[dan-b]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...ohn-rosenthal#

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. “Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,” Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

[ices]

...and this is why we shouldnt get involved with Muslims.

[Steve]

We should quit meddling and let them get on with it, it's laughable that we get involved with select regimes, why didn't we get involved with Robert Mugabes regime? China hardly has a good human rights record, Sierra Leone why didn't we send the troops in there? yes so let them sort their shit out we have our own problems.

[RangaRang]

I wouldn't be surprised. Assad's on his way out, and not because he's killing his own people or because he's "evil". But because he's an Iranian ally and without Assad's Syria, Hezbollah (and thus Iran) could never keep Israel in check. After Assad falls, Israel will bomb Iran. Don't believe the hype about Assad. He was loved in Syria for a long time before all of this, but there are many Sunni groups out to get him and he represents a threat to the West. It's hard not to look like a mass murderer when your own people are being pushed by outside forces to overthrow you. This same shit almost happened to the Shah.

[RangaRang]

Sam with Ghaddafi, a key Iranian ally because of his willingness to welcome anti Israel terror networks and help them out. And soon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen will fall to Sunni militants.

[niknik]

Originally Posted by weeb ↗

Sam with Ghaddafi, a key Iranian ally because of his willingness to welcome anti Israel terror networks and help them out. And soon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen will fall to Sunni militants.

Can't wait. Those places are shitholes, bring a change. If America had their problems we would demand change we can believe in too..

[niknik]

Oh and Iran is a terrible place. Horrible.. Awful.. Eewww.

[mengala]

niknik you sound like a mentally challenged, homosexual forest gump.

[RangaRang]

Originally Posted by niknik ↗

Can't wait. Those places are shitholes, bring a change. If America had their problems we would demand change we can believe in too..

When a government does not have the interests of its own people in mind, and instead takes orders from foreign influences, it only and only benefits a small group of people there. Eventually most people will grow disillusioned and take to the streets. When the US brings about "change", it knocks down nationalist interests and advocates for adjustments that make US investment and businesses more profitable in those countries. This is what the UK did 100 years ago.

Take BP and the UK's involvement in Iranian oil. They lobbied for the governments to do something, and so the MI6 and CIA plotted then overthrew a democratic, nationalist government in Iran in 1953. Why? Because they nationalized the oil, meaning Britain/USA would have to pay the REAL amount of money for the worth of the oil they buy, and not pay 1/10th of the price while sucking the country dry. If oil is a country's main source of income, shouldn't that oil money be used to build roads, schools, army, universities, security, and encourage homegrown industry for their own people? When the US/UK breaks a country into the free market system, it only benefits the upper and upper middle classes of that country. The middle class gets smaller and smaller, the poor die of hunger and the workers get their rights trampled on. Is this positive growth? Is this change?

Or rather, is it subjugating third world people who cannot conventionally defend themselves, so that we Americans can live our lavish and high-consumption lifestyles?

Niknik, please pull yourself out from behind that US/Confederate flag and read about your own country.

And btw. Iran's a beautiful country with a 7,000 year old civilization, the first human rights charter, the inventors of algebra and accounting, chess, the first to abolish slavery, builders of the Silk Road, Taj Mahal, Persepolis, Pasargadae, Ctesiphon, one of the oldest languages in the world and a higher rate of literacy than much of the Middle East and Asia, and more than half of Europe. Even Iran's government right now is not without its merits, despite the shit that it pulls on its own people. For one, they aren't anyone's bitch. For two, they stand up for Palestinians and Lebanese whose genocide is forgotten by others, for three, they are pissing all over the Saudis and have been for 30 years.

[RangaRang]

And btw what good will it do if Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia, and eventually Syria, fall to Sunni extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood? What good would that do to the world? More al-Qaeda and Taliban types running around? This is a stupid foreign policy and the USA is fucking itself over in the long run by supporting these guys, but hey no one did anything when the Taliban got weapons to defeat the Soviets....