War! This one Obama started.

[notageek]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23847839
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"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated, until defeat has been accepted as a reality." -- Bruce Lee

[Naib]

bad... the entire region is a tinderpot...

Personally I think it is a Syrian high-up general who has access to the weapons BUT his support for the regime is waivering. His honour (or whatever reason) does not permit him to defect soo.... setoff some of their known chem weapons so draw US/UK into the mess to bring it to a close

Only the regime has access to the weapons so who else could have launched it???? couldn't be the rebels they wouldn't be able to secure them

Yes there is the angle the rebels launched it to force the west hand equally CIA/MI6 doing it to force their leaders hands, a rogue general wanting the best for his country and his people fits occams razor *IF* it is confirmed chem weapons were used as who will be very hard to identify
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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter
Great Britain is a republic, with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king

[sikpuppy]

Unless they go for a scorched earth approach, who exactly are they going to target? There's no good guys in positions of power there, and the guys waiting in the wings are worse, probably.

[wildhorse]

Opoohbah murders only the bad guys. Since there are only bad guys in Syria, no innocent people will be hit by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Opoohbah. Besides, these are Syrian people, not The People. What a fucking arsehole. What a fucking country.

[energyman76b]

and of course the poison gas wasn't used by the rebels. Those saudi funded, al'quaeda supported rebels who want to create another Sharia hellhole. Of course not.
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Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males

I identify as a dirty penismensch.

[Muso]

This is yet another war Obama is trying to get us into.
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People Of Love

Kindness Evokes Kindness

Peace Emits Positive Energy

[John-Boy]

[McGruff]

You guys are too cynical. A few surgical air strikes will quickly bring the bad guys to their knees and restore peace to Syria.

[Muso]

[dmitchell]

[dmitchell]

Didn't I read somewhere that Obama won a peace prize? Must have been the onion.
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Your argument is invalid.

[LukynZ]

Everything is going well by the plan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha1rEhovONU

Soyuz nerushimyy respublik...sieg heil USA

[wswartzendruber]

So we're going to go blow up the Middle East again. This always works out well.

[Prenj]

[erm67]

[petrjanda]

This is Iraq v2.
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There is, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. If that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. - Gautama Siddharta

[Bones McCracker]

I had a countdown going in another thread, predicting that Obama would do this. I pointed out that there is no way in hell the Syrian government is behind those chemical attacks, because they were intentionally made right under the noses of UN chemical weapons observers.

This isn't Iraq v2. While the WMD lie thing is the same, there we at least had interests at stake (Hussein invading neighbors, trying to seize control of oil supply, aiming to be Hitler of Arab world). What have we got at stake in Syria?

This is nothing but a red herring to distract the public from their dissatisfaction with the Administration. We're not going to invade or occupy Syria, just cowardly bomb it from a safe distance. It's misdirection. It's the "perpetual war" scenario right out of 1984.

If anything, our involvement should be merely to provide non-combat assistance to whoever is losing at any given time, to maximize their collective opportunity to kill as many of each other as possible.

I have to say it was pretty funny to watch John Kerry, Mr. Anti Iraq War himself, now in Colin Powell's shoes, making an impassioned speech giving the Obama Administration's bullshit justifications and asserting that "the intelligence community is convinced" that it was the Syrian state who fired those chemical weapons. His inner Jane Fonda must be keeping him awake at night after that.
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[Old School]

[Greens]

I've been following the civil war in syria (watching allahu ackbar fights on liveleak) for a couple years now. It's funny when people act like this is a new issue because of the recent chemical attacks.

We're not going to war with Syria, I hate when people say that. We are of relative neutral standing with both Assad's forces and the FSA. There would be no one to fight, and the US is not going to become enemies against either.

[Bones McCracker]

Bullshit. Chemical weapons are all over the region, and many are believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq and hidden in Syria during the regime's collapse.

The White House is full of shit.

[Greens]

[Bones McCracker]

To compel and/or give the U.S. an excuse to intervene on their behalf with its mighty weapons. They're starting to lose, and this would likely turn the tide of the war.

The sacrifice of a few hundred lives is a small cost for victory. 70,000 or so (on their side alone) have died fighting for it already, and they're getting desperate.

Also, the opposition is not one homogenous entity trying to bring down the regime there and the FSA is only one of many groups, each with a different agenda. There are patriotic, secular, democratic Syrians who want freedom from Ba'athist oppression. There are Islamists (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) who want to institute a traditional theocracy. There are Shiites trying to destroy and seize a Sunni state. There are ethnic Turkish groups fighting oppression. There are ethnic Kurdish groups fighting oppression. There are Salafi Jihadis. There's Al Qaeda.

If the opposition (which is currently losing) were to succeed, those groups would then battle it out for control, and they have very, very different ideologies. They don't like each other at all; they just happen to share a common enemy at present.

So this isn't a question of somebody "attacking themselves". It's a question of somebody sacrificing a few people (ones whom they might see as enemies ultimately anyway) to turn the tide of the war and achieve victory. The groups most likely to do that, and to have access to chemical weapons either hidden locally or smuggled in from elsewhere, are the militant Islamist groups.

Furthermore, there's also the possibility that this attack was perpetrated or facilitated by a foreign country with an interest in the outcome.
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[Prenj]

[Bones McCracker]

[pjp]