They are shooting "the enemy".

Exactly! The rebels are probably doing the same too.

Quite a few people here seem to take their life views from childrens TV where there are always easily identifiable good and bad guys with no grey inbetween.

All sides do that in every war. Is it any worse than us using drones to kill people and not worrying about the children standing next to the car we blow up? I even remember a conversation I had with someone who was in Benghazi in WWII who told me that his sergeant had killed an entire family in a house where they had been hiding a fugitive.

Civilians get killed in wars. That's why we shouldn't support them.

True, there are 100's of groups, rebel or pro government fighting in Syria. We in the west just need to keep out of it.

'Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.'

Samuel Johnson

That is even more true when one is speaking of a civil war.

The UN is really going to have to get involved if there is to be any hope of determining the truth, but I cannot see that happening when one of the permanent members of the security council supports one side exclusively.

No war has been declared. It's a civil war and Assad is ridding himself of the people who tried to usurp him with a little help from his friends.

Oh dear.

It would be interesting to know the source of these reports.

Well, 2 members (UK and USA) support one side exclusively, so what's the difference?

Or perhaps we just let Assad roll over Aleppo and the rest of Syria, killing all those who stand against him, until he wins?

Who else would you want in power? Look what happened to Iraq and Libya.

Oh dear oh dear. You really have swallowed the western propaganda lie about Assad. The ones standing against him are terrorists and foreign mercenary jihadists.

All these people that are posting on twitter about us standing by and doing nothing about Syria. Realistically though what can we do? Nothing!

Lol another one?

Depends who you are.
Neither are people who you'd really want to be in charge of a country because they both see creating unity as eradication of those who simply disagree.

The problem is that's an over-simplification. "The rebels" actually encompass several groups from IS terrorists to civilian ethnic groups that get bitterly persecuted by the government. They tend to all get painted as one or the other depending on who is doing the reporting.

People on the far left and far right argued the same about the Nazis. In Syria you have a religious genocide going on - one side is just backed by Backfire bombers., and army levels of firepower, and better at killing people.

So his dictatorial rule should be forever unchallenged by his own people? Perhaps these so called terrorists are merely fighting for democratic freedoms?

Ideally a democratically elected government. Something we in the UK hold so dear and fought to defend in two world wars. It's not hard to see why the Syrians could want something like democracy and freedom (Thrown a American twang on the freedom bit )

But therein lies the problem with proxy wars. Another member supports the other side exclusively, ie the US and their interventions. Then there's us, who've also been demanding regime change... And France, who kinda started this mess.

But the UN is pretty toothless, and potentially political, ie-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

The UN's humanitarian adviser on Syria, Jan Egeland, earlier spoke of "massacres of unarmed civilians, of young men, of women, children, health workers".

He named a pro-government Iraqi Shia militia as being responsible for the killings, but placed overall blame for any atrocities in the hands of the Syrian and Russian governments.

"Those who let them loose in this area are also accountable," he said.

And so should be those who've armed and supported the 'moderate terrorists'. But such is war. To the victor goes the evidence that will complicate attempts by war crimes investigators to establish the truth.

But the truth is the side we've been supporting has been using heavy weaponry indiscriminately in populated areas, so will have contributed towards the butcher's bill.

Yep, shouting Allahu Akbar at every opportunity, I'm sure they are all for freedoms and a liberal democracy, just like their brothers in Iraq and Libya. I bet you were in favour of the West's involvement in those conflicts as well.

In Syria's last elections, they voted for Assad. But as a moderate, and having a fairly secular Syria set a bad example to other Middle Eastern fiefdoms, that aren't in any way democratic.

In Syria, women could drive, wear Western clothes and there were even off-licences.. Except those rights were removed in areas where the 'moderate terrorists' we support took control. And it was much the same story in Libya. Providing you didn't cross Gadaffi, quality of life and freedoms were greater... and certainly greater than they are now.

That has nothing to do with it. Such a daft thing to say.

Indeed but for all the supposed freedoms Syrians were given, their democratic right for self determination was brutally suppressed.