Paper Tiger?, NATO Air

Real news, I agree.
In America, the only source for real news is the Internet... and some newspapers, from time to time.
The problem with the newspapers is that when they publish wrong information, they do not publish a correction or an appology.
Example: The New York Times - again, again and again.
But if you are (very) rich, you can buy even a whole page of "The New York Times", and then publish your point of view as advertise. Sometimes even the governments do this. Years ago, Nigeria bought a whole page, and in a huge article they criticized the newspaper. Their title was "Nigeria is not falling apart", and they said that in about two months "The New York Times" published 26 articles saying that Nigeria will collapse. That was some 7...8 years ago - it looks like Nigeria was right!

This post has been edited by Florin on August 27, 2012 03:48 pm

Triple M,
Of course nothing is simple in real life,but this is the core of the problem in Islamic world.Certanly Turkey, Emirates and Saudis ( sunnis )are suporting with arms,etc the multitude of groups that call themself SR Army.And of course US and some NATO countries back the sunnis. And Iran&Hezbollah (shia) are backing the alawite regime and,in turn are suported by RF&China.But you know this allready.What I'm trying to say is that the Syrian events were not started by superpowers strategig games,but by long existing internal conflict ( see Homs in the seventies,where Assad the father killed around 20 thousand suni insurgents ) anf the influence of " arab spring " The superpowers simply joined thr band when their strategic interests were in danger.
I repeat,if one does not take into account the sunna-shia rift ,one does not understand islamic world (if its possible to understand it at all ) and will fall into conspiracy theories and ( so fashionable in our country now ) anti west propaganda.
take care,Dan

This centuries-old "rift" can appear only in the circumstances of weakening the central power and I'm not sure that only the "Arab Spring" was enough for the opening of the Syrian rift.

Oh,whatever.

There's one other element to add to the mix - specifically, Middle-Eastern racial politics. The Arabs and the Persians (i.e. Iranians) don't particularly care much for each other, and to the best of my knowledge never have. The Arabs - specifically the Saudis - currently have the upper hand in matters of Islamic prestige due to their control of Mecca and Medina, and the Iranian religious leadership has made no secret of the fact that they'd like to usurp that position (which is one of the likely reasons why Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons... and why the Saudis have hinted that if Iran gets the bomb, the Saudis will get it as well in short order). Syria has been acting as Iran's gateway to the rest of the Middle East (i.e. funneling cash and supplies to groups like Hezbollah, and bringing members of those foreign organizations back to Iran to act for the government against protestors, people who act too "Western", and other "subversives"), and removing the Allawites from power in Syria will make it much more difficult for the Iranians to challenge the Saudis.


As for Western responses, one of the reasons why so many in the US are against any sort of intervention is Syria is due to the question mark regarding who is going to end up in charge if the Allawite regime collapses. Replacing Assad with someone who favors al Qaeda might not necessarily be such a good thing.

The Americans have done clumsy moves like that in the past... but perhaps - just perhaps - if there was a Republican administration, there would've been a more "active" involvement there! BTW, I think Obama will remain at the White House.

This post has been edited by MMM on September 09, 2012 07:42 pm

Sure he will!
Taking from those who are hard working and giving to the "poors" always had a great popularity...
The question is what will be when the "cow" doesn't produce milk anymore.