The measures employed by Hezbollah and the Lebanese security forces have succeeded in preventing a number of attacks so far. But the deployment of suicide operations will force the targeted parties to resort to deterrence through preventative operations, which is the only way to confront lunatics eager to meet their maker.The idiots who run Saudi Arabia do realize that killing goes both ways, right? They believe they are the only ones in the region who are armed with guns and explosives, flushed with cash, and able to mobilize ideological soldiers at a moment's notice. They couldn't be more wrong. Be careful what you wish for. No one will be safe from a wide-scale, regional war that stretches from Libya to Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is right in the middle of that. So it is better to stop the madness now. The Saudi royals should keep whatever is left of their dignity and stop waging war.
It is clear from the questionable behavior of the Saudis of late that their bitter defeat in Syria will impose on us more of the kind of meaningless bloodletting that we witnessed in Beirut on Tuesday.
An excerpt from, "OPCW: Destroying Syria's Chemical Weapons at Sea is a Possibility" by Matthew Feeney, Reason.com, November 20:
A spokesman from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has said that Syria’s chemical weapons could be destroyed at sea rather than on land.Knowing how the international system works, the OPCW will probably dump this shit off the coast of Somalia or some other poor African country that no one cares about, and then pretend to be shocked when the locals get mad and hijack a few American or European ships for payback. And then they'll make a big Hollywood movie about how the heroic hostages on one of these hijacked ships stared down the ruthless enemy, and got their loot back from the kidnappers. That's usually how these things work.
The news comes after authorities in Albania, Norway, and Belgium declined to have their country host the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons.
Although destroying the weapons at sea has numerous advantages, chemical weapons disarmament consultant Ralf Trapp told the AP that there are, unsurprisingly, potential regulatory, environmental, and logistic issues that would need to be addressed:
An excerpt from, "A Violent Year in the Life of the Syria-Turkey Border" by Joe Parkinson, Nour Malas and Ayla Albayrak, The Wall Street Journal, November 20:
Yet many here fear Ankara may now be unable to contain the expanding influence of radical fighters, some of whom it once hoped could tip the military balance against Assad, according to U.S. officials. The power of radical Islamists in northern Syria has risen after the U.S.-Russian deal to strip Damascus of its chemical weapons emboldened President Bashar al-Assad and demoralized the moderate Free Syrian Army, according to analysts and rebel commanders.
The perception in these borderlands that Syria's conflict is spilling onto Turkish territory spotlights the policy dilemma for Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has spearheaded international efforts to force regime change in Damascus: ease support for Syrian rebel fighters and likely strengthen the regime, or boost military support and risk strengthening radical groups and importing violence.
"The constellation of risks along the border means Turkey is journeying into the unknown," said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat now at the Carnegie Endowment. "Ankara is increasingly unnerved by the risks."
