Jeremy Bowen gives a fair assessment of the consequences of the vote not to help the FSA against Assad…..the FSA now has to fight both the ISIS and Assad and the West is caught between a rock and a hard place having been out-manoeuvred by Assad and the likes of the BBC:
What if the West had intervened in Syria?
The BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen assesses the events of the past year in Syria and how they have shaped the Middle East region.
The problem is he misses out one crucial element (never mind the BBC not revealing it had evidence of a chemical attack on a school on the eve of the vote)…..Assad was central to the rebirth of ISIS:
Why Assad is secretly helping his ISIS enemies become most powerful rebel force in Syria
How Syria’s Assad Helped Forge ISIS
That is now crucial because of the discussion on how to tackle ISIS, or IS as it now calls itself, and who is to blame for the rebirth of ISIS….the BBC usually points the finger of blame at the invasion of Iraq in 2003….despite ISIS actually having originated in Afghanistan as part of Al Qaeda….and now we know ISIS is due more to Assad than Bush and Blair, it having been crushed by the Americans in 2006/7 with the ‘Surge’ in Iraq against them.
The grotesque alliance that has been allowed to carve up Syria
Assad has forced us to choose between supporting him, or watching the very jihadists whom he has empowered advance across the Middle East. Lord Dannatt and Sir Christopher Meyer have duly urged us to sign up the arsonist as a fireman, hoping that Assad can be trusted to refrain from picking up the petrol and going back to his old career.
In truth, this is the bankrupt choice which the House of Commons made – perhaps unwittingly – a year ago. By deciding against striking Assad even after he had gassed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people, Parliament effectively resolved to leave events in Syria to take their course. And that meant allowing Assad and Baghdadi, the two most powerful warlords, to carve up the country between them. The non-Islamist opposition was duly ground to dust between these two millstones.
Parliament sent a signal that Western power – the one factor that could have tipped the balance of the conflict – would never be deployed. The result was to leave the field to our twin nightmares, Assad and Baghdadi, the arsonists-in-arms.
Who would be a moderate now?
The BBC played its part in that…first by helping to generate the fear of military engagement with its constant anti-war message and second by hiding the evidence of that chemical attack, only showing it on Panorama after the vote ensuring MP’s consciences weren’t pricked.
you dont know what to believe when its comes to left wing biased bbc and syria anymore,but i would rather have assad on are side than that wet lettuce nick clegg,weird red ed milliband and all these liberal conservatives who are coming out against any tough action taken against these islamist killers living amongst us because they fear losing the block muslim vote,notice how clegg and milliband have been silent over the isis nazis in headscarves mass murdering machine sweeping across the middle east butchering christians in there millions,not a word from red ed or sleaseball clegg over this holocaust of christians,compare that to the attacks and criticism by clegg and millband against israel defending themselves against the isis wing of hamas and we all know that was to keep the muslim vote on there side,winston churchill and maggie thatcher would be turning in there graves if they could see what spineless. gutless, yellow bellied politacaly correct cowards who are running are country now.
By the universal rules of Islamic supremacy, apparently politically endorsed by INBBC-
1.) there shall be mass immigration from Islamic countries into Britain;
2.) such immigrants should (and do) get preferential treatment (inc from INBBC);
3.) Britain (and West) should not intervene to stop Islamic jihad mass murderers
in Syria, Iraq, etc;
4.) future Islamic jihad mass murders inside the West will be propagandised
as the fault of …the West.
The Islamisation of the West, and of Britain, continued.
Good article by David Blair this one.
It would not have occurred to me that Assad might play this game of keeping ISIS on a leash, whilst pretending to be opposed to them.
Typical politics…which is why no-one of any principle could conceive of forcing us all to choose between ISIS and Assad.
Great politics-but evil morality.
Never mind what if, what about what they actually did?
I’m sure readers who have followed my posts of the last few days will know that I hold the opinion that the US ‘intelligence’ agencies are hopelessly inept, and it would appear that this is the case here.
ISIS was formed as long ago as 2006 in Iraq to oppose the equally inept but also corrupt Nuri Al-Maliki a Shia Prime Minister. It wasn’t difficult for ISIS to convince Sunni tribal leaders they would have a better deal if the leadership was Sunni.
A name you probably haven’t heard yet is the military brains behind the outfit.
“According to the New York Times, the mastermind behind the ISIS military success is former Baath Party head and Saddam Hussein successor, General Ibrahim al-Douri.”
Despite being on the US wanted list since 2003 they have failed to find him. Of course the CIA ‘knew’ he was in Syria, but other sources put him in Qatar, Yemen, and all over the Middle East !
Where did they get their funding?
“The financial backing for ISIS jihadists reportedly also comes from three of the closest US allies in the Sunni world—Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. ”
Neither the US, UK or Europe has done anything substantive to stop this funding.
Even worse than all this
“Key members of ISIS it now emerges were trained by US CIA and Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, according to informed Jordanian officials. The US, Turkish and Jordanian intelligence were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region, conveniently near the borders to both Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two Gulf monarchies most involved in funding the war against Syria’s Assad, financed the Jordan ISIS training. ”
“Advertised publicly as training of ‘non-extremist’ Muslim jihadists to wage war against the Syrian Bashar Assad regime, the secret US training camps in Jordan and elsewhere have trained perhaps several thousand Muslim fighters in techniques of irregular warfare, sabotage and general terror. The claims by Washington that they took special care not to train ‘Salafist’ or jihadist extremists, is a joke. How do you test if a recruit is not a jihadist? Is there a special jihad DNA that the CIA doctors have discovered? ”
That good old term again ‘moderate Muslims’ which is the product of rose tinted liberal glasses. How many times do they have to get bitten before they learn the lesson?
“Former US State Department official Andrew Doran wrote in the conservative National Review magazine that some ISIS warriors also hold US passports. Now, of course that doesn’t demonstrate and support by the Obama Administration.”
Iranian journalist Sabah Zanganeh notes, “ISIS did not have the power to occupy and conquer Mosul by itself. What has happened is the result of security-intelligence collaborations of some regional countries with some extremist groups inside the Iraqi government.”
There is of course a whole load more including the recruitment of Chechen Muslims by senior CIA people who can’t stop seeing the world in terms of the cold war and a Russian threat which no longer exists.
Like many previous screw ups the CIA believed they could control ISIS and then lost control. So lets not talk about ‘what if’ lets talk about the incompetence, stupidity, naivety, ignorance, and the continuing history of US intelligence which simply isn’t fit for purpose.
http://rt.com/op-edge/168064-isis-terrorism-usa-cia-war/
Hi,
Just a quick one, has there, is there an issue with the board as I have had difficulty getting on here. Also any chance of a new board.
For at least the last 24 hours there have been problems with sporadic outs.
israel has just has declared victory over hamas who got a hell of a beating,well done the idf for destroying this terrorist entity called hamas.
“Hamas: The Middle East’s Other ‘Cancer.’
Dealing with the Islamic State will hopefully help U.S. lawmakers appreciate Israel’s fight with Hamas.”
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2014/08/26/hamas-is-a-middle-east-cancer-just-like-the-islamic-state
I see the bBC has reworded the Palestinians celebrating their victory over Israel, into simple pleasure that the fighting is over.
Celebrations in Gaza
And the blockade is over. Meaning that Gaza requires food (err bBC over 100 trucks a day have entered from, Israel these past 50 days) and building equipment.
How can we trust anything that Bowen says? He is an activist, not a journalist.