PARIS — As Western powers pressed the Syrian authorities to permit United Nations inspectors to examine the site of a claimed poison gas attack outside the capital, Damascus, France said on Thursday that outside powers should respond “with force” if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed.Read the rest here.
At the same time, Israel said its intelligence assessments pointed to the use of chemical weapons.
“According to our intelligence assessments there was use of chemical weapons,” the Israeli minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel Radio, “and this of course was not for the first time.”
For the record, I have no reason to doubt that Assad used lethal gas. The man has repeatedly demonstrated that he is a barbarian. But while I feel deeply for the suffering people of that country, including and especially the suffering Christian minority who are always the first casualties in any civil unrest, the fact is that it is none of our business. If France wants to take a trip down memory lane and send the Foreign Legion for a romp in her former colonies, good for them. I think they are nuts. But they will find that out in short order.
Syria is a country being ripped by a bloody civil war between a sociopathic dictator backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah (Iran's mercenary terrorist surrogates) on the one side and rebels mostly consisting of, and heavily backed by, Islamic religious extremists including Al Qaida who are fanatically anti-Western and anti-Christian on the other side.
What exactly do the French hope to gain from this? The problem with interventionists and enlightened imperialists like the French (and far too many Americans) is that they never grasp that some wars have no good guys involved. The supreme irony is that it was the French who warned Eisenhower to stay out of Vietnam.
For the record, I have no reason to doubt that Assad used lethal gas.
ReplyDeleteWhy would he do this? The so called rebels are in disarray, a UN inspection team has just arrived in the Country and the use of these weapons has been described as a red line that if crossed will bring foreign intervention.
I don't believe for a second that Assad for all his sins is that dumb
I'm sorry John, but I'd have to agree with Andrei here. I've been watching this thing since it went down and something smells fishy. The timing is too perfect.
ReplyDeleteDitto to the above. Pro-Assad Syrian forces are making serious headway and have no need for such. Even Gaddafi - who supposedly had such weapons - didn't use them when he was cornered (it's because it was all bull that he had them, but nevertheless).
ReplyDeleteThis falls in the same bin of Saddam's WMD's. Just a fairy tale spun to galvanize spurious popular support for continued Middle East intervention.