Hi James

Yes the legal deficiencies under the UN Charter of the US and France’s case does require much more international discussion.

The usual comebacks might be that the veto power of the P5 members of the UN Security Council system can lead to unjust outcomes if this forever blocks peacemaking or lifesaving action. But in this case Russia and China are blocking the delivery of Western high explosive to a country suffering from too much home-grown explosive and CWs.

Putin threatening a reaction in the Mediterranean or other dangers is a type of power that the US and France will need to think about.

Further damage to what is seen as an adventurist US's international standing is another issue that the US Congress will need to think about - before voting.

Pete

James, in June 1981, the Israeli Air force bombed and destroyed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear breeder reactor which Saddam Hussein planned to use to build atomic bombs.

The Israelis did more for nuclear disarmament and world peace in five minutes than all of the UN peace resolutions for the past 60 years.

Couldn't help noticing a post in this thread about how the German BND had turned up really damning evidence that Assad's crowd gassed the Syrians. Apparently someone in the BND had told some German pollies that the BND had overheard a phone conversation to someone in the Iranian embassy in Damascus by a high-ranking Shiite Moslem to the effect that Assad had ordered the attack. Gotcha! Bang to rights! And here's the kicker: BND has a fantastic record, the poster tells us, its predecessors go back a century. That would presumably include the Gestapo. Wow! Hot stuff!. Assad's guilty, get the missiles flying, start killing off the families. Degrade Assad’s forces and open up Syria’s people to Al Qa’eda.

There's more about BND. It missed a major Moslem plot being hatched in Hamburg to level the Twin Towers and hole the Pentagon (oops!) and was central to the Yank lie machine cooking up a WMD causus belli to launch the de facto annexation of a devastated Iraq. The operation is described at http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/07/08/recycling-curveball-what-intelligence-failures-iraq-teach-us-about-spying.

So lie after lie was fed out into their respective countries by traitors in Britain and America and Australia and Iraq and the lies were accepted with an “OK. that’ll do, get on with the attack” . The key omission was any honest, critical, open forensic appraisal of the lies. And now, even in this little thread, we again see total incuriosity about the credibility of the stories fed out by demonstrated liars, and calls to “punish” Assad (i.e. the people of Syria). Pity if those actually planning policy were as credulous as this. But wait a minute, they are.

Jules,

I suppose it's a consolation that some on the pseudo-left are not in bed with al-Qa'ida, that even though it is anti-US (and therefore Good), it has some slight wrinkles.

Like carrying out two thousand bombing attacks since 9/11, killing not only a couple of thousand suicide bombers, all currently in Paradise each with their 72 virgins/raisins, but perhaps a hundred thousand innocent people, in market-laces, schools and hospitals. Real heroes.

But thanks anyway.

Joe

Loudmouth, Satan himself could have sent Al Qa'eda to earth (he probably did send Al Qa'eda's "prophet" here) and it wouldn't have the slightest relevance to whether we are again, as a treaty-linked ally, again associating ourselves as a nation with a bunch who have shown themselves to be lying war criminals - and this without a care over whether or not the regime targeted actually committed the crime which has formed the pretext to join Al Qa'eda in war against it for geopolitical objectives.

The Serb racists shelling Sarajevo and the tribal Wahutu savages murdering the Watutsis both committed blatant crimes in full sight and it was always right to put them out of business (in the latter case regrettably left undone). Their crimes, which are not in doubt, can't be used as an alibi for "responding" to an offence as readily set up by liars as the supposed 1939 Polish raid on Germany. Or, worse, they CAN be used as an alibi but only by closing ranks with the liars.

EmperorJulian

1. You dismiss the BNDs evidence by externalising.

2. Your externalising is largely accurate.

3. BND's "evidence" is largely circumstantial. BND records conversations about an attack but not specifically a gas attack.

4. The lead-in linking the attack with gas was actually written by a journalist.

The comeback from intelligence analysts is usually "we base our estimates on a wide range of classified and overt sources".

But what if the pivotal sources are circumstantial?

With the intelligence analysts, military and political staffers interpreting in line with Obama's need to go to war.

Pete