Rhys Jones and Halduell pose the obvious point: Assad is neither stupid nor suicidal. Are our memories so short that we do not remember the tremendous propaganda campaign that preceded the invasion of Iraq; entirely, as Rudd noted, based on a lie - in fact multiple lies. As was the invasion of Libya; the current campaign against Iran's so-called nuclear weapons program and multiple other occasions in the past. The Gulf of Tonkin is another lie that lead to Australia's disastrous involvement in an illegal war. How often must the mistakes be repeated before the obvious is realised? These are wars of choice that the Americans engage in, mostly on behalf of their elites and in the face of opposition from the mass of the people.

I invite people to read Seymour Hersh's article in 2007 in the New Yorker. He talked then about US policies designed to achieve "regime change" in the Middle East. This included, inter alia, arming sectarian groups to encourage sectarian warfare. Lo and behold, this is exactly what is happening with the US, France, UK and Gulf States arming and financing a disparate bunch of terrorists, including groups (pause for a scoffing laugh) that the US is officially opposed to.

Yet again however, our supine media repeat the propaganda and do their best to condition the people for yet another disastrous war on behalf of others. Time to wake up Australia. The election of an Abbott government won't make a blind bit of difference to our fundamentally stupid foreign policy.

The US should know better. It is showing its apparent ineptitude by refusing to acknowledge that there is a civil war going on.

The anti-Assad forces are quite adept at making the gassing appear the work of the Assad regime, so that the pig-headed Obama would charge in. It remains to be seen whether the US allies including Australia will exercise prudence and talk Obama into first ascertaining who was responsible for the gassing.

I was appalled seeing the performance of our foreign minister Bob Carr on late line last night. He was being asked what Australia intended to do regarding Syria. It appears that we have absolutely no foreign policy of our own in this regard. The only answers that he came up with was to wait and see what Barack Obama decided. I don't ever recall voting for Mr Obama. I really think we have lost our way in this regard.
Of course, we should probably do nothing. It is none of our business. There are plenty of middle power nations in the region who can intervene if they wish. Our role should not extend to getting involved in internal disputes on the other side of the globe where we have few if any interests, human rights abuses or not. The Iranians, Turks, Russians, Saudi Arabians, Israeli's, Jordanians and Lebanese can intervene if they think it appropriate. Australia getting involved would be like the Turks getting involved in the conflict in West Papua or like the Indonesians intervening in some Russian war. I don't know where the arrogance comes from that makes us think we have responsibility to fix all the worlds problems.

If you really want to know what is going on in Syria, please read:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/08/26/syria-another-western-war-crime-in-the-making-paul-craig-roberts/

US Hegemony is just so on the nose and in the pig trough in cahoots with Israel it just makes one feel sick!

The attack force of the US and UK navies is are now approaching Syria and soon will be in range. You can rest assured that from space with photo scans they they can identify targets as small as an army truck on the ground. The inspectors on the ground identified a genocidal attack by examining the victims in hospitals at 12 am yesterday. Later in the day Obama and UK PM warned of what was likely to happen on the world media.

God help the survivors of the chemical gas attack the long term effects are horrible. If its same chemicals used in World War 1 they may await a long slow death

The belligerence and hypocrisy continue unabated. The UN inspectors were specifically forbidden (according to Ban Ke Moon) from establishing who was responsible for the chemical attacks, only whether or not they had occurred. That latter fact is not in doubt; the identity of the perpetrators most certainly is in doubt.

The hypocrisy is manifest in the silence of the western media when the Americans used chemical weapons to attack Fallujah; when the Israelis used chemical weapons in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza; and when the Americans supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons during Iraq's war with Iran. That is very far from a complete list.

Neither Labor nor theCoalition are likely to condemn the forthcoming US missile attack despite there being absolutely no foundation in international law for such an attack.

As with so many US military interventions the consequences of this forthcoming folly of monumental proportions are likely to be considerable. There is a very real risk that the first consequence, apart from the inevitable mass death and destruction, is a widening of the war outside the boundaries of Syria. Does the US seriously think that their actions are not going to have consequences for the US itself? Is the hubris so great that they cannot see, for example, how the Russians and the Chinese are going to react to this latest outrage?

Or are we so inured to American lawlessness that this latest (in a long line) of international criminality will pass Australia by?