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Fighting surges around Damascus; NATO to send Patriot missiles to Turkey

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The FSA rebels seem to think that by targeting schools and other civilian targets they can terrify the Syrian people into submission.

An off-camera voice said they were shot after being detained at government checkpoints.

Who shot them? What's omitted here is that they were detained and then released and then shot by the rebels because the rebels became suspicious about them being released without charge. Lying by omission of facts.

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In July, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a news conference that Syria would only use chemical or biological weapons in case of foreign attack, not against its own people.

So he's saying the rebels are his own people?

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So he's saying the rebels are his own people?

The rebels are foreign terrorists and their tactic is to hide amongst the civilian population. They're using Syrian citizens as human shields.

The terrorist rebels are well aware that the Syria army will refrain from overwhelming force (including chem/bio) in areas where Syrian civilians live.

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I bet that there are NATO troops in Syria by end of 2013......

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The rebels are foreign

Not all of them are. You certainly have no shown that they are.

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They're probably arming the scuds in case of foreign intervention. The NATO decision is questionable, as it could inadvertently trigger a wider, regional conflict.

Since Assad's army has finally started using the MRLs, it could simply be a precursor to more intensified military operations by the regime to clear the surrounding areas of Damascus where the rebels are active, reducing them to a no-man's land heap of rubble.

If Assad succeeds in securing Damascus, then what are the Western supporters of the rebels going to do?

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The NATO decision is questionable, as it could inadvertently trigger a wider, regional conflict.

How could the deployment of Patriot anti-missile systems inadvertently trigger a wider, regional conflict? That does not make any sense.

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NeverSubmit: The terrorist rebels are well aware that the Syria army will refrain from overwhelming force (including chem/bio) in areas where Syrian civilians live.

So they just need to target the weapons on areas where no civilians live and where there are foreign troops. Should be pretty easy.

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ubikwit: If Assad succeeds in securing Damascus, then what are the Western supporters of the rebels going to do?

If Assad loses, what are you going to do?

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So they just need to target the weapons on areas where no civilians live and where there are foreign troops. Should be pretty easy.

That would be great if the Al Qaeda rebels followed the Geneva convention but they're intentionally hiding amongst civilians and seeking cover in populated areas. That's why all the fighting is in cities.

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The rebel tactic is very simple, but it works:

First the rebels enter a neighborhood and break into people's homes and harass, sometimes even rape and kill the residents.

Residents call emergency services begging for help.

The Syrian army gets sent in

The rebels shoot at Syrian soldiers from the windows and homes of the local residents forcing a fire fight in the residential neighborhood.

Civilian casualties mount and sometimes rebels kill civilians if enough aren't killed in the crossfire.

The rebels then take pictures of the mayhem and the bodies and contact Rami at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in the UK and give the body count along with pictures, claiming that the Syrian army randomly attacked the neighborhood.

The SOHR then reports to all the world's media outlets that the Syrian Army attacked so and so neighborhood and x number of people died.

Gullible westerners fall for it and blame everything on the Syrians and demand that their governments do something for humanitarian reasons.

Western governments feign reluctance and then eventual respond to public opinion (which was primed by the media) and send in troops to secure the oil fields and install a puppet government.

The process then repeats itself in the next country on the list.
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NeverSubmit. You make some wild claims but have no evidence to back them. From this reader's perspective you may be invested in the outcome on the government side and not remotely objective.

Bottom line, if the people of a nation want a king or leader out, they should have the right to peacefully organize and act to do so. But when a regime, any regime, turns to violence against a civilian population it should be denied the moral approval of the world.

The people want change. Assad has only two moral choices. 1. Go and let the people have their will. 2. Enable a call to the entire population to vote on the future of the country's leadership.

But what he elected to do was take the immoral path and use violence to suppress the people. This is unforgivable. I for one hope to see Assad defeated, quickly and without much more blood shed. He can join the pile of other dead and deposed tyrants who turned weapons on civilians.

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“We are of the same opinion, that these weapons should not be used and must not reach terror groups,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu have blood in hands for slaughtering countless innocent children and elderly people. He should not use WMD for excuse as wiping out handful of militants. He is a war criminal by himself and lecturing other as" Do as I told you. Not as I did! It is hypocrite.

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tkoind2

Very succinctly put.

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The Patriot missiles are nowhere near as good as the missiles in Israel's Iron Dome system.

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The Patriot missiles are nowhere near as good as the missiles in Israel's Iron Dome system.

2 different systems. Patriot is built primarily against big rockets fired by states. Iron Dome is for small rockets fired by militants.

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