Like many an old soldier Colonel Latchford of UKIP is mistakenly fighting the last war given his letter in the Gazette a week ago.
Syria now is not Iraq in 2003: they definitely do have chemical weapons and have used them several times.
Saddam gassed many of his own citizens in 1988 and got away with it. And then invaded Kuwait two years later and was let off the hook and ran rings around the weapons inspectors and no fly zones until he was finally ousted in 2003.
Several tons of chemical weapons have been revealed since then by the existing Iraqi government, and Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden were then largely confined to Afghanistan.
A monster like Assad is now desperate to hand over his chemical weapons before a US-French-Arab missile strike, as with Kosovo or Libya or Yemen, wrecks his palaces and barracks and tanks and jets and warships. Such bombing attacks would undoubtedly aid the rebel alliance, we are already funding and arming, in toppling him. Or at best Assad could hope for an ICC war crimes trial in The Hague and the cell next to the Rwandans and Yugoslavs and Kenyans cluttering that place up.
Syria is already destroyed. The worst option would be further chemical attacks or the kind of limbo-land of Saddam's Iraq between 1990 and 2003 of further destruction.
While both the French intervention in Mali and the UN attack role in The Congo show both the necessity and possible success of intervention especially R2P.
Maybe Britain's generals could have done better in Basra and Helmand. Maybe not, with the usual MOD errors in equipment.
Maybe sat in their barracks surrounded by piles of expensive kit they daredn't use - or lose - is the future of our military?
To suggest intervention is always a failure or ineffective is simply not true. We have already have a disaster in Syria.
Shame on the British government and military for not being able to end his vicious and repulsive regime already as one of the last dictators alongside Mugabe, AlBashir, Nazarbayev, Obiang or Lukashenko - and far sooner than 100,000 casualties and millions of refugees requiring further UK aid.
No doubt the dictator's secret prisons and torture chambers will reveal more British armaments and handcuffs and sniper rifles as usual - this year we were even exporting chemical components for sarin to Assad. And next year's WW1 anniversary is the perfect time to celebrate confining chemical weapons along with napalm and landmines to the history books.
Why are we supporting Egypt with their chemical weapons stockpiles or Angola or Sudan?
While for Colonel Latchford to speak out on poisoning his own citizens when the removal of the Manston monitors by Infratil and TDC remains unexplained, and with 4x EU safety levels of air pollution endangering the Thanet public, is a disgrace.
When will he speak up on that?
Time for arrests.
Time for corporate manslaughter charges.
Time for misuse of public office and funds charges.
Time for jail sentences at Infratil and TDC.
Time for Change.
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