And the missiles have been launched ..

[Coldwaragain]

Oh crap.

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed

I said he was a former Ambassador to Syria. Are you saying i'm wrong. Oh dear indeed.

@user1492877024

Any feedback on the 2 reuters articles I posted?

I worry about the way that Russia is trying to frame the U.K. as somehow complicit in both the Salisbury incident and the chemical attack

Yeah, that's a weird one. Look we all know the British government is pig headed and doesn't care much about it's own poorer people, but turning chemicals on our own soil and somewhere in the middle east that we were avoiding being involved in, come on... Look at how we've treated Blair.
But doubtless some people in the middle east will pick it up.

Oh dear. I'm guessing being the UK Ambassador to Syria does mean you have links to the country. Lol.

Not in your last post

Why would he have links now

He has been doing the rounds on the radio for a while now claiming Assad isn’t stupid so wouldn’t use chemical weapons on his own people

EnthusiasmIsDisturbed

I don't agree with you, however, you have made me think.

Sorry, my last post was meant for WrongOnTheInterne

??

user just in case you missed it: Do you believe that Assad was behind this chemical weapons attack on his own people?
www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/world/europe/syria-united-nations.html

It has the sort of evidence that you said that you were looking for. I’m wondering if it’s enough.

Syria is really a proxy battlefield allowing Russia and the west to square off, though both sides have other interests in the region.

This is the really key issue here. Chemical weapons attacks are of course awful and should be dealt with accordingly. I don't know enough about evidence-gathering to comment on that aspect. I do think, though, that retaliating or otherwise won't make much difference to the overall situation.

Sadly, the war in Syria isn't going to end until and unless Russia decides it wants it to end. I doubt Putin has the capacity for a full-scale military conflict with the US but I don't think anyone wants to find out. Escalating military action on both sides in a third territory is just a way of showing off their might where the consequences are for Syrians and not their own people, so not the same consequences. Probably it needs either Putin to tire of the situation or some intensive level diplomacy between Western nations and Russia, which Putin has shown he's not interested in. Such a mess. I have a Syrian refugee family living near me and think they have given up all hope of ever being able to return home.

I do think, though, that retaliating or otherwise won't make much difference to the overall situation

Our retaliation was intended not to help the overall situation, it was a global warning against the continued use chemical weapons.

Assad will win, the alternative is an ISIS in all but its name government, Assad will the brutally murder all those who didn't take arms to support him.

The situation is far more complex than bullishly saying why are we the world police and letting them brutally murder each other, the uprising was because they didn't want to live under a dictator, now ISIS etc are involved means the west are letting them play it out amongst themselves, and that unfortunately means being weary of immigration and funding camps in the ME .

Its a convoluted shit show, it needed to be done, but its a PR exercise that could be classed as willy waving etc but Russia/Syria will still have taken notice

there is a huge difference between actually being in these HUGE countries than actually serving on the front line, which as a female, i'm guessing you didn't. Please educate yourself on such matters.

Oh User149 - You don't have much experience of the forces, do you dear?

Women are often outside the wire - not allowed to be infantry until recently, but plenty of other trades embedded with infantry units.
When I was going through my resettlement courses on leaving the military, there were a few women on my course who were leaving on medical grounds - a couple with ptsd, a female bomb disposal soldier who was off to get her ruined legs amputated & a female medic whose back was fucked after being caught up in an ied explosion.

It rather seems it's you who should 'educate yourself on such matters'.

I think we should do something. This is a massive humanitarian crisis and intervention is thus required. What is the alternative? I think we need to put ourselves in the position of those living in Syria, would we want the West to stand back and watch or to intervene?

could it be Russia using Syria and Assad for it's own gain? We'll never know all of what's 'going on' but there will be far more happening than we're aware of.
Just gotta live our lives as best we can; worrying will hold us all to ransom, just like terrorists do.

Please too see limited military action is going to be followed up by increased sanctions on Russia.

Exactly the right thing to do - to back down in the face of putins threats would have been potentially disastrous - putin has already got away with far too much in recent years. Appeasing him further will not work.

To all posters whinging about TM using initiative, all I can say is thank god Jeremy Corbyn is not in charge. He'd still be pondering what to do two weeks from now and asking Putin and Assad to come round to his for a nice cup of tea.

I’m with Jeremy.

@Payitforward55

I’m with Jeremy.

You could be honest and say you was with Russia.

You will no doubt infer that we should use the UN more without any grasp of the situation.

Meanwhile most people do not want chemical weapons continually used, but hey ho lets make this party political and do not try and paint this is in a partisan way

Payitforward

An interesting statement for you to make. Corbyn’s weakest political area is probably international affairs, wedded as he stubbornly is to anything remotely anti west or pro Palestinian.

That being so, I can only assume you have swallowed the rest of his snake oil, hook line and sinker.

In any event we will never see a corbyn prime minister. The next election is several years away and by then the Labour Party power struggle will be over. They will either have drifted further into unelectability and protest politics or the party will have selected someone else to lead them and professionalised their offering to the point ‘ mondeo man’ might vote for them.

As things stand corbyn has a real problem in that most of us feel he would rather stick up for foreigners than his own people. That won’t play well outside London.

I hate the thought of bombing, but in this case where children and babies have been gassed by chemical weapons, blowing them up so they can't be used again against innocents is probably the best we can do. At least it may mean Assad has less chemicals to poison more babies.

@Heyduggeesflipflop

I will get in there first.

You need to stop reading the daily mail ..

Justanotherlurker

Being a bit of a politics geek, I read a lot of papers across the political spectrum. I don’t personally agree with a lot of left wing politics because I feel that such types tend towards idealism and issues being black and white when the real world is shades of grey are far more nuanced.

That doesn’t however mean those on the left wing are always wrong, in the same way as those on the right wing are always right.

But... corbyn is simply not prime minister material in the same way that, in some respects, neither is Theresa may. But there is a key difference - the slight (but pervasive) odour of being anti west and, to an extent, anti Britain is strongly attached to corbyn.

I think he is really an honest but naive man. I worry about who comes after him.

lindaf100

Two weeks from now we may just be praying that JC had been in charge.

Oh user, there you are. Have you checked out the ample evidence that Assad gassed his own people yet? I want to know if it’s enough to convince you that he did it.

User

Is that because in two weeks time your Russian handlers will ‘activate’ you...?

I thought that had already occurred