Liam Fox says we know both sides in Syria have chemical weapons on Daily Politics 5 Sept 2013, but Andrew Neil lets it pass.
Liam Fox’s claim comes about 10 minutes into a 15 minute discussion with Peter Hain and Andrew Neil
For the impatient here’s a short clip in which Liam says we know both sides have chemical weapons or more precisely “both sides have chemical weapons, we know”.
Here is the full discussion which I strongly recommend you watch
Peter Hain made several strong points, for example,
- chemical weapons account for just 1% of the casualties,
why not focus on the other 99%. - Although this is a civil war, there are more than 2 parties involved
- Sunni v Shia
- Saudi v Iran
- Russian v US
- Assad is backed by 40% of population, in part because they fear the alternative – a Sunni lead genocide against Shia(Alawite) and Christian.
Why am I writing about this?
The main stream media in UK is churning out a relentless diet of
- Civial War In Syria
- Assad Bad
- Rebels Good
- Support US Good
- Russia Bad
there is virtually no alternative discussion although it’s not to hard find with just a little digging on Google, for example
- mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135
- rt.com/news/turkey-syria-chemical-weapons-850
- www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/14/syria-rebels-ordered-10-tons-of-sarin-nerve-agent-in-turkey
- www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/20/the-ghouta-chemical-attack-where-are-the-missing-children
zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-09/syria-101-ultimate-infographic
I’m not saying these reports are correct, just that there are alternative points of view.
So why isn’t UK main stream media reporting on them?
Surely it can’t be because it’s easier to persuade a country to go to war if they are feed a simple story of good versus evil. Once the story becomes more complicated people tend to just scratch their heads.
Although the conflict in Syria is referred to as a “civil war” it seems to me a combination of
- a religous war – Sunni against everyone else
- a regional war based largely on religion with
Saudi Qatar Iraq on one side
Iran Syria and Hezbollah on the other
Israel and Kurds looking after their own interests
I have been so slow in posting this events have overtaken with the Al Shabab (Sunni) attack on a shopping mall in Kenya.
In the interest of balance wikipedia state there are about 1.6 billion muslims in the world of which 80-90% are Sunni, so around 1.3 billion. I am certain it is just a tiny minority who resort to violence. It would be silly to suggest it is only Sunni muslims who resort to violence, Christians, Hindus & Tamils are among the many others who like to join in.
But if 1% of 1% of Sunnis do that’s still around 130,000.
