I'm leaning towards only going after Assad personally.

[Nye Bevan]

Destroy his Presidential palaces. And his vacation homes, offices, private planes, and so on. And if we can take out the man himself with a drone, let's do it.

But nothing more. No regime changes, no troops on the ground, no picking sides among the various rebel factions. The idea would be to make other dictators see that if they break weapons treaties we will make their lives as miserable as possible.

[uponit7771]

1. For what?! There's been no solid proof that he ordered the attacks. Our intel agencies have no

...credibility and some translated cartoonish sounding recordings don't meet the test of Adley Stevenson type of proof needed to kill hundreds of people.

Something aint right about this

[cali]

2. The Administration does not want to depose Assad

for obvious reasons.

[MADem]

3. Going after his stuff to hurt him, personally, is fine, but we don't assassinate world leaders.

Terrorists, yes, but heads of state, no.

We got out of that business some time ago.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333

[n2doc]

4. Worked so well with Saddam

I mean, no one misbehaved after he and his sons were killed. Everyone learned their lesson.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. Political assassination --

kind of frowned upon.

And the biggest question of all: who steps into the Assad void? Considering recent history, probably a regime even worse.

[Nye Bevan]

6. Whoever it was, they would know not to use chemical weapons

if they didn't want to suffer the same fate.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

8. They may not use chemical weapons --

but they would create a toxic, Islamic state that sets back women's rights in Syria a 1000 fucking years, kills LGBT for fun, aligns with some of our biggest enemies, rejects modernity, and generally turns into a problem that WILL bite us in the ass down the road.

If those are my choices, I'll take Assad, thank you very much.

[tblue]

7. But we do it all the time.

I hate this. Whole thing.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

9. I know.

And we have been punished greatly for our madness -- our actions ALWAYS come back to bite us in the ass.

[Abq_Sarah]

10. I'm fairly certain

Taking out Assad would constitute "regime change".