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President Trump ordered US air strikes on a target in Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles targeting Shayrat airfield near Homs. The action followed a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in a rebel-held town. Trump said the attack was "in vital national security interest" of US. The UK stood side by side the US supporting the air strikes. Russia, a close Syrian ally, condemned the US "aggression" and suspended a joint air safety agreement.


Now don't get me wrong, I condemn the chemical strike as any person would, however this nut job barmy US president is putting world security at risk. If he wants to continue with such behaviour, it will not be long before Russia retaliates with a consequential potential war resulting. This is not a good thing for anyone and the sooner this nut job is removed from power only then will the world be a safer place

I'm watching the United Nations Emergency meeting about the US missile strikes on the BBC at the moment.


The US is being criticised for unilateral action - the matter should have been given the go-ahead by the UN. BUT (note caps) with Russia and or China exercising their vetoes all the time the UN is effectively impotent - a glorified talking shop.


Meanwhile a mad-man is so desperate to hang on to power he is prepared to destroy the country he is desperate to rule.


Good on you Trump. The sooner Bashar al-Assad is led in chains before the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity the better.

dbboy, the consequences of your proposition would seem to be that Assad gasses and tortured whoever he wants - because we're all scared of creating a fuss (that could lead to escalation in conflict).

Well we have to draw the line somewhere don't we ?!

We obviously know only some of what's going on. What the media want us to know.


Killing children is an outrage and we are outraged, rightly.


Trump bombing them so they can't do it again is fully supported. Stop the bully. But Assad's been doing bad stuff for years and getting away with it because he's got big friends.



so Trump decides he doesn't care about Assad's big friends and steps in anyway.


The things is - we're all scared of Trump getting hi ass kicked for standing up to Assed, by his big friend.


so - what do we think is the right thing to do? Let the bully keep provoking a reaction? Give that reaction? The ultimate provocation is killing children.


It's clear there are many games at play - one of which is to see what Trump would do. Now Assad/ Putin know.

What does that mean they will do next? What would they have done next - if Trump had gone and played golf instead? No response means that they have permission to do anything they like.....


It's a hard position for Trump to be in. but he's either stupid, or has balls.


Either way, he had to do something - particularly when doing nothing is actually a response.

I think what's interesting, is how quickly Trump has been pulled into line. Because of his inexperience, he has no option but to take the word of well established pentagon experts and military personel. So we are going to see exactly the same geo political policy from the Trump administration as we saw under Bush and Obama etc. All the hot air about Hilary Clinton being a hawk, was just that, hot air. The reality is that US politics, and Washington, is a well oiled machine, run by a whole number of people who make any radical diversion from the status quo impossible. The issue with Trump, is not what will he do, but just how impotent will he be. He is no idealogue, so that force of nature, that appalled so many of us during the persidential campaign, won't follow through in Washington, imo. In reality, he is another Bush, a puppet for those who are really in power. Think what Rumsfeld was to Bush, and you get my drift. The balls are elsewhere.


As for the air strike. That was just a warning shot over the bows. Russia and America are not going to be the touchpaper of WW3. There will be a lot of posturing and at worst, a proxy war, of the likes seen in Afghanistan in the 80's, where both sides arm opposing forces. And while the media likes to label every rebel group in the region as IS, this is not at all true. There are enough rebel forces for the superpowers to arm and support if they want to remove Assad.


For us in the West, the impacts will be the same as always. Refugee flight, and an endless stream of war zone footage and distressed civilians, none of which is quite relatable enough for people to really care that much about. I'm thinking of a line from 'Hotel Rwanda' which goes that 'when (western) people see dead Bosnians, they see someone like them. When they see dead Africans, they just see another dead African'.


If anything meaningful is ever going to happen in international terms, it will require Russia and China to be on board (unlikely) and it will require far more than 30 'Stop the War' protesters outside of Downing Street every time the USA (but not Russia or Assad) engage in military internvention.

a friend of mine who is Kurdish, actually suggested that the chemical attack may not have been the work of the assad regime at all. the regime has the rebels well on the back foot so such an attack would be unlikely. this was also the view taken by peter ford the former British ambassador to Syria in an interview on bbc breakfast recently.

Yes. That's a man who earns a lot of his money on RT nowadays and at first said these attacks were fake news with no western media present to verify, when the BBC then pointed out a Guardian Journalists on the ground had witnessed the attacks he, the ambassador, went to plan b - "Assad would be mad to do this" totally discredited witness.


If so many people believe the blatant russian propaganda peddling these ludicrous Conspiracy Theories on the internet then god help us. I suppose that passenger jet they shot down over Ukraine was faked too as they laughably tried to claim at first?


The world is full of useful idiots as far as Russia is concerned

Just because Assad would be mad to do this, doesn't mean he didn't do it. I personally see no benefit to using chemical weapons on an enemy that is losing hard, but then Assad may be trying to prove a point.


For all I know the whole thing is a total false flag, but like many other 'alternative' theories of major events, it's a rabbit hole of tinfoil beliefs that I'm just not willing to go down. The simplest explanation is usually the right one, and I don't think Assad is above gassing his own people just to make a point. It's also a convenient way to find out what Trump will do in a situation, and now they know; the people controlling Trump are trigger-happy.

holloway Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> a friend of mine who is Kurdish, actually

> suggested that the chemical attack may not have

> been the work of the assad regime at all. the

> regime has the rebels well on the back foot so

> such an attack would be unlikely. this was also

> the view taken by peter ford the former British

> ambassador to Syria in an interview on bbc

> breakfast recently.


I realise there is no direct evidence at the moment and so many theories will do the rounds. However, as a recent programme on the BBC about Porton Down showed, Sarin is not be be messed with. You can't exactly produce Sarin with an off-the-shelf chemistry set. It is produced using the financial and technical resources of states.


The initial suggestions that it might have come about from the bombing of a rebel arms cache seems highly unlikely. How would the rebels get hold of it?


So if not Syria, or Russia, who?

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