If you are genuinely serious in that statement binners then i fear for the parental guidance and upbringing of any children you may have, when i was 16 (1988) my Aunt took me to Afghanistan to meet the people she stayed with when she travelled there on a vespa in the late 60’s, since then i have travelled back to certain areas of the country along with Pakistan and i can say that i never once felt out of place nor at threat in any way possible.

I’d far rather nuke or selectively cull most of the western population, i’d start with vast swathes of the USA to begin with.

Sigh, I miss Hitchens.

the “middle easterners have been killing each other since the bible” bollocks is an especially pernicious type of bollocks because it a) is factually untrue and b) ignores the real sources of conflict for which there are rational fixes.

also, if you’re taking a two millennia perspective and want to identify people that can’t seem to stop fighting, then it’s Europeans that take the cake. not only were they in a state of almost constant warfare on their own continent during that time (including particularly nasty episodes in the early to mid 20th century) but they also spread their killing across the Americas, Africa and Australia.

our economy benefits from UK-based weapons manufacturers selling stuff to the likes of Assad

it doesn’t. the arms industry is a massive subsidy junkie and its sales do more to damage UK investment abroad than to cultivate it.

Oh dear, someone has been listening to the pro-war lobby.

No, someone was making a flippant comment.

The pre-war messaging didn’t take long to turn into a reality

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28831248