Faisal Al Yafai

In my view, the West should intervene in Syria militarily only if the world's leading intelligence agencies believe that there is an impending possibility of Syria's Wmds falling into the hands of radical Islamists. If they do, the militants will not hesitate to use them in an attack on Israel, the Shiites in Syria or neighboring Lebanon, or against the Saudis. If, for example, they launch WMDs against Israel, the Israelis would justifiably respond with a vengeance. There would certainly be collateral damage in terms of many deaths of innocent civilians. If chemical weapons were indeed used, it wouldn't be the first time for the region. During the North Yemen Civil War (1962-'70), Egypt sided with the rebels (known as republicans), while Saudi Arabia and Jordan sided the Royalists. When Nasser (Egypt's president) saw that the war was stalemated he sent in 70,000 troops and ordered the use of chemical weapons. Chemical bombs were deployed in the form of blistering mustard gas, and later nerve gas. Conservative estimates put the dead at 1500 and many thousands maimed. In the Iran-Iraq War (1980-'88) Saddam Hussein also used used nerve gas when the war was turning against him. It is estimated that 100,000 Iranian troops died horrific deaths either immediately or in the months and years that followed. In 1988, Saddam again used gas to punish the rebelious Kurds of northern Iraq. In the most infamous incident, in the Kurdish village of Halajba, 5000 were killed and many thousands more wounded due to mustard gas and nerve agents Additionally, gas attacks were launched against forty other Kurdish villages. If the Assad regime finds that the war is turning further against him, he will order gas attacks on a massive scale. If the Salafist (Islamist) led rebels can procure chemical weapons, they too will use it. This you can take to the bank. The U.S. and the West should not supply arms to the Syrian rebels. All recent reports that I've read have stated that the The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Salafist oriented groups are now in the vanguard and may at this point represent the majority of the rebel fighters. There is a reason why the many Syrian minorities have not joined the revolution (Kurds, Druze, Christians, Turkamen, Circassians, etc.). They know what awaits them if the Islamist Sunni forces win the day. They gaze south to Egypt and see the Christian Copts being murdered as their churches and businesses burn by Salafist forces as the MB led government doesn't lift a finger to help them. Mubarak, dictator that he was, did protect them. They look to Iraq and see the Salafists butchering the Shiites. In Turkey they see the Islamist Sunni givernment's unrelenting oppression of the Kurds (a full eighteen percent of Turkey's population). Assad is a ruthless dictator, but like Mubarak, always protected Syria's ethnic/religious minorities. The Arab Spring has been an unmitigated disaster in Egypt and Libya (no longer a real nation state, but rather a series of statelets ruled by warlords and religious extremists (remember the Benghazi massacre). As difficult as it is to say, the new rulers of Syria are likely to be even worse than the Assad regime.

turning a victim into the accused is a very common defense used ...