Why "disinvite" one of the entities that can aid in backing the situation between Turkey and Syria down and maybe get Assad to stop murdering his citizens?

The stupidity is mind boggling.

UN Security Council condemns Syrian attack on Turkey

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Thursday condemned a Syrian mortar attack on a Turkish border town that killed five people and demanded that "such violations of international law stop immediately and are not repeated."

The rare agreement on a Syria statement condemned the attack "in the strongest terms" and came after Russia rejected an initial text on Wednesday's incident and proposed a diluted version calling on both Turkey and Syria to exercise restraint.

Western council members objected to Moscow's text but revised the original draft to accommodate some Russian concerns.

Consensus within the council on anything related to Syria is unusual and it has been deadlocked on the issue of the country's 18-month-long conflict for more than a year, with Russia and China rejecting calls to sanction the Damascus government. ...

The mortar attack happened on Wednesday and Turkey responded by striking targets in Syria later the same day and on Thursday.

Turkey Approves Possible Further Action Against Syria

ISTANBUL/WASHINGTON — The Turkish parliament has approved a government motion to authorize further military operations outside the country's borders, after striking Syrian targets in response to a deadly cross-border mortar attack. ...

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the one-year measure is not a declaration of war, but intended as a deterrent against aggressive action by Syria. ...

The Turkish government has in the past said it would not intervene unilaterally in Syria. But it is finding little international support for intervention from the United Nations or NATO. Following Syria's shelling, Turkey's allies condemned Syria and called for restraint.

Turkish analyst Sinan Ulgen said Ankara has been generally disappointed by international response to the Syrian crisis.

"Turkey feels it has been left alone to deal with crisis on Syria," he said. "The international community, despite having engaged in the rhetoric of the responsibility to protect, did not live up to the bargain."

Wider war feared between Turkey and Syria

AKCAKALE, Turkey Turkey and Syria fired artillery and mortars across their volatile border for a fifth consecutive day on Sunday, in one of the most serious and prolonged flare-ups of violence along the frontier.

The exchange of fire stoked fears that Syria's civil war will escalate into a regional conflagration drawing in NATO member Turkey, once an ally of President Bashar Assad but now a key supporter of the rebels fighting to topple him. ...

Ankara's warning was coupled by an apparent diplomatic push by the Turkish leadership to promote Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa as a possible figure to head a transitional administration to end the conflict in the country.

In an interview with Turkish state television TRT Saturday, Davutoglu said that al-Sharaa was a figure "whose hands are not contaminated in blood" and therefore acceptable to Syrian opposition groups.

It was not clear whether the Turkish stance was coordinated with other allies, but the candid remarks by Davutoglu suggested some consensus might be emerging over a future role for him.

The links between Syria and Iran worry me about as much as the links between Syria and Russia.

Tensions Soar as Turkey Forces Down Syrian Jet ...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Turkey sharply escalated its confrontation with Syria on Wednesday, forcing a Syrian passenger plane to land in Ankara on suspicion of carrying military cargo, ordering Turkish civilian airplanes to stay out of Syrian airspace and warning of increasingly forceful responses if Syrian artillery gunners keep lobbing shells across the border. ...

The steps taken by Turkey added ominous new tensions to its troubled relationship with Syria, where a nearly 19-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has evolved into a civil war and threatened to touch off a regional conflict. Turkey is the host for main elements of the anti-Assad insurgency and for roughly 100,000 Syrian refugees, who have been fleeing in greater numbers as violence has increased along the 550-mile border in recent days. Several mortar bombs have landed on Turkish soil, prompting Turkish gunners to return fire.

News reports on Wednesday spoke of intensified fighting close to the Syrian border settlement of Azamarin, with mortar and machine-gun fire clearly audible from the Turkish side. Wounded civilians, some of them in makeshift boats full of women and children, could be seen crossing the narrow Orontes River, which demarcates part of the Syrian border with Hatay province in Turkey. ...

The rising tensions between Turkey and Syria are especially troublesome because Turkey is a member of NATO, which considers an attack on one member an attack on all, implicitly raising the possibility that NATO will be drawn into a volatile Middle East conflict.

On Tuesday, the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, emphasized that NATO had “all necessary plans in place to protect and defend Turkey if necessary.”

...
In light of the plan, any attempts by Turkey to escalate will be seen as obstructing international diplomacy. According to Ismail Yasa, a prominent Turkish columnist, Ankara realises that the Geneva plan will not be implemented but is obliged to hold back until it officially fails. "The majority [in Turkey] expects a response to the jet's downing to maintain Turkey's dignity but without being drawn into a war," Yasa told The National.

The plan was a major diplomatic victory for Russia, preventing a Turkish escalation while failing to specify any sort of enforcement mechanism. The regime now has a back-up plan on the shelf - the "Syria-led" transition - while for the time being Turkey is obliged to respect Syria's territorial integrity.

It is fair to ask why Kofi Annan, the joint special envoy of the UN and the Arab League, could convene the major powers in Geneva after the jet's downing, yet failed to do the same after each of the several major massacres in Syria recently.

This Geneva plan is a reminder of the initial Annan peace plan in April, secured shortly after the question of arming the rebels gained momentum. After the April plan was adopted, any moves towards the militarisation of the opposition were seen as detrimental to diplomatic efforts. On both accounts, the failure of the international community to respond to the violence is not a sign of impotence, but of a lack of urgency and seriousness in dealing with Syria's deepening humanitarian crisis.

U.S. Weighs Bolder Effort to Intervene in Syrian Conflict ...

The most urgent decision, likely to come next week, is whether NATO should deploy surface-to-air missiles in Turkey, ostensibly to protect that country from Syrian missiles that could carry chemical weapons. The State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Wednesday that the Patriot missile system would not be “for use beyond the Turkish border.”

But some strategists and administration officials believe that Syrian Air Force pilots might fear how else the missile batteries could be used. If so, they could be intimidated from bombing the northern Syrian border towns where the rebels control considerable territory. A NATO survey team is in Turkey, examining possible sites for the batteries.

Other, more distant options include directly providing arms to opposition fighters rather than only continuing to use other countries, especially Qatar, to do so. A riskier course would be to insert C.I.A. officers or allied intelligence services on the ground in Syria, to work more closely with opposition fighters in areas that they now largely control. ...

In the case of Syria, a far more complex conflict than Libya’s, some officials continue to worry that the risks of intervention — both in American lives and in setting off a broader conflict, potentially involving Turkey — are too great to justify action. Others argue that more aggressive steps are justified in Syria by the loss in life there, the risks that its chemical weapons could get loose, and the opportunity to deal a blow to Iran’s only ally in the region. The debate now coursing through the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. resembles a similar one among America’s main allies. ...

On the more immediate concern about defending Turkey, NATO is expected to act on the Patriot missile request next week. The Patriot PAC-3 is the most modern air defense system in the American and NATO arsenals. Built by Lockheed Martin, the system successfully shot down Iraqi missiles in the early days of the war there in 2003, and has been deployed to South Korea to protect against missile attacks from the North.

Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey

BRUSSELS (AP) -- NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey's request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria, officials said Tuesday.

Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition to President Bashar Assad's regime, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. Syria is reported to have an array of artillery rockets, as well as short- and medium-range missiles in its arsenal - some capable of carrying chemical warheads.

NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.

The ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Germany and the Netherlands are expected to provide several batteries of the latest PAC-3 version of the U.S.-built Patriots air defense systems which is optimized to intercept incoming missiles.