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Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal. The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, "should have been mine," he said. The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made "jokingly" during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said. However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than...

“We now possess deterrent weapons that are more important and more sophisticated than chemical weapons,” Syrian President Bashar Assad told visitors to his palace in Damascus on Thursday. He emphasized that he had no need for chemical weapons. According to the report, which was carried by Hezbollah’s paper Al-Akhbar, Assad said this was because the situation in Syria “has never been better,” as “we created chemical weapons in the ’80s as a deterrent against Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Today, it is no longer a weapon of deterrence. We have weapons that are more important and more sophisticated to challenge Israel, which...

Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday. “Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.” The Syrian president also charged that the West was not really concerned with stripping Syria of its weapons stockpile in order to safeguard the country’s...

Five minute handycam videos show crash of apparent SU-22 amidst AAA and surface to air missile fire. Presumably taken by FSA rebels, video clip collection shows six different views of the same event. First clip is totally inconclusive, however subsequent clips in the collection suggest the most likely cause was a successful MANPADS hit. Fire is visible from the aircraft tailcone as the strike aircraft arcs through the sky and strikes the ground in a huge ball of smoke, with no pilot ejection discernible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9divCVW94 After the success of Reagan's post-Lockerbie Libyan air raids Gaddaffi went on a years-long...

A young Christian girl beheaded in Syria. The sign of extremism and fanatics, the long beards, is present in each and everyone of these subhuman Muslims who killed this small child, in their jihad to Allah – inspired by the Quran. This is Obama, Britain, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey funded and supported handiwork. Don’t put your support behind any of these people, whether for military action in Syria, asylum, immigration, another hate preaching mosque. This is what is moving into your town, your country, your society, your neighborhood: video... This video is written with false propaganda claiming...

An al Qaeda spinoff operating near Aleppo, Syria's largest city, last week began a new battle campaign it dubbed "Expunging Filth." The target wasn't their avowed enemy, the Syrian government. Instead, it was their nominal ally, the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. A band of fanatical al Qaeda rebels are turning their guns on more secular rebels in an attempt to turn the struggle in Syria into a holy war. Across northern and eastern Syria, units of the jihadist group known as ISIS are seizing territory—on the battlefield and behind the front lines—from Western-backed rebels. Some FSA fighters now consider the...

Despite it being overwhelmingly clear that the American people want nothing to do with the civil war in Syria, the Pentagon has proposed entering the war. Under the proposal U.S. involvement will escalate from providing weapons to rebels via the CIA to direct support and training of rebel forces by the U.S. military. ...

INTERVIEW WITH ASSAD ON FOX NOW...WITH KUCINICH AND A FOX REPORTER....NO LIMIT ON QUESTIONS. aSSAD SPEKING IN ENGLISH..fOX PANEL TO FOLLOW

The U.S-Russia plan to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons is drawing attention to Israel's own suspected chemical stockpile and could raise pressure on the Jewish state to come clean about its capabilities. Israel signed the landmark international treaty banning the production or use of chemical weapons two decades ago, but it is among a handful if nations that have never ratified the deal. ...

Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor's civil war. Even Assad's defeat by al Qaeda-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus's current alliance with Israel's arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. His comments marked a move in Israel's public position on Syria's two-and-1/2-year-old war.

Half of Syrian rebels are hardline Islamists: British study AFP - Jihadists and members of hardline Islamist groups make up almost half of forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to extracts from a British defence study published in Monday's Daily Telegraph. The analysis by defence consultancy IHS Jane's, due to be published in full later this week, puts the number of rebel forces at around 100,000, the Telegraph reported. But these fighters have split into as many as 1,000 bands since violence flared two years ago, the study concluded. Of the rebel forces, IHS Jane's estimates that around...

Israel must now persuade Russia, to draw the line at providing weapons to its allies that would undermine Israel’s security. President Barack Obama’s abysmal failure to provide leadership during the Syrian crisis represents a turning point in the Middle East and has paved the way for President Vladimir Putin’s Russia to emerge as the dominant regional force, a position it had surrendered after the breakup of the Soviet Union. To avert abject humiliation, Obama has absurdly spun the situation into a victory achieved by the American threat of military force. Instead, it was Putin who played the role of international...

Full title: Is Assad hiding his chemical weapons outside Syria? Rebel leader claims stockpiles have been moved to Lebanon and Iraq to prevent detection Syrian president Bashar Assad is hiding his chemical weapons outside the country to prevent the deadly arsenal being destroyed, a rebel leader has claimed. The dictator has been accused of moving his stockpiles across the border to Lebanon and Iraq to evade a possible inspection. His forces were said to have acted after the US and Russia agreed to secure and eliminate the weapons – a deal hailed by Assad’s regime as a ‘victory’. General Salim...

...So this was always the plan, plotted three moves ahead by the clever American president, who was only pretending to be indecisive, quixotic and out of his depth. By sort-of threatening military intervention and then appearing to back down at the last minute, the US was not dithering or tripping over its own feet on the world stage. Oh no. It was creating the necessary conditions for Bashar al-Assad and his Russian mentors to come to the table and begin the process of submitting themselves to international standards on chemical weapons. Of course, if we pursue the chess analogy, then...

Lebanese daily says 20 trucks crossed into Iraq last week, bearing equipment and material used for manufacturing chemical weapons. Syria has moved 20 trucks worth of equipment and material used for the manufacturing of chemical weapons into neighboring Iraq, the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reported on Sunday. The newspaper reported that the trucks crossed the boundary separating Syria with Iraq over the course of Thursday and Friday. Border guards did not inspect the contents of the trucks, which raises suspicions that they contained illicit cargo, according to Al-Mustaqbal.

Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.

...Warning; Graphic content A Syrian boy is held by the hand as he walks past the body of a beheaded Islamic militant loyal to Assad. An unnamed photojournalist was given rare access to the public execution in the town of Keferghen in the north of the country. @LeJournal/SIPA/Rex Features ... A group of young children sit on a wall as they stare at the dead body. The severed head of a militant is held aloft. The photographer witnessed four executions on August 31. @LeJournal/SIPA/Rex Features

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24 on Friday, US Senator John McCain acknowledged François Hollande’s support on Syria and noted that US inaction had put the French president in an “unfair political position”. US Senator John McCain has said he was worried US inaction had hurt the Syrian rebels’ campaign against President Bashar al-Assad and had put Washington’s allies, such as French President François Hollande, in an “unfair political position”. In an interview with FRANCE 24 on Friday, McCain said he feared the recent international focus on chemical weapons had given Assad an advantage in his use of conventional...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force. France, which...