Please tell me this is not just some piece of political skulduggery.
While not saying anything out loud, it does smack of Putin's usual set up publicity ops (except he kept his shirt on…

Banque de Commerciale Arabe

First up, he needs to work on his French grammar. And it's a fairly difficult bank to find. Which I suppose may be the point...

And now Freemasons? And the Muslim Brotherhood being a Freemason creation? And the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt having police…

I am a pragmatist and you are an idealist.

I've decided to embrace it.

Yeah, but before you know it they'd have…

Granada, Libya, Iran-Contra. Alright, so he bombed like a Democrat, but he was certainly no innocent.

Mr Reagan would probably prefer you narrowed that down to the Bush family. Truman is miffed about missing the cut.

As is Roosevelt.

As is Wilson.

I dunno, history would seem to suggest the Democrats are just as good at launching military action as the Republicans.

They have an air force base in Incirlik in the south of Turkey, not far from the Syrian border. According to this VOA story Turkey indicated that they'd be willing to cooperate. And other bases across the middle east…

and let's not forget the Sandworms
lurking beneath the desert lands...
...oh hang on, we're not on Arrakis,
are…

If you call having no air force, no tanks, totally immobilized and confined to hiding under a civilian blanket "reasonably intact". The ground assault was supported by all of these facts, to…

No, that was the land…

The events of the last few years have more or less shown that not much has changed from WW2. Iraq…

I'm surprised by that, since radar is a very powerful electromagnetic signal. It's like turning on a strong beacon to anything tuned even nearly into the wavelength. You can be nearly instantly triangulated.…

Secretary of State John Kerry said today that he was “shocked and flabbergasted” that the Russians heeded his suggestion about Syria’s chemical weapons, telling reporters, “After four decades in public life, this is the first time someone has taken me seriously.”

Yes, there is that. So that really comes down to terrain control.

The Swedes and the Swiss developed a model, which the North Vietnamese also used successfully, of mobile radar units. Networks of…

I really do think you are overstating the ability of US technology to take these…

Sure they are, just as modern bows and arrows are designed with laser sights. But they're still a weapon that has had its day. In terms of cutting edge offensive power, unpiloted devices really do have the…

Not in a war against a superpower, anyway. Between two similarly armed non-superpowers, you might have an actual air battle.

I wouldn't imagine we'll be seeing many fighters taking on fighters in any war. Stealth bombers, drones…

...and some Congress folk remain unconvinced by 'evidence'

That sounds like a "target". Send a ship with minimal self-defence capabilities and an expendable crew of jarheads into Syrian waters in the hope that it'll get sunk and create a casus belli.

one day I'll take the time to write less...
:- )

I read a couple of days ago, can't remember where, that the US is moving an amphibious assault ship carrying a few hundred marines towards the Syrian coast. I doubt the marines would…

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2568245

Josie Pagani on the panel lays out her case for why doing something is imperative, gets the Powell doctrine almost completely wrong, ignores the idea that even if you do this to stop CW use that there will be other consequences to it than…

And then there is the fact that it is already a regional war. the death toll in Iraq is about 2000 over the last two months. The flow of refugees between the two countries over the…

Be careful what you wish for.

I think that has to be the major issue here. It's easy to identify Assad as "bad". It's much less easy to identify who is "good". And an order of magnitude more difficult to ensure that…

The senate authorisation is pretty ‘creepy’ compared to what Obama was saying just a few days ago. Lots of shifty language, and the goals now include changing the civil war:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution Wednesday saying a…

Well, sure. But I don't think Assad live-gassing a kitten…

I get the impression that regime change was the price of Republican support in Congress. Lord knows hey they think they're going to achieve it.

But mission creep is already creepy creeping in with talk of regime change as a 'collatoral effect',…

Oh, me too. What's the achievable goal?

One hopes. The recent lack of certainty about MAD being so mutual means that it's more likely, rather than less, that nukes will fly.

I'd place these two in the opposite order but both well ahead of any other explanations.

There have been incidents…

If "the regime ordered them…

Cold War II, perhaps. Superpowers flex and glare at each other while grinding their proxies to bloody dust in the middle.

The part about the disastrous drought and crop failures was interesting, and news to me.

But what’s he saying here?

Why did the investigators not do…

Me too, but Kerry may have been caught out fabricating parts of his dossier, not least the photo of bodies he used, with questions over the intercepts he quoted.

There’s clearly some dissention in the ranks.

I think the biggest loser here in all likelihood stands to be Obama and the next Democratic candidate unless he/she is well distanced from the current POTUS. The likes of Fox will turn on…

I'm glad he raised issues of past US sophistry*
in the same physical, and moral, area.
According to the US military attaché working with the Iraqi army at the time, the US…

Which provides more information than I've seen before. The summary could be "It's complicated, the evidence is mixed, and there are no good options".

I don't know that they see it like that. They took out Hussein, the Taliban, Bin Laden and Gadaffi, installing democracy in each place (how they would see it).

They're tired of ground war, I'm sure, and having trouble finding recruits by accounts. But I…

Somalia?

Americans, if current polling is any pointer, are war weary. 11 years of unwon wars and mounting casualties seem to have had an effect on the national psyche and it won't be the first time either – witness the national…

This is significant why?

I'd rate it about 50:50 that…

It's nowhere near a match for pretty much anything. Long-ish article, but a fascinating insight into how a decades-old grudge held…

Quite. And they very likely will. This then plays out on evening news in the US over and over – dead or captured pilots…

I think you are overestimating the airborne assets the US has in the region.

They also don’t need to land…

It's a pretty horrible way to die, particularly for anyone on the fringe of the blast, which is a substantially larger area than those who are humanely vaporized at the epicenter.

Not on it's own, but it's a pretty important step, especially when wanting to minimize your own casualties, to take out the air power of the other side. For that reason it's tempting to see it…

That's not exactly a design effect. The design is thermobaric trauma, not poisoning.

Has the US demonstrated capability of exerting air superiority against maintained modern fighters without allied support over hostile territory using carrier based forces? I don't think they have, not since Korea/Vietnam, at best.

Not immediately fatal, anyway.

Again, I'm not saying the US should do this. But let's not kid ourselves that they couldn't do it. They have huge practice at it. They have demonstrated not only the capability…

As a deterrent, that makes sense. But once the shooting actually starts, it's curtains for their air force.

Agree. Also the large Mig-23 and Mig-29 forces don’t require airfields…

Yup

A Human Rights Watch report of 1 February 2000[27] quotes a study made by the US Defense Intelligence Agency:

The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique–and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures…

Agree. Also the large Mig-23 and Mig-29 forces don't require airfields – a road with a shed to refuel will do the trick.

Probably not, but if the US were to deploy penetrating and cluster munitions from cruise missiles against Syrian air force runways it would be disruptive. If they could coordinate it with operations to lure large numbers of Syrian…

Got a citation for that? The whole point of an FAB is that it combusts its entire payload resulting in a massive negative-pressure effect which results in barometric damage to structures and people.…

Syria is NOT Iraq or Lybia. Syria is relatively rich AND has spent a huge amount of it's wealth on arms – supplied mostly from USSR…

Depending on the kind of bomb, and the bombing pattern, of course. MOABs have huge radii, Fuel Air bombs work in a way that is a mix of blast and chemical anti-personnel effects, and firebombing deliberately seeks to…

I'd be pretty amazed if they could maintain an effective airforce for more than a few hours against a concerted attack by the USA, if they do it the…

Or, at the least, the Syrian military has been, if what's reported about communications intercepts is accurate.

I thought the Le Monde reporting, based on two months spent on the ground alongside rebels, was pretty compelling.

Even that's hard. A mixture of force dispersion and rotating aircraft into the air means that this is unlikely to happen. And the very, very, last thing Obama needs are…

Yes, even a more targeted and purely military attack, like destroying Syria's air-force, doesn't have a clear purpose or end-game.

It's a terrible situation there. Despite my brain telling me that intervention is only likely to escalate the conflict,…

Israel has granted a U.S. company the first licence to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports.
A local subsidiary of the New…

Yeah that's the problem for everyone I think, even the normally gung-ho US are moving slowly. There are a lot of players in the region that would love to manipulate intervention in Syria. There really are not…

I'm in no doubt that the Syrian government has been using chemical weapons in populated areas — there are…

I’ll see your white powder and raise you one Gulf of Tonkin

To be fair they have said they saw rockets launched from govt positions that landed where the gas was released. Not proof no. But at this point only lawyers are arguing.

The reason everyone wants proof good enough to satisfy a lawyer is…

...and I really don't see how Kerry leaps from identifying that Sarin was used, to claiming that agents of the Syrian Government filled and fired the rocket (or whatever dipersal system was used), with no further proof of that…

noice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjRG5MLJYLo

Yes, I consider Bono a weapon of mass destruction, frankly.

I think the real lessons of Iraq were about how the decision was made. If…

http://themonkeycage.org/2013/08/27/do-military-interventions-reduce-killings-of-civilians-in-civil-wars/

A brief post about a study looking at the effects of intervening in a civil war on casualty rates. There's a link the full study there, but limited interventions on the side of rebels tend to increase casualty rates by about 40% for the rebels, as…

Oops, sorry Lebanon.

Indeed, and you could've filled a library with the vocal denials from the US political mainstream about this around 2003.

The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria…

It comes to the same thing, really. That's "using your veto to block something".

That was pretty much his job description when he took it.

When the British left Aden the last governor had to back up the rear stairs to the RAF Britannia with…

The average over the last decade is about two per year (from here), which isn't overly crazy. Mostly it's the US protecting Israel from the consequences of its criminal behaviour, though Russia and China have been knocking back resolutions on Syria…

Tried that in '61, didn't work out too well (Of course, using proxies again, but even so... ), and it didn't spark any kind of Soviet march on West Berlin, not even a subtle encouragement of the GDR to have a go.…

Right, but the US was restrained from marching into North Vietnam and Russia similarly from entering Pakistan by the likelihood that they'd wind up with a direct US/USSR conflict. It's all hypothetical, but how would Cuba have played out without…

If they…

I certainly don't disagree with that.

But you're going to have to work hard to persuade me that the Security Council setup is what stopped the US…

While it's not the greatest of systems, it has thus far stopped an American army slugging it out with a Russian one, and the loser deciding to…

The permanent members don't seem to use their vetos terribly often. They seem to be more often held up as a threat, a kind of nuclear option to encourage negotiations to head in a more preferable direction. Even so, abstentions seem to happen far more often than…

Or just do one of:
a) dispense with the permanent member concept entirely;
b) dispense with the permanent members having veto.

Not trying to apply current standards at all.
However looking at past actions can inform future ones.
When doing this judgements will always be made regarding previous actions.
Yes, the past is a foreign country but it…

See zoom response above. I managed to nuke Aleppo, but that's 178 miles away.

First time since Crimea, apparently.

You can zoom in a bit but that's sort of cheating ;-) I'm still wondering how someone thought it was in Greenland...

I love randomness!!!

Oh, I thought it was something much more mundane sounding, like "British Empire".

Never studied Latin, but Google seems to have all the answers…

Veni, vici, delinqui.

Maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place?
Don't know how much planning went…

I was 64 miles away, which I thought was okay on such a small map.

Before

After

All before Cut and Paste.

This set of maps makes interesting looking. A whole series of maps around Palestine with commentary on some about hows and whys of partitioning.

And what happened to Palestine.....…

Whether they did or not, there wasn’t much left of Britain after WW2. They were flat broke, their economy had been converted almost entirely to war effort, and they were dependent…

I would suggest the Brits had a fairly good idea of the communal tensions in India in '47 too. I do sometimes idly wonder if the Kashmir issue was left unresolved at least partly out of…

That's not a good comparison with Rwanda, where the US (and the UN) had explicit forewarning…

Nonexistent when a rogue regime has a permanent member of the Security Council in their pocket. It's why Israel's economy hasn't been ground to dust as a consequence of their war crimes. In Syria's case, Russia vetoes everything.

The Security Council today condemned the widespread violation of human rights in Syria and the use of force against civilians by the country’s security forces, calling for an end to the violence…

The EU/UK and US already have sanctions against…

A chemical attack on the Jobar front, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, doesn't look like anything much at first. It's not spectacular. Above all, it's not…

A US intelligence official told Foreign Policy magazine that agents had intercepted…

Apart from a brief respite around 2009 it's been pretty relentlessly fucking awful there for the people who were allegedly freed since 2004 or so.

On top of the bombings almost 3 million are still sitting in semi-permanent refugee camps in Jordan…

And: 4000 civilians killed and and more than 10,000 injured this year. 1000+ last month alone. This is 10 years after the invasion.

Hamas vs Fatah, surely? Hezbollah is Lebanese and was founded in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in... umm... 82, was it? (too lazy to check right now), and being Shiite is allied to Assad (Alawi, a branch of Shia) and Iran. Hamas, I…

I suppose I'm cynical enough to look at who has nothing to lose as well as people who have something to win. And there seem to be a few…

I'm sorry if you thought my intent was to write it off. Personally I think all the explanations are preposterous. Nothing makes sense. I'm not saying it isn't possible, it's as possible as all the other equally bizarre scenarios.

That I think that…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/imminent-us-strike-on-syria-could-draw-nation-into-civil-war/2013/08/27/d780e0f6-0f59-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html

Whether or not that's intended as a warning to the President or a signal from him, is a 'known unknown' I guess.

Yes, but you proceeded to write it off as so obviously preposterous that it wasn't worth discussing. I don't agree. Hezbollah vs Fatah in Palestine, for example, has led to a great number of fatalities. The…

Just wondering. Is New Zealand still vying for a seat on the UN Security Council in the next while? I thought that was being discussed a few months ago? In which case staying out of things might…

I did just say that

Of course given that there are multiple rebel factions one could suppose one faction used the weapons on another faction,…

The bazaar in Damascus. Full of happy shoppers and a few tourists.

Roman ruins in Syria

Crusader castle in Syria

Why do people keep talking about "the" rebels, when there are multiple factions of rebels. There are enough competing factions, plus enough long-standing feuds within Syria, for one faction to decide that gassing their enemies-who-are-also-rebels…

Personally I find the use of chemical weapons abhorent and in this case very confusing.

Assad was probably going to "win" if the UN or US did not intervene, which they seemed disinclined to do. So he had a…

Syria seems awful from this distance as did the Balkans in the 90s. Barely comprehendable from a relatively cosy kiwi…

Australia is currently a Security Council member for a two-year term. What…

latest fisk is interesting reading

That report's based on a Washington Times report from May — it's both dated and from a very ropey source.

But that hasn't stopped it being taken up by the conspiracy sites. Ditto this insane Daily Mail story, which claimed proof that the…

It’ll all be for nothing if a dick gets booted out, only for an arsehole to take his place. Especially if Egypt and Libya are anything to go by.

http://www.aina.org/news/20130826131925.htm#.Uh07zqxCYrc.twitter

in short its a complicated relationship that bombs will not undo

Colin Powell has some vials of white powder he'd like to discuss with you.

I haven't seen any evidence beyond the victims being on the rebel side.

Earlier accusations have claimed use of poison gas by both sides. It could have been an accident (artillery hitting stored poison gas); it could have been…