A Strike on Sryia Could Explode the Entire Region.

[GreenStormCloud]

Iran is threatening to attack Saudia Arabia and Israel if Sryia is attacked. Israel will certainly strike back. Other countries are very likely to be sucked in into a general Middle Eastern war with massive confusion of who is on whose side. Such a war could have to potential to go nuclear.

Assad is definately a bad guy, but the rebels are Islamic fundamentalists who want to establish a theocracy.

Let's sit this one out and watch from the sidelines.

[cali]

1. I agree that the postential exists for that

and that the rebels are largely Islamic fundamentalists- though there used to be more secular opposition.

From April of this year:

Absence of secular rebels in Syria creates problem for U.S.

In Syria's largest city, Aleppo, rebels who are aligned with al-Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

This is the landscape President Barack Obama confronts as he considers how to respond to growing evidence that Syrian officials have used chemical weapons, crossing a red line he had set. More than two years of violence has radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar Assad, leaving few groups with both a political vision the United States shares and the military might to push it forward.


<snip>

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23122877/absence-secular-rebels-syria-creates-problem-u-s