[PART 1]
Just in case: I believe in your sincerity and want for the truth, and didn't mean to offend you in any way.
>Amnesty talks about 10K dead just in detentions (without e.g. bombing/shelling of cities) as probably low.
No, I've opened the actual article by Amnesty that is linked in Wikipedia near the figure, and on pages 10 and 11 it states this:
Since the outbreak of pro-reform protests in Fe bruary 2011 and of mass protests calling for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad and his government, in particular after the security forces first shot dead several demonstrators in Dera’a on 18 March 2011, Amnesty International has received the names of more than 10,000 people – mainly men and boys -who have been killed during the unrest, although the actual figure may be considerably higher. The evidence collected in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates, including the Jebel al-Zawiyah and Jebel al-Wastani areas, shows that hundreds, possibly more, have been deliberately killed at close range. While some of the victims were active in the opposition, many of them were killed unlawfully after having been taken captive; others appear to have been targeted simply because they were living in opposition-held areas and as such may have been considered supporters of armed opposition groups, including those linked to the FSA. Others were reportedly killed simply because soldiers wanted to take revenge on people from the area and/or could not find those they were looking for. [2]
That is not to say that Assad is not to be held accountable for at least part of this deaths, but it is a civil war death toll, and not the number of deaths in detention/and deliberate killings.
I think that Assad is a horrible guy. His father was obviously a brutal dictator and Assad has mismanaged the country so badly that it fell into the civil war. I have personally seen videos of the shootings at demonstrators. One of the most touching and at the same time not explicitly graphic being this one [3]. I think that he's got to be held accountable for what he did. But not at the expense of tens of thousands dead innocent people.
>AGAIN: WHY WOULD THE RESULTS OF THE STRIKES BE WORSE THAN LETTING THE MASS MURDERERS GET AWAY WITH IT, SO THEY KEEP USING WMD??? (Not to mention keep using air/artillery on civilians.)
Here, I would abstain from commenting on the validity of claims that the chemical weapons were used by Assad regime, since I think that I've already made my point that the so called 'evidence' is not to be taken seriously. Even the members of the US House Intelligence Committee that have seen the full classified version of it don't seem to consider the evidence compelling. Even the White House chief of staff has stated that the "Administration lacks irrefutable beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence". Let's consider that the WMD was used by the explicit order of Assad, just for the sake of the argument.
0. Why not call for peace talks, and/or immediate ceasefire? It is the US and Syrian opposition that has continuously abstained from them.
1. First and foremost, if the good of the Syrian people is to be taken as the priority, before any strike there should be a plan that takes potential civilian death toll into consideration. There is no such plan, not to my knowledge. And not to the knowledge of the members of the UK House of Commons and US State Senators (at least, the ones whose testimony I watched). How are you going to imply that the death toll would be magically minimal? Do you really think that it is the matter to be discussed without relying on documents, calculations, etc.? You somehow seem to imply that it is commonsensical that the death toll would be low, but that is not enough, as the past shows.
1.A. Kosovo (in this thread I have made a sourced point about the civilian death toll in Kosovo operation and the fact that it was well above the supposed number of Milosevic victims).
1.B. Iraq. Invation of Iraq has led to a horrendous civil war with tens of thousands (by conservative numbers) civilians killed, and that is not to mention couple of thousands of civilians that were killed during the invasion itself. Sorry, US has destroyed this country, it's infrastructure, etc. etc. The fact that Saddam was a horrible guy is not a validation for destroying the lives of millions of Iraqis. This is a crime against humanity, the same one for which people were hanged after Nuremberg Trials. Not to mention the horrible illnesses that were inflicted on Iraqis by depleted uranium contamination.
Actually, the list can go on, and on, and on.
As a large number of experts claim, and as I have written in previous comments, the situation could potentially deteriorate and go out of control. Israel is preparing for potential armed conflict with Iran as a result of this war. Turkey is preparing it's troops for potential ground invasion of Syria. Etc. etc. etc., I have written about it in this very thread. The civil war in Syria is not a war of Assad against all of it's people (or he would've already lost long time ago). It is a war between various factions in Syria and outside of Syria. It is a war of Alawites against members of other sects. It is a war between Sunni and Shia. It is a war of Syrian people against invasion of foreign jihadi militants from all over the world. It is a war of Quatar for the ability to sell natural gas on the European market (they finance foreign militants to be able to install the regime that will allow to build pipeline over Syrian territory). It is a war of Saudi Arabia, United States [4] [5] for the regional domination. It is a war of Iran for it's security. It could be a war of Israel to potentially gain more territories beyond Golan Heights. It is a war of Russia for the domination of the European natural gas market. It is a war of Russia with it's very own jihadists that have travelled to Syria from Chechnya, the list goes on, and on, and on. Oh, and also this is an opportunity for the Kurds to create their own nation state. And a war of different factions of Iraqis against each other.
Just to elaborate, according to a Qatari poll that was made in the end of 2011, 55% of Syrians were supportive of Assad at the time. [6]