That’s not the aim of the article. It doesn’t critique the Theory of Relativity either.
Tagos, where and when did he say that? I’m curious because if he said it, that’s a really provocative thing to say on his part. Not to mention phenomenally stupid.
AISI, Assad may treat a limited cruise missile strike as merely realpolitik, and something to be endured due to his inability to fully safeguard or control his chemical stockpile. Getting rid of him, OTOH, is a whole lot more serious, in an age where deposed dictators end up dead. Again, if the goal of the proposed US military actions is regime change, and Assad knows it, then he has nothing to lose. Let that sink in.
The point of the article is the insinuation, via “just asking questions”, that the Israeli intelligence is a deliberate false intelligence operation. It offers exactly no evidence for this insinuation, or even why it would be in the interests of the Israelis to engage in such an operation.
Surely a conspiracy has to have some sort of point, or are the Israelis so horrible that it can just be taken on faith that they conspire even against their interests - perhaps from a love of conspiring? 
That’s what is so frustrating. You’ve got Kerry saying one minute that it’s not about regime change, and then the next minute saying this is part of an overall strategy to give the rebels of boost. In fact, the measure that passed in committee in the Senate amends the AUMF to explicitly say that we have an overall strategy to aid the rebels. There is no way you can bomb someone and not weaken them. Claiming it’s not about getting rid of Assad is double-speak. It might not be decisively in favor of that, but it surely tips the balance.
Depends on what they target, John. If they target chemical weapons storage sites then it won’t substantially weaken Syria/Assad except insofar as he won’t be able to use them against the rebels next time. If we target C&C, logistics or other military targets then it would certainly weaken Syria’s ability to fight, but it would depend on the duration of the attacks whether it would make a substantial difference. Since, afaik, nothing has been decided yet this is all still up in the air.
The conspiracy, to the point of proxy war and accusations of WMD, is well documented by the Israelis themselves, so no need to speculate. I mentioned it before, perhaps you missed it, in 1996 neocons working for B. Netanyahu wrote a paper titled "A Clean Break - A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, the realm in question being Israel. Wiki has a writeup on the paper, from wiki…
"It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of “weapons of mass destruction”.
The situation now is very different from that in 1996.
Now, Syria happens to be in the middle of a civil war, which pits a group of rebels - none of whom are exactly friends of Israel, and some of them Islamicist wackjobs to whom Israel is an abomination - against the dictator Assad.
Any effort to attack Assad by the US will, naturally, weaken him and make a rebel victory more likely. Assad, the Israelis can ‘contain’ and have for decades, though of course they don’t like him and have even attacked him to prevent him from building nukes. Assad is a rutheless dictator with all that implies, but without a larger alliance and domestic stability, he’s in no position to mess with Israel.
Why on earth would the Israelis, of all people, want the Syrian rebels to win? Assad is no threat to them now. He’s too weak to mess with the Israelis, even if he wasn’t fighting a civil war. He’s very effectively “contained” by the fact that he’s hanging on to his power (and his life) by his fingernails. The rebels, on the other hand, are a largely unknown factor.
Anyone who knows the politics of the region knows that the allegation as stated makes little sense.
Oh my God! Juan Cole and Rafsanjani are agents of Mossad!
The Zionists are more clever than anyone ever imagined.
Hmm… maybe those stories about Mossad being responsible for 911 are true.
We are not targetting the CWs for the mist oart and its not like Syria has an infrastructure dedicated solely to CW delivery so whatever we do will weaken Assad. Kerry even saud so. But lets not ignire that CWs are part of Assad’s arsenal against the rebels. If he can’t use CWs then he is weaker. Just because we don’t like the idea of using CWs dies not mean Assad dies not consider them to be part of his arsenal.
For those not content with the ample explicit public (what more do you want?) evidence of an Israeli conspiracy, let’s look at it from the banking angle … you need to read the entire article "Making the World Safe for the Banksters’ …
“Later, the same general (Wesley Clark g) said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
If Assad can’t use chemical weapons, do we care if he’s weaker?
Oh, so that doesn’t mean Country and Western?
Of couse not. But the claim was made that we don’t know if the bombing will weaken Assad or nott. That is wrong on the face of it. Assad withot CWs is weaker than Assad with CWs. Assad with 50% of his CWs is weaker than Assad with his current CWs.
If my neighbor drops dead, it isn’t necessarily because I think about strangling him at 5:00 because his pickup has no muffler.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
We are not targetting the CWs for the mist oart and its not like Syria has an infrastructure dedicated solely to CW delivery so whatever we do will weaken Assad.
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I’m assuming ‘mist oart’ means ‘most part’, and I’d like to know how you know this, John? As far as I know we haven’t launched anything yet, and that we haven’t even decided whether we WILL be launching anything at all. The Russians have done a great job of bringing in a bunch of countries opposed to doing anything (China is no surprise, but several in the EU are also joining in…again, not a huge surprise but still not totally expected either).
As I said, it will depend on what (certainly at this point on if) we target. Yeah, any strike against Syria will weaken them in a non-zero sort of way, but symbolic strikes aren’t going to substantially shift the balance of power one way or the other.
Well, Kerry can saud off for all I care. 
As to what Kerry said, of COURSE he said that it would weaken Assad…he and the administration are trying to rally support for military strikes. Saying ‘well, it probably isn’t going to substantially shift the balance of power’ or even ‘these strikes will be more symbolic than substantive’, while (IMHO) true aren’t going to inspire Congress to support the President on this one.
About 1% weaker, based on body count so far. Roughly, I’ve read that Assad et al have been responsible for around 100k causalities. The recent gas attack killed around a thousand or so people. I think we can afford to weaken Assad et al by around 1% if it means they won’t be using chemical weapons in the future.
Pretty obviously (assuming you don’t believe this tripe about Jewish conspiracies the OP is finally getting around to unleashing), he DOES consider it part of his arsenal for use against his own people. I’d say taking that out of the equation would be good for everyone involved. YMMV of course.
Perhaps you should consider the impressive track record of the authors of ‘A Clean Break …’, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, et. al.
I guess no-one told the authour that Syria is not and has never been an Islamic theocracy, but a Ba’athist Arab Socialist dictatorship.
Even the slightest bit or research would demonstrate that banks are, in fact, allowed to charge interest in Syria.
http://www.byblosbank.com/Syria
But why spoil a good conspiracy with Bankers and Israelis in it, with facts?
Made that last post from my phone…
Well, I’m just not really understanding what point you’re trying to make. Do you want us to bomb Assad? I listened to most of Kerry’s session with the Senate on Tuesday. He keeps going back and forth between saying this is only to send a message and that we want Assad out. You can’t pretend one punitive action, which will certainly weaken him, is separate actions which are designed specifically to strengthen the other side. It’s a pure semantic smoke screen.
We don’t plan, according to Kerry, to destroy the CWs (and that makes sense, since that’s a very risky proposition), but to significantly weaken his ability to deliver those weapons to the battlefield and use them there.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Made that last post from my phone…
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I figured. 
I have the same problem posting from my iPad.
Do I want too? Not particularly. Personally, I’m good with just letting the Syrians work things out on their own. I similarly was good staying out of Libya. It’s not really a matter of want, though…I think it’s something we need to seriously consider. There are implications to either doing something or not doing anything that need to be carefully weighed.
Then I guess I haven’t been following along very closely to the details, since my impression was that we would be striking facilities for making or storing their chemical weapons. If that’s off the table then it will depend on what they ARE planning to hit. I still see some pros to hitting other targets that would amount to a slap on the wrist to Assad et al and a warning that using chemical weapons in the future would result in similar slaps, but it’s got to be a very measured response…and one that doesn’t substantially change the current balance of power between rebels and pro-Assad forces. At least, that’s my opinion, FWIW.
The vanishing 800 lb. gorilla - just heard on Democracy Now that the NYT ran a story over the weekend that had a quote from an Obama insider that the Israeli lobby was the ‘800 lb. gorilla in the room’ in the Syria discussions, and that the quote was removed from the online version of the article. A flap has ensued.
The show was an interview with Alan Grayson, Zionist congressman who is opposing the bombing, and according to him AIPAC is just another lobby that cannot be effective in the current environment because “the public has become involved”.
Is he right? I have no idea, it will be interesting to see how it plays out, especially if it doesn’t lead us directly to WW III.