Syria- should Parliament be recalled?

Well, that article answers the questions Bags posed a day or so ago i.e. Obama referring to the 'worst' use of chemical weapon in Syria, so if it's the worst, just how many times has it happened?

'Western intelligence has long suspected the Syrian regime of using front companies to divert dual-use materials imported for industrial purposes into its weapons programmes. It is believed that chemical weapons including sarin have been used in the Syrian conflict on 14 occasions since 2012.'

J0 - stop deliberately misunderstanding me. The point I was making was that it wasn't logical to just be concerned about chemical warfare

Here's the report in today's Independent. I'd say that Vince Cable has a lot of explaining to do.

A report I read yesterday said that WE had been selling the Syrian government the chemicals with which to make the weapons. How's that for hypocrisy?

just glad that for once we are not rushing into intervene without thinking thru all the future consequences. stay out of it.

Quoting bluebell "The attack on the school doesn't count as chemical warfare I thought I heard on R4 this morning."

Oh well, that's them off the hook then.

No need to sound quite so casual about it!

That's alright then bluebell.

I don't believe that violence of any sort can be beaten by further violence.
It will almost certainly make a horrific situation much worse.
I don't know the answer but let's go on giving humanitarian aid and perhaps making trading etc. difficult for Assad.

susie's link is interesting except for one thing and that's the elephant in the room - in other words, Israel. And please don't call me anti-Semitic. I am neither that nor anti-Moslem. What Stephen Fry says on a link quoted in another thread (am I an Islamophobe?) applies equally to attitudes to Israel. It is believed - and apparently on good authority - that Mossad has had a good deal to do with supplying the Pentagon with information about Syria's use of chemical weapons.

Now milliband does not want us to ignore Syria and their plight you can't have it both ways

I ask myself the usual question - who stood to gain financially if Britain entered an open-ended war?

Your link susie is excellent.

And innocent children are always being killed by a variety of means - the US did quite well on this in Iraq and Afghanistan

Flick - I wish I could believe we would always respond in a principled way but we won't - it will always depend on the specific country. I just can't accept either that chemical warfare should be put in a special category compared with blanket bombing, drone attacks, what happened at the school, mowing down if peaceful protesters etc

Bluebell, innocent children are being killed and are going to be killed whether we take action or not. As I said not fighting often kills as many people of all ages as fighting.

We have already taken sides, we have supplied humanitarian aid to the opposition including medical aid and some non-lethal military equipment.

I think it must be made clear that any military intervention is linked to the use of chemical weapons and should be limited in extent, taking out the airbase from which the planes few and a central military HQ. Every use of chemical weapons should get a similar response.

If we do not respond to this dictators and tyrants world wide will note that they can use chemical weapons with impunity because the ban on them is not worth the paper it is written on. Then how many people will be killed?

This article in the New York Times reports some disquiet among members of Congress and the public:

'some senior lawmakers were not persuaded that the Obama administration had made its case for military action in Syria. Representative Howard (Buck) McKeon, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Obama needed to make a forceful case to persuade both Congress and a “war weary” country.

'“If he doesn’t, I think he could have a real problem with the Congress and the American public,” he said. “He’s got a big sell.”'

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=677628138932097&set=a.200655096629406.57916.196601040368145&type=1&theater

Dont know if that works - but it just about sums up the whole sorry mess

I for one do not relish a 3rd world war, because syrians bombed syrians, tragic though it is

Quite anno see my post above.

It seems that the original rebels against the Assad dictatorship have been joined by unsavoury elements from all over the Islamist world who have used the rebellion as a bandwagon. Do we want to support Al Qaeda and their cohorts?

Yes quite bags any number of parties have a vested interest in making the situation worse and drawing in the west...

From what I've read so far, there is no certainty about who used the chemical weapons. Please point me to it, someone, if there is concrete evidence that it was Assad's regime or the rebels.

In any case, surely "The West" can offer humanitarian aid (such as Medecins sans Frontieres) without getting involved in the actual civil war?

And, perhaps, when the civil war is over, people can be held to account for abuses, as has happened on other occasions.

Whatever the West do it is bound to be wrong. it is just a case of how badly wrong isn't it. The capacity for making a terrible situation worse is limitless here, given the region. They should concentrate on things like confiscating wealth of the Assad clique, making commerce difficult for them etc

But Flick - whatever we did would be presented by one group or the other as taking sides. Innocent civilians would be killed - or we would be told they had been - who knows what propaganda would ensue? The attack on the school doesn't count as chemical warfare I thought I heard on R4 this morning.

I was utterly, utterly opposed to the Iraq war but I do believe something should be done in Syria, not because I support either side but Assad has been using chemical weapons that were banned decades ago and this morning we heard and saw in all the graphic detail the results of the napthalm/thermite attack on a school.

If we let one government get away with using banned chemical weapons then more renegades will start to use it, Mugabe, for example, or North Korea, even Palestinians or Iranians on Israel (and even vice versa).

No arms should be given to the opposition nor should ground troops be used but the airbases from which the planes involved flew and the military headquarters that ordered the attacks should be destroyed. Send in the drones

We are talking here not of supporting one side or the other in Syria but protecting millions of people worldwide who could be killed by chemical weapons now that their leaders have seen how ineffectual even big powers like the USA are when faced with a government, how ever small and puny, that uses them.

Not fighting often kills as many people as fighting.