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12:48 PM, Jul 18, 2012 • By LEE SMITHIn Damascus this morning a bomb at the National Security building killed several members of Bashar al-Assad’s “crisis cell” —a group of key regime figures tasked to put down the 16-month uprising against the Assad regime. Interior minister Mohammed al-Shaar and head of national security General Hisham Ikhtiyar, are reportedly wounded.
Read more... There is another reason for more robust U.S. action to topple Assad.11:53 AM, Jul 16, 2012 • By LEE SMITHAdvocates of robust American action in Syria to help remove Bashar al-Assad from power have typically made two arguments.
Read more... 4:42 PM, Jul 13, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERSenators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham released the following statement on Syria:
Read more... 11:57 AM, Jul 13, 2012 • By LEE SMITHThe Syrian regime has reportedly perpetrated another episode of sectarian cleansing. Yesterday, the army and paramilitary gangs loyal to president Bashar al-Assad killed more than 200 people in the Sunni village of Tremseh, in Hama province.
Read more... 3:05 PM, Jul 6, 2012 • By TONY BADRANThe latest military developments in Syria are now generally understood as ushering in a new phase in the Syrian conflict. What’s less observed is that the minority Alawite regime’s mass killings of Sunnis and the intense fighting around the cities of Homs and Hama also seem to replicate significant moments of Syrian history. Specifically, Bashar al-Assad’s campaign against his Sunni adversaries recalls the strategy employed by the Crusaders, as invading European armies fortified themselves against various Muslim coalitions in the Levant, from the 12th to the 13th century.
Read more... 3:45 PM, Jul 2, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERAt the end of an interesting op-ed, Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevy relates an interesting and revealing anecdote about Senator John Kerry, who is believed to be in the running for the secretary of state position should Barack Obama be reelected.
"Western naiveté about the Middle East is hardly confined to Egypt," Klein Halevy writes.
Read more... While Russia arms Assad. Jun 25, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 39 • By THOMAS DONNELLY
The prominence of Russian-made helicopters in Bashar al-Assad’s brutal and desperate efforts to hang on to power puts the Syrian war in a new light. It’s getting difficult to categorize the conflict simply as a humanitarian crisis or a “teacup war” of secondary significance. Rather, Syria’s civil war is increasingly fought under a great-power cloud that hasn’t been seen in the Middle East for decades.
Read more... Does the administration finally know who the good guys are in Syria?3:00 PM, Jun 15, 2012 • By LEE SMITHThe Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is helping to coordinate logistics for the Free Syrian Army, but not providing arms. “U.S. intelligence operatives and diplomats have stepped up their contacts with Syrian rebels in part to help organize their burgeoning military operations against President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to senior U.S. officials.”
Read more... 1:39 PM, Jun 11, 2012 • By LEE SMITHWhile the Obama administration and its allies at the New York Times are waiting for Russia to intervene and get Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down, the children of Kafranbel show a clearer sense of strategic reality:
Read more... 10:56 AM, May 27, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPERPresumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the Syrian regime's latest atrocities "horrific." He also said that "it is far part time for the United States ... to put an end to the Assad regime."
Read more... 12:03 PM, May 1, 2012 • By JAMIE M. FLY and ROBERT ZARATEBashar al-Assad’s security forces have brazenly slaughtered more than 10,000 Syrian civilians, and injured or detained tens of thousands more, since the anti-regime protests began in March 2011.
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