Posted on 06/18/2015 10:00:52 AM PDT by lbryce
The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is systematically targeting civilians and hospitals, often with chemical weapons, to reverse recent setbacks in the countrys civil war, witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Assads forces have suffered a number of battlefield defeats in recent months, with the Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra gaining ground north of the capital Damascus and more moderate rebel groups achieving victories in the south.
The Syrian army has also lost about half of its soldiers throughout the course of the four-year civil war and has increasingly relied on outside militant groups such as Hezbollah.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
Assad may be a son of a bitch but are we better off with ISIS in charge?
Pick your poison. More like, choose your pedo head-chopping regime.
Assad is getting more and more help from Iran.
Now that the Kurds are striking back in the north, that might give Assad some time. He’s a brutal dictator, but Shias, Druze, Jews, and Christians were not burned alive and sold into sexual slavery by his troops. There is a reason the minority factions of Syria fight with him.
If the tribes fear you more than hate each other then there will be peace. The Russians know this, but we stupidly think every culture wants democracy and the rule of law.
These stories about Assad always seems to appear when ISIS is losing ground, as if we're supposed to perceive Assad as the worst evil. I don't believe it. Assad protected Christians and other minorities who have lived in Syria for centuries.
Meanwhile, the US either by design or by ineptitude has indirectly provided an unbelievable arsenal of weapons and transportation to ISIS.
Considering that fanatical Muslims fight from and in civilian areas this is no surprise.
I remember watching a news report about those mean old Israelis bombing civilian houses and hospitals. The reporter was outside a hospital interviewing all these Palestinians saying how they are being targeted by the mean old Israelis for no reason whatsoever and Hamas would NEVER resort to using hospitals as a launching pad for their rockets. As soon as the reported started talking again, no more than 50 feet from the entrance to the hospital, Hamas launched a rocket right outside the hospital door.
Smells like BS.
It’s been smelling that way since 2008.
There's nothing new about it, but Assad can *always* count on his apologists and astroturf.
The biggest single reason for Assad's steady downward spiral these past four years has been his bloodthirsty tactics which show he doesn't distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. The enemy is always the most recent attacker, and when it's the self-appointed gov't, support will not be forthcoming in the future. The same failing led to his having his occupying troops and his own ass kicked out of Lebanon.
Even the regime's transparently obvious photo-op offensives -- where they pull out of a Christian village, let the jihadists rampage back in, then send in troops to 'liberate' it again, with compliant 'journalists' there to cover the story -- have backfired among the victims, and of course are no longer worth the effort as the walls close in.
"The ship is sinking and all of us, the Lebanese, should stick together and work together to stop the Israeli aggression," Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian who served as president from 1982 to 1988, told the Arabic-language TV station Al-Jazeera . . . Michel Aoun, a one-time commander in Lebanon's 15-year civil war who now serves in parliament, said . . . "I don't think that Israel has the capability to destroy Hezbollah militarily because Hezbollah is not a group of armed men," Aoun said. "Hezbollah is a major part of the Lebanese social fabric."
Lebanon Turns to the Vatican to Halt Israeli Offensive
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1668754/posts
Vatican Condemns Israel for Attacks on Lebanon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1665678/posts
On the Syrian-Lebanese-Iranian alliance.
Lebanon Is NOT Innocent (David Horowitz Slams The Lebanon “Innocent Bystander” Myth Alert)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671142/posts
Free Syrian Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army
Allies
Islamic Front[6]
Peoples Protection Units[7]
Syriac Military Council[8]
Opponents
Syrian Armed Forces
National Defense Force
al-Nusra Front[9][10][11][12]
Jund al-Aqsa[13]
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant[14]
Please don’t call it the US. It is an NWO Occupation Government.
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