Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Is this Tory git about to get us into another war?
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i can't make up my mind on this one, we keep hearing stories of chemical weapons being used and the subsequent denials.
a couple of air strikes is never enough as we know from the bitter past and the probability is that we and other western countries will get dragged into a ground war.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,895
To put it very bluntly and I apologise to other forum members who are sensitive to mild swearing...... I bloody well hope not.
Whatever is happening in Syria we should not send any troops to fight another countries battles, send arms if we really feel we have to but our troops never.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
What if we were to adopt the stance that if open negotiations cannot be arranged we would ONLY send troops, not armaments.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
for Cameron refer to blair.
Guest 717- Registered: 16 Jun 2011
- Posts: 468
Whilst I would hate to see us dragged into another war I would hate to think other countries would just stand by and watch us die from such foul play.
We tend to think of the enemy, and forget about the innocents who are crying out for our intervention.
Keeps politics to myself
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
I'll be very careful what I write here.
My view is, because the Foreign Secretary William Hague claimed from day 2 to have evidence about the provenance of the chemical attack that occurred 21 August, he is doing wrong by hiding this evidence and should report it to the Police.
Currently he is hiding evidence he alleges to have on a chemical attack..
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
cor blimy ,what has brit police got to do with Syria,they haven't got police powers down there.unless things have changed with policing powers.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Sorry, Brian, you're out of touch. The Foreign Secretary claimed to have evidence on who carried out a chemical attack, he should hand this evidence over to the people who need to investigate it.
Has he handed this evidence over to anyone to investigate?
Furthermore, the British Police could demand this evidence from him, for example if the UN ask for it and he refuses to hand it over.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
that's if he has any in the first place alex,clegg is of to the un tomorrow.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Chemical weapons?
The WHO must release report on Iraqi birth defects now
"...Today, increasing numbers of birth defects are surfacing in many Iraqi cities, including Mosul, Najaf, Fallujah, Basra, Hawijah, Nineveh, and Baghdad. In some provinces, the rate of cancers is also increasing. Sterility, repeated miscarriages, stillbirths and severe birth defects - some never described in any medical books - are weighing heavily on Iraqi families.
For more than a decade, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been approached by public health experts, asking it to take this issue seriously. After much delay, a seriously handicapped study was initiated by WHO and the Iraqi Ministry of Health in 2012 to investigate "prevalence and factors associated with congenital birth defects" in Iraq.
Last October, the Independent (UK) said that the WHO report was due to be released in November 2012. However, that report remains undisclosed to this day..."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/20138111224621617.html
NATO vows better cleanup of unexploded munitions as it closes Afghan bases
" KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan has agreed to do a better job of cleaning up deadly unexploded munitions from its bases and firing ranges as it closes them down after the U.N. accused the coalition of leaving dangerous explosives behind, a coalition spokesman wrote Wednesday in an emailed statement.
The International Security Assistance Force also will re-examine bases that already have been demolished to make certain unexploded ordnance hasn't been left behind, the spokesman said.
So-called "explosive remnants of war" have emerged in the past few months as an increasing danger to civilians, in particular children. In the first half of the year, nearly 150 people were killed or injured when such munitions detonated, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA. That's a jump of 53 percent from the same period in 2012. Nearly 80 percent of the victims were children..."
Read more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/31/198210/coalition-admits-its-left-unexploded.html#storylink=cpyIgnorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 944- Registered: 16 May 2013
- Posts: 57
There is bigger stuff at stake here than just Syria. Unless we want to live in a world where tyrannical regimes think they can get away with using chemical weapons with impunity (and someone used them, almost certainly the Syrian armed forces), then there has to be a response. And the only response likely to mean anything now is force, or at least the credible threat of it. Ideally with UN backing but that may be impossible because of the Russians and Chinese.
We won't see troops on the ground (at least for a good while) and probably not airstrikes either, it will be tomahawk cruise missiles from US ships and subs in the Med, and probably from Royal Navy subs as well. I reckon within days.
The Syrian government are idiots. Obama was clearly very reluctant to get involved. Only an action that was totally beyond the pale was going to change that and that's what they did. Assad is finished now and good riddance. Just hope not too many others have to die before him.
Andrew Richardson
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
I read a report some weeks back that the Iraqi armed forces stormed Al Qaeda bases in Iraq near the Syrian border and found documents and chemical stockpiles.
In mid July 2013, the Syrian army reported finding chemical stockpiles belonging to the rebels-terrorists in an area called Jobar, not far from where the chemical attack took place 21 August 2013.
It's all documented.
some months back, the UN (United Nations) unequivocally stated they believe the rebels had carried out chemical attacks, and in fact these three chemical attacks were supposed to be investigated by the UN team currently in Syria, which arrived four days before this latest one occurred.
So did the rebels-terrorists deliberately distract the UN team from carrying out investigations on chemical attacks for which the rebels had already been suspected by the UN by launching an even bigger chemical attack and blaming it on the Syrian government?
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
"A United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria announced on Sunday that they have evidence that the recent sarin gas attack in Syria was committed by rebel forces and not the Bashar Al-Assad regime."
http://www.examiner.com/article/un-commission-claims-to-have-evidence-rebels-launched-chemical-attack-syriaGuest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
" 'Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,' Carla Del Ponte, a member of the UN commission told Swiss-Italian television.
'This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,' she added.
According to the commission, they have yet to see evidence that Assad's forces used the chemical, despite accusations made against the regime by the U.S. and NATO governments."
http://www.examiner.com/article/un-commission-claims-to-have-evidence-rebels-launched-chemical-attack-syriaGuest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Andrew you're of military age, ripe for some stupid politician to stick a rifle on your back.
Iran and Iraq where lobbing chemical weapons at one another for years, over 1 million dead
The super powers where very happy cashing in on that conflict
In this war like all wars ,there will be a losing side, this is haw wars end.
The Syrian army will use everything to win, theirs no good ending to this.
Theirs only 2 ways to dismantle a big army like the Syrian army
That's ground troops with air power, or nuclear weapons
If its ground troops, it will not be the sons of Cameron's Eton friends, it will be lads of the counsel estates.
KEEP OUT
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
That is certainly possible, Alex. The Syrian opposition is highly fragmented and many of the groups which comprise it are worse than Assad. The only style of government that works in the Middle East is that of a dictatorship juggling to control the various opposition groups. Some are benign dictatorships, (Jordan, Oman) but many are ruthless like Saddam and Hafez al-Assad. Bashar was plan B to succeed his father, his elder brother having been groomed for the role for many years only to predecease his father in a car crash. He was dragged back unwillingly from a career as an optician in West London. From the start he has been regarded as weak both by the rebels and by his own generals. Bashar is not really in control but a puppet president.
Don't be fooled into thinking that any of the rebels want democracy. Each group is fighting to gain control of the levers of power.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
# 18...spot on..
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
agree with all the above, just to add that we have seen how the arab spring panned out and democracy will not work in most of those countries.