All about Syria .... September 9, 2013

I absolutely love it when terrorist lovers  get their comeuppance.   The  journalist Piccinin used to be pro-terrorists  until he got kidnapped and found out what's what.

From HurriyetDaily:
 .....Freed Belgian, Italian faced ‘mock executions’ in Syria. Pierre Piccinin, the Belgian freed in Syria with Italian journalist Domenico Quirico, said Monday they faced "real violence" and mock executions after being captured by rebel forces in April. 
Scant detail has emerged of their release on Sunday but Quirico's newspaper said Italy's secret services had stepped up efforts to secure their release ahead of feared US military strikes. 
"Physically, we are okay despite the torture we suffered," Piccinin told Bel RTL radio station shortly after returning to Belgium. 
"There was sometimes real violence ... humilation, bullying, mock executions ... Domenico faced two mock executions, with a revolver," he said. 
Piccinin, a history teacher in a southern Belgian town, and Quericio, a correspondent for Italy's La Stampa daily, entered Syria via Lebanon in April. 
Shortly afterwards, the Western-backed Free Syrian Army picked them up and handed them over to the Abu Ammar brigade, a rebel group "more bandit than Islamist," Piccinin told Le Soir daily. 
The five months they were held proved to be "a terrifying odyssey across Syria," he told Bel RTL. "We were moved around a lot... it was ......



From HurriyetDaily:
....Many Syrian Alawites  are escaping the violence in Turkey’s neighbor and have come to Istanbul, where they are living in the parks and streets. Some say their children were kidnapped by jihadists. In increasing number of Syrian Alawites, who fled from Aleppo to Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep two months ago, have come to Istanbul in search of a safe haven. 
Hundreds are now living in the parks and streets, mainly in the Kumkapı, Fatih and Şirinevler districts of the city. In the last week alone, Alevi associations, led by the Haci Bektas Veli Foundation in Istanbul, have taken more than 200 Syrians from the parks and streets and brought them to cemevis (Alevi worship houses) in order to provide them with shelter. .....

From VoiceOfRussia:
...The chemical attack on August 21   allegedly was orchestrated - Lavrov.  "The chemical attack on August 21 allegedly was orchestrated," Russian Foreign Ministed Sergei Lavrov said during the meeting with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem. .....

From CBSNews:
...There's "no doubt about it," though,  that the bulk of Americans oppose U.S. involvement in Syria, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said later on the program; Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., in the same segment, agreed.
Amash said in town halls across his state he has gauged "not just disapproval of the war - overwhelming disapproval - from Republicans, from Democrats. And when you're dealing with an issue like war, you must take into consideration what the public thinks. You're asking people to possibly send their loved ones into harm's way.
"...Based on the objectives that the administration has laid out, based on the strategy they've laid out," Amash continued, "I can't come up with a reason right now why the United States should support this action."  ....

From BBC:
On my last tour of rebel-held areas in northern Syria, the streets looked very different.
The black-and-white banners representing Islamist factions are now prevalent in most areas, instead of the green flag of the revolution.
Nusra Front in Saraqeb, checking its fighters at the entrance of the town.........



Patrick Buchanan at  LewRockwell:

“Catastrophic!” said Sen. John McCain.  

If Congress votes no on a resolution calling for U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war, says McCain, it would be “catastrophic” for U.S. credibility in the world.

Consider what the senator is saying here.
Because Barack Obama, two years ago, said “Assad must go,” and, one year ago, said any use of chemical weapons crosses his “red line,” Congress has no choice but to plunge America into yet another Mideast war. 
Can this be? Are we really, as a nation, required to go to war to make good the simple-minded statements of an untutored president who had no constitutional authority to issue his impulsive ultimata?........

From CNN:
Russia's proposal for Syria   to surrender its chemical weapons to international control was a "potentially positive development," but could be a stall tactic, President Barack Obama told CNN on Monday.
"We're going to run this to ground," Obama said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, adding that the United States will work with Syrian ally Russia and the international community "to see if we can arrive at something that is enforceable and serious."....

From USAToday:
Secret memo says more than 1,200 prisoners fought Assad regime to avoid beheading.   Saudi Arabia has sent death-row inmates from several nations to fight against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences, the Assyrian International News Agency reports.
Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.....



From Breibart:
This really says a lot about    how the ruling class looks at their dimwitted subjects, doesn't it?  You won't understand what a chemical weapons attack really means until you've seen pictures of it.  The rational public response is, "Don't drag us into another Middle Eastern civil war," and that attitude grows stronger the longer Obama talks, as polls show public resistance to Syrian intervention is increasing.  But evidently the Administration hopes that showing some horrible video will provoke a visceral reaction, transcending thought, and they can have their "unbelievably small" war after all.
When do we get to see video of the 100,000 people Assad killed by other means? .........