Very informative and clearly presented about a country we hear little about.

"...the new democratic and liberal Iraq..."?

One may ask "what planet you on Mista?"

With an enormous insurgency in Iraq, only held down by an occupying army you've got a pretty hard to see liberal democracy.

The "democratic process" has been injected by the occupiers and it will evaporate when they leave.

Syria is safe from democracy (at the point of an M16) for the moment.

Like any sane empire the US wants stable secular regimes even if they are authoritarian rather than democratic. Thats what the US really wants and I don't blame it for not risking Iraq turning to the more popular model of Islamic rule.

As for Syria, once Iran is "sorted out" it needs to watch its back.

This information was presented on TV. I believe SBS, regarding Syria's involvment in various capacities.

The capture of three key spies who admitted on visual tape to their alias lives and operation ranks on behalf of this region has given the West a glimpse of the real deals.

If you look at Syria's place on the map, its borders are wide and vast and strategically to be taken advantage of by radical groups.

The sideshow at the moment is Iran and its nuclear intentions.

The leader of the country believes that he is the one that will bring back some dead islamic idol by eliminating the dark side as it is written.

The dark side being the West and those non believers.

He said that he felt a light around him when he spoke to the worlds delegates at a world council meeting.

It was commented that he had every delegates focus because they could not believe what he was actually saying.

syria is not iraq. the world could easily agree on the need for regime change in syria, even without the US. If only the security council was not controlled (in part) by communists we could easily deal with syria, iran and saudi arabia. then move on to north korea. Then with such a sizable force assembled africa would hardly be a problem. Then we could all go to megido, hey?

As with the Jews who have been abused and pushed around through history, Bashir, so we have the Kurds. Also like the Jews, the Kurds seem to have intellect and indeed seem as if they should be an asset as an adjunct to any nation. But they have been shockingly abused at least for the last 500 years, not that they would not have been a help to a nation, but it seems that there has been that cultural or social fear - proven in Nazi Germany that Jewish political and business acumen was not so superior possibly, but their sageness and determination for success in business had or still has those scary tendencies as we found with them as wool buyers in the Australian outback. Nor that they were criminal tendencies, but tendencies of over determination in pressing a wool deal made them the butt of nasty jokes in country pubs. But the way they were treated in Nazi Germany has since created a wealth of sympathy from all of us country people.

As regards the reason the Kurds have been treated so badly, especially by Turkish governments, the almost deliberate lack of historical causal information on the subject even in universities, tends to make us more curious, especially as the US seems to be making a special point of looking after the welfare of the Kurds as they have also done with the Jews in Palestine.

But of course, it can go too far, as we see the Israelis almost running the US White House, Americans copping plenty of abuse over it, as indeed they possibly should especially over the allowance for Israel to go militarily nuclear, while not one Middle-East Islamic nation is allowed the privelege.