our duly elected, if egotistical, awful president elect. The chickens have come home to roost.

was the subject of an earlier essay. I watched the entire video, and it was great. Unfortunately the original poster took his or her essay down.

they slit throats.

That man lost my respect for his biased and simplistic coverage of the conflict in Libya and is now doing the same for Syria.

He pushes the canard of "peaceful protesters" being attacked by a "violent, brutal regime" as being the initial cause of the conflict (just as he did in Libya). The truth of the matter is that these anti-Assad protesters had been infiltrated by agent provocateurs within weeks, if not days, of the start of the protests using pre-staged weapons. There were masked snipers shooting both the protesters and the police at several protests. The western media then amped up the message and the rest is history. History has also shown that using agent provocateurs in conjugation with false flag attacks is a common denominator of many, if not most, of the dozens of covert conflicts that the US has instigated around the world.
Another tool the US government uses is if they do not get the regime change they desire, they will go to plan B - destabilize the nation by fomenting internal strife and by sanctions that hurt the ordinary citizen to make their lives untenable.

The Wicked War on Syria: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words

Clinton echoes the western narrative about the Syrian conflict:

“The crisis began in early 2011, when Syrian citizens, inspired in part by the successful peaceful protests in Tunisia and Egypt, took to the streets to demonstrate against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al Assad. As in Libya, security forces responded with excessive force and mass detentions which in turn led some Syrians to take up arms to defend themselves and, eventually, to try to topple Assad.” (p 447)

This description is widespread but misleading. In his 2007 article Seymour Hersh exposed the U.S. promotion of Sunni fundamentalists to undermine Syria and Iran. In 2010 Secretary of State Clinton pressed Syrian President Bashar al Assad to comply with Israeli and US calls to stop supporting the Lebanese resistance and break relations with Iran. Was Clinton especially hostile to the Syrian President because he did not comply with her requests/demands and soon after forged an agreement with Iran? She makes no mention of this in her book but it is obviously relevant to the issue of Syria-USA relations.

Regarding the so-called peaceful protesters, in fact there was a violent element from the start. In Deraa in March 2011 several police were killed. In the original “capital of the revolution”, Homs, a very credible eye-witness reported armed demonstrators initiating the violence.

Syria: It’s Not a Civil War and it Never Was
How to settle a civil war that doesn’t exist?

If the Syrian conflict was created by foreign interests fueling militant groups it has used for decades as an instrument of executing foreign policy (in and out of Syria), amounting to what is essentially a proxy invasion, not a civil war, how exactly can a “settlement” be reached?

Who should the Syrian government be talking to in order to reach this settlement? Should it be talking to the heads of Al Nusra and IS who clearly dominate the militants fighting Damascus? Or should it be talking to those who have been the paramount factor in perpetuating the conflict, Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington, all of whom appear involved in supporting even the most extreme among these militant groups?

If Damascus finds itself talking with political leaders in these foreign capitals, is it settling a “civil war” or a war it is fighting with these foreign powers? Upon the world stage, it is clear that these foreign capitals speak entirely for the militants, and to no one’s surprise, these militants seem to want exactly what these foreign capitals want.

Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this is a “civil war.” This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy, the West further strengthens its hand in this context.

Just think of the response that the US government would be if we had "peaceful" protests like those in Libya, Syria and even Ukraine. The response here would be like that of the Saudis putting the protesters in Bahrain - crush them using massive overwhelming force.

Iraqi military: Mosul citizens killed an ISIS cleric who gave an edict declaring the shelling of civilians in liberated areas is permissible

— Tamer El-Ghobashy (@TamerELG) December 18, 2016