re: The Russians say the chemical attack was by the rebels, America says by Assad.

quote:

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yeah those are the major coalitions (and lol yes Turkey is just in this to kill Kurds..probably the biggest example of "this is a bunch of bullshite" in the entire conflict)....but i'd imagine WITHIN those coalitions there is a bunch of internal conflict, further splintering the actual "sides"

to put it another way, if any of these non-Assad coalitions was to gain power, how long would it take before they had a "civil war" within the ruling group? a year?

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Agreed. I had to think for a minute before removing ISIS from the US/EU/Saudi/AQ side. They really didn't read the script of how this was supposed to go.

I don't know if I'd give it a full year if Assad fell. As much as the NeoCons here keep calling for Assad to die, no one can reasonably make the argument that any replacement would be measurably better for the Syrian people, and would likely be markedly worse for minorities in the country (Christians, Alawites, etc).

The whole thing gives me a bad taste in my mouth, because the sudden (and it was sudden) demand for Assad to go because he was a big meanie came as soon as the powers that be realized he would under no circumstances agree to a Saudi owned pipeline being built through Syria.

Side note on Turkey:

You can see witht he two pipelines proposed through Turkey, WHY they are on the fence between both the Russian and US/EU/Saudi side. Either way, they win and get a pipeline through Turkey that they can exert control over, they just don't want to side with the loser.