"measures which will make a practical difference to the situation on the ground in Syria"

Thus BBC radio news, toeing the Government line in most uncharacteristic fashion, on the decision to send arms to even up the balance of the Syrian civil war.

I think I get it :

Islamists killing soldiers on British streets - bad.

Islamists killing soldiers on Syrian streets - good.

I liked the quote from the Qatar PM :

"providing arms may be the only means of achieving peace"

In other news :

The late Col Gaddafi takes "measures which will make a practical difference to the situation on the ground in Britain".

Mohamed Sidique Khan takes "measures which will make a practical difference to the situation on the ground in London"



There's no doubt that Assad is a nasty piece of work. I'm just not at all sure that any replacement will be any better. The fate of the Iraqi Christians is ever before me. It seems from here highly likely that Syrian Christians will suffer similarly in a post-Assad Syria.

You'd think that the post-invasion unpleasantness in Iraq, which while not the apocalyptic peoples revolt against imperialism predicted (and hoped for) by the Left, certainly wasn't the flowering of civil society that some people foresaw (my fourth-ever post still seems pretty cautious and prescient, even if I say so myself), might have made minds in Washington and London more cautious about a repeat performance.

If, that is, the welfare of the average Syrian was the priority. Maybe it isn't.