Well, at least the Syrian rebels have God on their side.
Islamic cleric decrees it OK for Syrian rebels to rape women
I wouldn’t send a popgun to either side in Syria. The fact is there are no good guys in that conflict.
Post #79, the one right above yours, points out that even Obama acknowledges they appear to have been targeting Al-Qaeda rebels (albeit mighty imprecisely), not civilians.
In 1966 the General Assembly adopted a resolution that called for all nations to observe the ban (page six here), and in 1969 the GA recognized that use of the weapons was a violation of international law.
I know, but nobody cares if you’re impressed. You said it was no fair making Syria observe the ban because they hadn’t signed on to it. I wouldn’t much care if they hadn’t agreed, but it turns out they did so. That’s apart from the absurdity of saying it’s bullying to stop a government from gassing people.
That’s not quite what Obama said, but I agree that that’s probably your understanding.
No, I wouldn’t be OK with it. But it wouldn’t be a violation if international law and wouldn’t violate treaties Syria has signed, and thus it’d be treated differently.
Agreed. What Assad is doing to the neighborhoods controlled by the rebels is bad, but what the rebels will do to the Alawites if they win will also be bad.
“Trying to clear neighborhoods with opposition forces in them” is not quite the same thing as “full of Al Quaeda rebels”.
You’re first link is broken, and the part in red is wrong. I explained why in Post #75. To summarize: the Geneva Protocol applies to international conflict between “the High Contracting Parties” and Syria has never signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention which would’ve prohibited them from gassing the Al Qaeda rebels within their own borders. The second link repeatedly refers to “international conflict”, which this isn’t. Did I miss the portion where they “recognized that the use of the weapons in internal conflicts was a violation of international law”? I admit I mostly skimmed your link and its format doesn’t allow easy searching.
Fair enough. I think it’s fair to characterize them as locations that had civilians intermingled with Al Qaeda rebels. Certainly more on the side of a legitimate military target in the civil war than the start of a campaign of genocide (at least in my eyes). You seem to agree that if they’d use conventional artillery shells instead of chemical ones, and some civilians had died in the attacks, there’d be no problems internationally.
You are right. I was wrong. It was just a consulate, not an embassy. No wonder we still haven’t done anything. What difference does it make anyways?
Yeah, it’s not like it had an ambassador in it or anything … :smack:
If you understand what he’s on about, please explain.
It’s fixed now.
There is nothing about contracting parties in the newer resolutions.
Correct. I’m not sure how “domestic” use of these weapons is treated by the international community. We know what happened when Saddam’s use of chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and Iranians, of course: at the time nobody did much of anything, and later it was widely agreed to have been a war crime.
That sounds more accurate than the first version, yes.