Should we bomb De-ash/ISIS in Syria?

Oh good, Wilma I hadn't heard that (been out all day).

International co-operation is what is needed.

I certainly agree that Putin would not be happy removing Assad first, but always enjoys the limelight and being a big player in world affairs, so would not be surprised if Putin did go along with removing him at some point.

rosequartz the 70,000 are a disparate group, but their leaders are willing to sit down together for peace talks next week in Saudi Arabia. They want to show the international coalition they can work together. I think we should support them.

Are MPs able to abstain in tomorrow's vote?

I am sure that I would have to.

Wilma, I'm beginning to think that too. Your last paragraph.

I think that's the right decision, but not sure about the way to go about it.
It was a mistake to destabilise the country in the first place, now we reap the consequences.

Of course our government can't guarantee that no innocent civilians will be killed if we drop bombs. No government of any country can. It would be naive in the extreme to believe such a thing can be done.

Has our government actually promised that?

rosesarered I am not against military intervention. I just don't believe David Cameron has made the case for expanding the air strikes into Syria. Virtually everything I have read is saying don't do it or at least not without ground troops. And my worst fear is we have learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am coming to the conclusion that the international coalition doesn't want to remove Assad before tackling ISIL for fear of upsetting Putin. And I think that's the wrong decision.

Syrians resident in the UK say their terrorists hide among civilians so although this is not a new phenomenon how can our government guarantee
that no innocent civilians will be killed if we drop bombs?

And God forbid if we cannot protect Syrian civilians are we able to protect our own people from reprisals given that cuts in police funding has reduced public protection to a small force?

I wish that as a country we didn't have to do anything in the middle east or elsewhere, I'm sure that we all would love a peaceful world, but IS needs dealing with before their poison spreads even further, and it is not a case that ' leave them alone and they will leave us alone' because they won't.

this refers to the supposed 70,000 indigenous ground troops.
But they are not a cohesive force, they are all disparate groups as I understand it.

wilma I know that, and you know that, and quite a few others too, but there are some that have talked about the bombs as being like the blitz or similar.Apparently we do have better and more precise missiles, or targeting systems than some countries.
There is already 'collateral damage' as it is called right now in Syria, so hope that the RAF will do things better.
The same applies in Iraq.
I don't see that 'we' who are only a tiny part of all this, can confidently lay out our plans for the future of Syria and expect it to happen.It can only be done as part of a coalition of allies, and plans will have to be agreed by all of them.Meanwhile they all have to get on and root out the scum who call themselves IS.

Exactly - there is obviously a lot of information which isn't being made available to the public.

It's very refreshing that on this thread, at least, posters have been able to voice their opinions without being immediately put down by someone who doesn't agree with them and there were until recently very few of those 'links' which just give a one-sided view.

Many believed Blair and Bush

A very interesting article by John Mann, who knows the area as he has been out there. However, he admits he does not know about everything that is happening

No, none of us know, do we. We can only rely on what we are told, what we hear from people who have been there, and that goes for governments too although they are privy to more than we will ever hear about.

this means many innocent Syrians will be killed and quite possibly revenge attacks will happen here
Well, I think this is a worry, but it is not the possible killing of innocent Syrians that would trigger revenge attacks, but the killing of ISIL, which we are already attacking just over the border in Iraq.

And it would be innocent citizens here at risk of course.

Exactly roses. People are behaving as if we are about to throw bombs around Syria at random. This is exactly what we are not going to do. It will be as roses has said, which is what this country is particularly good at. I also think it will do what it has done in Iraq in helping to contain Isil, and push them back. It will need ground troops at some point though, which makes me feel that a lot more to this debacle, than that about which we're being told.

rosesarered what do you think has been going on until now?

There's been no blanket bombing, it's all been intelligence led and are our jets more precise than the US or French planes, or any other nation's like Canada or Australia?

And what about the collateral damage when more civilians are killed because they live under ISIL rule?

Doesn't it bother you that we have no plans except air strikes?

As has been said on this thread ( many times) it is not a blanket bombing, but intelligence led and as precise as possible missiles.

I think that Parliament will agree to start bombing Syria very soon.

It seems that the people who do not agree with any bomb strikes from us in Syria ( how do they feel about the same action in Iraq?) say that it won't work, but it has helped destroy IS in Iraq, so why wouldn't it in Syria?I don't think that anyone believes our few air strikes is going to do the job single handedly, that would be ridiculous, but we can do something, and maybe as part of the action there, have some say in stopping Russia from bombing any other enemy of Assad ,other than IS.
It won't make any difference to attacks here by terrorists as we are already bombing IS in Iraq and they hate us anyway, and we have plenty of home grown extremist nutters who have been planning attacks for ages now.
I don't see that our small involvement in going after IS in Syria is any different from going after them in Iraq.

Then share it with as many as you can, particularly your MPs.

act.thesyriacampaign.org/go/185?t=2&akid=274.124249.Rx3PGy

Everybody should watch this. It's by Nicolas Henin, who was an ISIS hostage for ten months. One of his captors was Emwazi.

i0.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/RyanBarrellCaseForBombingSyria.png

The important bit from the link dj has posted from the first Independent article above is for me: "If this ghost army existed, it would already have captured Damascus and hurled Bashar al-Assad from power." - this refers to the supposed 70,000 indigenous ground troops.

It really does sound like the Blair lies debacle all over again - it is unbearable to hear.