I can't read French :(

translate.google.com = your friend

I've had bad experiences with it haha. Though those have mostly been with Hindi and other Indian languages lol

That's ehm.. interesting, you should make a new thread about it ;-)

What is your position on this Syrian thing golden finger man?

They have no interest in expanding the war. This is a false flag operation by the rebels to get Turkey and others involved. The only way the rebels win is if the war expands.

And really do you trust the French media on Syria, when they are openly arming and training the terrorists from their Turkish bases? France has been 'hellbent' on reasserting their role in the world ever since the fiasco with Tunisia and the media criticism of France declining as an influential country.

Dang Putin, can't you make some absurd accusation about me being a racist or white supremacist so I can throw you out of here? You making good points like the one above was not a scenario I prepared for. Anyways, what do you mean "trust the French media", the media is just parroting a French minister right?

Sure, they are giving the minister's report, highly certain phrases like "Assad is a manipulator". Anyway who benefits from the killing of Wissam Hassan?

Hassan busted several Mossad cells in Lebanon, so he is no friend of Israel.
The Christian population of Lebanon had supported Assad, and this bombing in a Christian neighborhood now alienates that support. It also further destabilizes Lebanon, which is the same thing the West did after the killing of Hariri, which brought to power an anti-Syrian government for many years. The current government of Lebanon is influenced by Hizballah, a Syrian ally. Look at the news headlines, opposition storms government headquarters.

None of this makes sense from the Syrian point of view if they carried out the attack. I know the west likes to portray every leader they don't like as irrational and insane, but clearly the government of Syria is neither of these things.

By support Assad I mean about 1/3 of Christians support Assad, which is quite high considering the close ties Assad has with Hizballah and the Shia population of Lebanon.

He may be no friend of Israel, but this operation doesn't have the fingerprints of the Israelis on it.

And it makes no sense indeed that this comes from Syria. For me it would be much more logical that this came from the rebels like you say, but I don't see a good reason for the French to lie about something so fundamental. It would be a pretty big lie. Hence my question in OP.

Why don't see you see a good reason? If Lebanon & Syria fall they will then have friendly terrorists in power that are beholden to the French. Why is it that only "enemy states" behave according to the diktats of realpolitik but somehow countries like France are angelic?

And how do you figure the operation doesn't have Israeli fingerprints on it? The opposition was already blaming Assad even before it was known who was killed.

What's more plausible, Syria being suicidal, or France lying in order to benefit their allies and Israeli waging a bombing in order to wipe out an unfriendly counterintelligence minister in the lead up to Israel's preparations to attack Iran and Hizballah. This attack was very similar to the terrorist attacks in Damascus and Aleppo.

I honestly find both these things very plausible. And I'm the last person to call the French angelic.

Which attacks in Damascus and Aleppo? How was it similar?

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-72391-13-dead-in-Damascus-police-station-bomb

How is Syria being suicidal plausible?

I haven't been following the news extremely closely, but "constructive" isn't the first word in mind when I see the way Assad is handling the situation ever from the start.

How would you expect your government to behave if foreign terrorists armed by outside powers were rampaging through your country?

Remember when the far-right claimed they were against terrorism? That was funny while it lasted.

They'd probably call Obama about that. :-)

Well, the first thing to consider when looking at the Syrian government's perspective is that Assad loses, he dies. The Alawwite community is pretty solidly wedded to the Assad administration because they're scared shitless by the idea of ethnic cleansing which might follow any Shia takeover of the mechanisms of state.

@Bob - you mean Sunni, right?

As for my take on this....it doesn't seem to make sense that Syria did it. The whole population is up in arms (not literally) against the current government, Syria, and Hizbollah (or at least the most recent press would lead me to believe). This does not work in Syria's favor. But it seems even less likely that France was behind this too. After seeing how awfully bad Libya went, I think pretty much any western nation is loath to support the rebels with arms or covert tactics such as assassination. Its too risky and the west and Israel both don't want to destabilize the region too much.

In my opinion, this was Hizbollah cleaning house of someone who in private probably spoke out against their influence on the government. They did it in a Christian neighborhood to draw attention away from themselves but it just went horribly wrong.

Or the other possibility is that it was a lone actor. Those types of things can happen.