The real Axis of Evil .... Obama, Cameron and the House of Saud

It's heartening  to know that there are some clear-headed people still around.  Even if  one wants to see the Assad regime disappear,  the human lives lost, especially innocent lives,  in order to achieve that goal is too much to bear for people with a good conscience.

David Blair, Chief Foreign Correspondent writing at TheTelegraph:
Is there a moral distinction    between providing guns that deal death directly, and phones that help the process?  Suppose a rebel army mounts a raid on government forces that ends with the cold blooded execution of prisoners. Country ‘A’ donated the satellite phones that were used to organise the operation, while the weapons came from country ‘B’. Inadvertently, these two nations jointly gave the insurgents the means to commit a war crime. But are they equally responsible? Or is the government that handed over the satellite phones less culpable than the one that supplied the lethal weapons?

First things first: this is a theoretical scenario which I offer purely for the sake of argument. I’m not suggesting that anything like this has actually happened.

But it’s just possible that William Hague’s statement in the Foreign Office earlier today could make it a real issue. He announced that Britain will escalate its "non-lethal" backing for Syria's opposition, giving them extra supplies worth £5 million. The specific items he mentioned included mobile and satellite phones, radios, surgical instruments and body armour. The idea is to help the unarmed opposition and the “political wing” of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The difference between the FSA’s “political wing” – which appears to be a very recent creation – and the FSA itself seems to be of the Sinn Fein/IRA variety. In other words, it’s a matter of branding, not of reality.
Hague was quite categorical that Britain has not given – and will not give – weapons or military advice. His justification for this restraint was very clear. “It would be hard to guarantee how that equipment would be used,” he said, before adding: “There have been reports of atrocities on the opposition side.”

That’s where my scenario comes in. Once satellite phones have been given to the “political wing” of the FSA, suppose they find their way into the hands of rebels inside Syria, who then employ them to organise an attack that includes an atrocity of some kind? Is there a moral distinction between providing the guns that directly inflicted death, and the phones that allowed the whole operation to take place?.........