Cameron has failed to justify Syria airstrikes, MPs’ committee says | Politics

Et maintenant, Charles Lister (l’inventeur des 100.000 devenus 70.000 fourgués à Cameron) suggère que le terme « modérés » est « imparfait », et que « mainstream » serait plus adéquat :
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/charles_lister/status/672099847336558593

“Moderate” is such an imperfect term. “Mainstream” works much better within specific context of #Syria.

La contre-argumentation de Patrick Cockburn dans The Independent - le tout dans le contexte d’un vote à la Chambre des Communes sur les bombardements anglais en Syrie :
’Britain is on the verge of entering into a long war in Syria based on wishful thinking and poor information...’
►http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britain-is-on-the-verge-of-entering-into-a-long-war-in-syria-based-on
Extrait :

Much of the debate around the feasibility of the British strategy has focused on Mr Cameron’s statement that we do indeed have a partner, of whose existence few were previously aware. He said that there are 70,000 “Syrian opposition fighters on the ground who do not belong to extremist groups”. The impression given is that there is a “third force” in Syria which will provide a powerful ally for the US, France and Britain.
This would be very convenient but, unfortunately, its existence is very debatable. “The notion that there are 70,000 moderate fighters is an attempt to show that you can fight Isis and [President Bashar al] Assad at the same time,” says Professor Joshua Landis, the director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on Syrian politics. But he is dismissive of the idea that such a potential army exists, though he says there might be 70,000 Syrians with a gun who are fighting for their local clan, tribe, warlord or village. “The problem is that they hate the village down the road just as much they hate Isis and Assad,” he said.
The armed opposition to President Assad is dominated by Isis, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the ideologically similar Ahrar al-Sham. Some of the smaller groups, once estimated by the CIA to number 1,500, might be labelled as moderate, but only operate under license from the extreme jihadists. Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum and an authority on the Syrian armed opposition, says that these groups commonly exaggerate their numbers, are very fragmented and have failed to unite, despite years of war. [...]
The US-led air campaign has already launched around 8,300 air strikes against Isis which have slowed up its advance, but without bringing it to its knees. Professor Landis says that the difficulty is that the three powers in Syria capable of winning the war are Isis, a Jabhat al-Nusra led alliance or Mr Assad but “the US doesn’t want any of these to win”. He cites three attempts by the US to create a moderate armed opposition which have humiliatingly failed and, on each occasion, extreme jihadists have captured quantities of modern American weapons.