Foreign Minister Bob Carr has ruled out sending Australian troops to Syria as the United States and its allies gear up for a probable military strike against the country.

A military intervention in Syria could happen within days, as punishment for last week's deadly chemical weapons attack, which killed hundreds of people as they slept.

Western powers have told the Syrian opposition to expect military action against Mr Assad's forces soon, according to sources who attended a meeting between envoys and the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.

Mr Carr says as the evidence accumulates that Syrian government forces were behind the attack, the regime must be "made to pay a price".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-28/us2c-allies-gearing-up-for-probable-strike-on-syria/4917286

There is no accumulating evidence of anything... the whole thing is a set up to please the oil barons from Saudi Arabia... who not only are "sponsoring" Al Qaeda in Syria, but also run the Chechen rebels in Russia... 

 Even when the Western intervention in Libya appeared to be a triumph for its people, he said, polls showed that most Arabs considered it the wrong decision.

But while they will not say it publicly, several countries in the region have been working vigorously behind the scenes to topple the Assad government. For two years, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey have been shipping money and arms to rebels challenging Syrian troops. Neither Saudi Arabia nor any of the Sunni-dominated gulf states have publicly endorsed Western intervention. But all feel threatened by the regional rivalry with Iran, and all have privately urged the Western powers to intervene on behalf of the rebels, Western diplomats say.

In the Arab League meeting on Tuesday, Arab diplomats said, Saudi Arabia pushed for stronger language explicitly condemning Mr. Assad for launching the attack, which would have come closer to helping the Western powers justify military action.

But Egypt, still the most populous Arab state with the largest Arab military, disagreed, Arab diplomats said.

“It shows the schizophrenia of the Arab world,” said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, noting that gulf states and Jordan also appear to be working closely with the West on possible intervention while refusing to endorse it publicly.

But their silence created a potential problem for the United States and its European allies, he said, because it undermined the notion of a broad-based coalition with Arab support. “And every day that it goes on, opponents will try to exploit it,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/world/middleeast/arab-league-rejects-a...      

Yes, this may show the schizophrenia of the Arab world... but it shows far more the warmongering of the west...

It is grotesque to see officials of the U.S. government, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, condemning anyone’s war tactics as something “morally obscene” that should “shock the conscience of the world.”

Since 1945, the U.S. government has launched aggressive wars in violation of international law. It has tortured prisoners detained without charge. It has dropped atomic bombs on civilian centers, and used napalm, Agent Orange, depleted-uranium shells, and white phosphorus incendiary weapons. It has carpet bombed and firebombed cities.

America’s unexploded landmines and cluster bombs still threaten the people of Vietnam and Cambodia. (Tens of thousands have been killed or injured since the war ended in 1975.)

Today the U.S. government cruelly inflicts suffering on Iranian men, women, and children through virtually comprehensive economic sanctions - just as it did to the Iraqi people from 1990 to 2003. It also threatens aggressive war against Iran.

And while it selectively laments the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Obama administration bankrolls Egypt’s military government, which massacred over a thousand street demonstrators, and Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

The U.S. government should get its own house in order and quit lecturing others.

US Has No Moral Standing To Condemn Assad