Guys, the kind of "weapons of mass destruction" that were being strongly implied to the public in 2003 in both the USA and the UK in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq were not little stuff like nerve gas or chemical weapons. The threat that was being implied very strongly by both Blair and Bush was that Saddam had nuclear weapons and delivery systems for them...either already extant...or on the way very shortly. I think it's quite clear that that was not true. It was a fabricated scare tactic, and it was used to panic people into supporting the invasion. Saddam posed no real existential threat to the West or to Israel at that time. His military had been very seriously degraded since the earlier Gulf War, and even in that war he had proved capable of nothing more than throwing some inaccurate, conventionally-armed Scud missiles at Israel.

As for Assad, he is doing exactly what the leader of any nation would do if placed in the same desperate situation. He's fighting for his and his government's survival against both local rebels and a foreign-backed and supplied insurgency that is getting much help in both materiel and manpower from outside Syria. Many of the fighters who were used to topple Qaddafi have been sent into Syria.

This doesn't Assad a "nice guy", and I'm not saying he is a nice guy, necessarily...but what he is doing is simply normal survival tactics for any government put in the same circumstances. He'll fight until he wins or until he goes down. If Netanyahu or the UK's Cameron or Egypt's Mursi or Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin or any other leader were in the same desperate position, fighting for their very survival, they'd do the same thing, and they'd all use ANY weapons they had at their disposal...if it seemed necessary in order to survive.

That's reality. You can demonize Assad all you want for fighting for the survival of himself and his administration, but anyone else in his position would do the very same thing.

And when...and if...he's gone, you won't see one iota of improvement in Syria. It will get worse. Assad's independent secular government will be replaced by an Islamic government, in all probability, a government that is under the thumb of the western alliance, and Syrians will be worse off than they were before, pretty much like what has happened in Lybia.

But the USA will have eliminated one more independent secular regional power, and will have cleared the way to an eventual attack on the main final objective: Iran, and the Israelis will be absolutely delighted.

As for the Russians, they will be getting ready for Armageddon. This is some serious shit here, and it's NOT about establishing democracy or ending dictatorships in foreign lands. It's a long term and major war with global objectives. The eventual and inevitable opponents in that war, I think, are going to be Russia and China...versus the western alliance. Assad's Syria is just one more pawn, bishop, or knight on the big chessboard...same as Israel.

The trouble is, though, you can win a chessgame without killing both players. I don't think this game can be concluded without mutually ruining just about everybody.