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Syrian and Turkish armies opened fire on each other today for the first time since Ankara began its incursion against the Kurds. Artillery and machine-gun fire was exchanged near the village of Assadiya, south of the border town of Ras al-Ain, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Six Syrian soldiers were killed, according to the war monitor. President Bashar al-Assad had bolstered Kurdish strongholds in northern Syria after Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan began his offensive on October 9 to establish a 75-mile wide, 20-mile deep buffer zone.

WALLACE: ...in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the president ever did. Let's watch:(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)ROCKEFELLER: I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th that question is increasingly outdated.(END VIDEO CLIP)WALLACE: Now, the president never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?ROCKEFELLER: No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) took shots at Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and her prosecutorial record during Wednesday night's Democratic Debate."Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and she'll be a prosecutor as president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana," Gabbard said. "She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She...

To strike Syria, or not to strike Syria. As of Thursday evening, Donald Trump, our tweeter in chief, is keeping the world, the Russians and Syria's dictator-in-chief Bashar al-Assad guessing. On Wednesday, President Trump said U.S. missiles "will be coming" to visit Syria in retaliation for its government's alleged use of chemical weapons on the Syrian town of Douma on April 7. On Thursday, Trump hedged a little, tweeting that he "Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!" Later he tweeted, "We'll see what happens." Trump being...

The Palestinian cause will stay alive among Arabs until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the Syrian president’s office said... “The future of Jerusalem is not determined by a state or a president but is determined by its history and by the will and determination in the Palestinian cause,” President Bashar al-Assad’s office said on an official social media feed.

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

Get ready for more red-lining from Bashar al-Assad. Despite claims from Russia and the Syrian dictator himself that he fully disarmed his chemical-weapons program, a high-ranking defector tells the UK Telegraph that Assad still has hundreds of tons of those munitions stockpiled for use by his military. General Zaher al-Sakat says that includes sarin gas, the munitions used against a village in Idlib province that provoked a military strike from the US in reprisal (via Guy Benson): President Bashar al-Assad continues to retain hundreds of tonnes of his country’s chemical stockpile after deceiving United Nations inspectors sent in to dismantle...

The Obama administration claimed that it negotiated with Syria and Russia to eliminate "100 percent" of Syria's chemical weapons. After President Barack Obama's 2012 "red line" warning to Syria about using chemical weapons, Syria launched a chemical attack in August 2013. But U.S. military action was avoided by the alleged Russian/American/Syrian diplomatic accomplishment, achieved without "firing a shot." Here's what we were told: President Obama, on April 28, 2014: "We're getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike." Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., crowed on June 1, 2014: "We're getting the chemical weapons out of Syria." And Sen....

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley gave a speech today in which she sharply criticized Russia, saying it was “long past time” for them to stop covering for the Assad regime in Syria. “To my colleagues from Russia, you are isolating yourselves from the international community every time one of Assad’s planes drop another barrel bomb on civilians and every time Assad tries to starve another community to death,” Haley said. “People, not just in the West but across the Middle East and the world are speaking out against Assad’s brutality,” she said. She continued, “It is long...

A simple news segment about the media coverage of Syria spun wildly out of control during Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN. It started with Foreign Correspondent Lara Setrakian noting how little coverage the Syrian civil war received in the early years. But it ending with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, going off the rails and declaring that “We need to understand the historical context of how a butcher like Assad actually has more in common with someone like Dick Cheney than he does with the average Syrian…” Scahill’s inane tirade derailed the whole segment from the moment he opened...

The evacuation of civilians and fighters from the last rebel-held part of Aleppo concluded on Thursday after long delays because of frigid weather, putting all of Syria’s industrial capital back in the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces for the first time since 2012. ...Tens of thousands of people have been removed from eastern Aleppo since Dec. 15. Before the last buses left on Thursday, the Red Cross said that 34,000 people had left the city, including 4,000 fighters who had left in their own vehicles the previous night. ...The seizure of all of Aleppo by Mr. Assad and his...

It's surprising how time slips away: Five years ago next month, President Obama proclaimed a "responsibility to act" when American "interests and values are at stake." He made that statement in a major address at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. Within days, a no-fly zone was established over Libya, and the forces of longtime dictator Muammar Kaddafi were stopped in their tracks. In April, Mr. Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint letter congratulating themselves for having prevented a “bloodbath.” They emphasized: "Tens of thousands of lives have been protected." It...

Baku - APA. Russia could give asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he has to leave his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published on January 12, according to RFE/RL. "It was surely more difficult to grant [U.S. national security contractor Edward] Snowden asylum in Russia than it would be in the case of Assad," Putin told the German tabloid Bild, referring to the American leaker of classified U.S. documents who was given asylum in Russia in 2013. Putin said it was too early to say whether Russia would have to give shelter to Assad as...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian leaders about the crisis in Syria. On his first trip to Iran in eight years, Putin met with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday, as Russia nears a third month of military engagement in the conflict. The discussions come on a sidelines of a one-day trip to Iran for a summit of gas-exporting countries. Tehran and Moscow have supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing civil war that has crippled the country since 2011 and killed over 250,000 people. The violence has displaced millions more. On...

The posters of President Bashar al-Assad once hung proud in Syria’s capital. Supporters of the regime would confidently predict the defeat of the “terrorists” - the accepted term for the rebel opposition. In the last few weeks, however, the the insurgents have turned the tide of the civil war by winning a string of battlefield victories against Mr Assad’s forces. In the north, a newly unified rebel coalition called the “Army of Conquest” managed to capture Idlib, a provincial capital, and much of the surrounding territory.

Jeb Bush has spent the week debating with himself over whether he would have started the war his brother launched on Iraq. When he figures it out, hopefully, our would-be president will focus in on the campaign to drag us into yet another Mideast war -- this time to bring down Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. While few would mourn the passing of the Assad dynasty, there is a problem: If Assad falls, a slaughter of Christians will follow and the battle for control of Damascus will be between the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, the Nusra Front, and the crazed...

The Assad regime has placed its intelligence chief under house arrest after suspecting he was plotting a coup, in a sign that battlefield losses are setting off increasing paranoia in Damascus. Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country's National Security Bureau, and one of the few officials still to have access to President Bashar al-Assad, was accused of holding secret talks with countries backing rebel groups and exiled members of the Syrian regime. Mr Assad is struggling to keep together the regime’s "inner circle", who are increasingly turning on each other, sources inside the presidential palace have told The Telegraph....

I never crossed paths with James Foley. I regret not having met him. A freelance reporter of great skill and courage, Foley was murdered, on camera, by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by cutting off his head. I know "beheading" is a mellower term, but I don't think this kind of barbarism should be softened. According to the BBC:"James Foley, 40, had reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP." Foley had been reporting on the appalling situation in Syria when he was abducted on Nov....

resident Obama's recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year's West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each U.S. intervention thus far in the 21st century might have inspired at least a bit of reflection. However, the president made it clear that interventionism and American exceptionalism would continue to guide his administration in its final two years. The president said, "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being," adding the dubious claim that "because of American diplomacy and foreign assistance, as well as the...

Iraqi Al Qaeda's entry into Syria's civil war caused "a political disaster" for Islamist militants there, the movement's global leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video message, urging the faction to redouble its efforts in Iraq instead. Zawahri has repeatedly tried to end infighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and another Al Qaeda-aligned group, the Nusra Front. He said on May 2 in a message translated by SITE Monitoring that if ISIL had accepted his decision not to get involved in Syria and had instead worked to "busy itself with Iraq, which needs double its...