The line of attack by the 'weapons merchants' here seems to be that there is some support for Assad (by me?) for Assad on this thread.
What is happening in Syria shows that the regime should never have been sold weapons in the first place, by anybody - this includes the "only sniper ammunition" from Britain.
Nobody needed a "crystal ball" to know that Assad was a murderous thug - the Amnesty International report shows that the regime has been murdering and torturing for decades, yet this went uncommented on right up to the present events.
Despite this, a handful of rabid rightists on this forum have been attempting to justify/deny/play down (all at the same time) the sales of military equipment, including "sniper bullets" to Syria.
"yet our Lefties did not want to talk about it."
My early entry on this thread was to point out that a week ago a bunch of Tories and a Labour-cum-Tory had appeared on BBC's Question Time and carefully explained why the British Government did not intend to intervene in Syria, the argument being 'better the devil you know....'
The headline over an article in The Times yesterday summed up the response to that inaction by the Syrian people:
"THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD HAVE ABANDONED US. NOW WE JUST ASK GOD FOR HELP
Without positive action by the UN (despite the veto) condemnation of the Assad regime is no more than empty words
At the very least, a trade embargo should have been put into place immediately it became plain what was happening.
"The EU is the first trading partner for Syria with total trade amounting to approximately €7.18 billion in 2010. Although the EU–Syrian bilateral trade volume contracted in 2009 by almost 23% in account of the impact of the global crisis, the 2010 trade volume already surpasses the 2008 one. The EU is Syria's biggest trade partner covering 22.5% of Syrian trade while Syria ranks 50th for the EU."
"Jim's refusal to accept a terrible truth make me want to bang my head too."
Far from "the left not wanting to talk about it", left opposition to arms sales has been totally ignored and openly derided - Britain is the world's third greatest arms trader - in spite of the Arab Spring Cameron, recently attended an arms fair the purpose of which was to sell weapons to human rights abusers and possible war criminals
Prior to 2011 the British government listed Bahrain as a key market for arms exports.
The UK Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation, the government's arms sales promotion unit, supported the Bahrain International Airshow in 2010.
British armed forces have been used in support of sales efforts, demonstrating arms to the Royal Bahrain Artillery.
In 2010 equipment approved for export to Bahrain included tear gas and crowd control ammunition, equipment for the use of aircraft cannon, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and sub-machine guns.
British arms are still being sold to Mugabe - BAE has links with the Zimbabwe regime to the tune of £20m.
In the past British firms have sold weapons and equipment to Syria and Libya and continues to sell them to oppressive feudal regimes regimes which are actual and potential human rights abusers.
It is not the left who "doesn't want to talk about it - it is the laeft that have always campaigned to stop it I seem to have read somewhere that Russia, one of Assad's main suppliers, is a Capitalist country - is that right?
If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that weapons and equipment should not be sold to despots, sniper bullets or otherwise, and certainly not "anti-riot equipment, as has been obscenely suggested here
Jim Carroll