Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Bashar al-Assad”
Here’s your US foreign policy puzzler for the day: When is regime change not regime change? When the regime stays in power but loses its ability to rule. This is the current objective of US policy in Syria, to undermine Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s ability to govern the country without physically removing him from office. The idea is simple: …
Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, nearly a quarter million people have perished and fullyhalf of the country’s inhabitants have been forced from their homes, creating the worst refugee crisis in the past quarter century. Meanwhile, the continuing advance of brutal Islamist factions — which a leading CIA officer in 2013 termed the “top current threat to U.S. national security” — makes the …
SPIEGEL: Mr. Assange, WikiLeaks is back — releasing documents proving United States surveillance of the French government, publishing Saudi diplomatic cables and posting evidence of the massive surveillance of the German government by US secret services. What are the reasons for this comeback? Assange: Yes, WikiLeaks has been publishing a lot of material in the last few months. We have been publishing …
The recent ‘Ramadan Attacks’ supposedly carried out by members of ISIS – reek of Western propaganda dispensed from shadowy think-tanks. Over the past month, we’ve seen ISIS and the puppeteers behind them engineering a string of apparent attacks, crucifixions and caged deaths that have metastasized into the minds of many, renewing concern over the cloaked terror brand – yet again. Western media outlets have routinely …
With Yemen on the verge of famine, and civilians paying a devastating toll in the relentless Saudi-led bombing campaign, one key question emerges: Will the U.S. government ever be held to account for its role in the crisis? The United Nations warned Wednesday that the country of 26 million faces the highest-level humanitarian emergency—on par with Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan. The …
“Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps have become more crowded since March of 2011, but in large numbers starting in mid-December 2012, when Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp was heavily bombed. Between 70,000 and 90,000 Syrian-Palestinians have entered Lebanon and are staying mainly in Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps. Most were forced out of Syria because of persistent and accelerating civil-sectarian war, while others have …
A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these …
News media coverage of the Camp David summit between President Barack Obama and Gulf Cooperation Council members has focused largely on Obama’s success in getting the GCC States to go along with the negotiation of a nuclear agreement with Iran. But the much more consequential story of the summit is Obama’s decision not to confront Saudi Arabia and Qatar about …
President Barack Obama and his foreign policy staff are not having a very merry month of May. The Islamic State’s takeover of Ramadi, Iraq, on May 15 was one of the greatest U.S. military embarrassments since Vietnam, but the fall of Palmyra, Syria, just five days later made it even worse. This is an administration that, until recently, claimed to have turned …
How easy it is to forget there are limits to growth, especially when what you observe is designed to make us forget. The great Marcellus is famous for having increased its production 12-fold in four years to become the US’ largest producing natural gas field, but things have not looked that great lately. The average daily production estimate reported by …
