Die Berliner Morgenpost.) Hackensberger
visited Houla to conduct investigations for his report.

He also
interviewed an alleged eyewitness - identified simply by the pseudonym "Jibril"
- at the Saint James Monastery in Qara, Syria. In contrast to an earlier report
in the FAZ [4], which had claimed that the victims were largely Shi'ites and
Alawis, Jibril told Hackensberger that all of the victims were Sunnis "like
everybody here". By his account, they were killed for refusing to support the
rebellion. Jibril added that "a lot of people in Houla know what really
happened" but would not say so out of fear for their lives. "Whoever says
something," he explained, "can only repeat the rebels' version. Anything else is
certain death."

While traveling in the region of Homs, Hackensberger
heard similar stories about the conduct of the rebels. One - now former -
resident of the city of Qusayr told him that not only were Christians like
himself expelled from the town, but that anyone who refused to enroll their
children in the Free Syrian Army had been shot. Hackensberger's source held
foreign Islamists responsible for the atrocities. "I have seen them with my own
eyes," he said, "Pakistanis, Libyans, Tunisians and also Lebanese. They call
Osama bin Laden their sheikh."

A Sunni resident of Homs told
Hackensberger that he had witnessed how an armed group stopped a bus: "The
passengers were divided into two groups: on the one side, Sunnis; on the other,
Alawis." According to Hackenberger's source, the insurgents then proceeded to
decapitate the nine Alawi passengers.

That the German government would
cite national interest in refusing to disclose its information concerning the
circumstances of the Houla massacre is particularly notable in light of
Germany's support for the rebellion and its political arm, the Syrian National
Council (SNC).

While France, the United Kingdom, and the United States
have figured as the most visible Western powers supporting the rebellion,
Germany has been quietly playing a major role behind the scenes. According to a
new report in the FAZ [5], the German foreign office is working with
representatives of the Syrian opposition to develop "concrete plans" for a
"political transition" in Syria following the fall of Assad.

Seems with public sentiments changing people stop being so selective about what they want to hear. Only good thing from this war is people all over our decaying democracies waking up to allot of the bull...slowly but steadily.

[Wholly_Rufus]

GOP rep: “you can continue killing your own people, you just can’t kill them with chemical gas.”

Seriously, those were her exact words!

I think that about sums up the mind-numbing absurdity of the whole thing.

[Vanoi]

And now i know why i ignored it. No where in that article does it say Islamists represent the majority of rebels. No where in that article does it claim the BND believes the rebels committed the massacre at Houla.

You can do better than this thorn.

[Sphere]

That's kind of my point. We put forward a resolution. We didn't get them involved in making such a resolution in the first place. It was a case of, "oh hey, here is a resolution against your ally. Yay or nay?"

If we publicly got Russia and China involved in the resolution making process we might have more success.

I think you misjudge who has leverage here. It is clear the US & co. are now willing to act without a UN resolution so the Russian UNSC veto is powerless. If the Russians want a say they have to offer something up, give the US a reason to seek a UN resolution which it is not currently seeking.

[Thorn777]

And now i know why i ignored it. No where in that article does it say Islamists represent the majority of rebels. No where in that article does it claim the BND believes the rebels committed the massacre at Houla.

You can do better than this thorn.

Read more carefully. In response to a parliamentary question the BND admitted 90 "terror attacks" last 7 months of that year can be attributed to these jihadis and to that same question also admitted to have several reports on Houla which they wont classify by reasons of national interest. In any case thats a 180 compared to the American media coverage of the day. And note the reports of the reputable journalists who went there.

Also:

[Vanoi]

Read more carefully. In response to a parliamentary question the BND admitted 90 "terror attacks" that year can be attributed to these jihadis and to that same question also admitted to have several reports on Houla which they wont classify by reasons of national interest. In any case thats a 180 compared to the media coverage of the day.

This doesn't prove the massacre was committed by the rebels. The information concerning the massacre in the article doesn't even come from the BND but a war correspondent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houla_massacre

Also, the UN already released their report on the investigation into the Houla massacre. They believe it was conducted by Assad.

Another problem is that we don't know what BND classify's as terrorist attacks. Massacres might not be considered terrorist attacks at all by them.

Also:

Lol, and why should i believe anything coming from Putin's mouthpiece? Where is this report he says is from the BND?