AP’s reports on Syria are becoming increasingly insulting to one’s intelligence. See this piece on Riad Hijab’s defection here:
“Syria’s prime minister began planning his break from the regime two months ago when Bashar Assad offered him the post and an ultimatum: Take the job or die….The criminal Assad pressed him to become a prime minister and left him no choice but to accept the position. He had told him: ‘You either accept the position or get killed,’” said Otari, who told the AP that Hijab and his family planned to travel on from Amman to Qatar.
Of course, that makes perfect sense. Of all the eligible Sunni politicians he could have appointed for the post, Bashar insisted on the one he believed was most likely to defect and betray him. I mean, why select someone committed and trustworthy, when you could just as easily knowingly appoint a potentially perfidious figure, threaten his life if he rejects his new position, and promote him from a low key position as Agriculture Minister to a higher profile one so that his defection will deal the government an even stronger blow.
His break suggests that elements of the Sunni elite - long a pillar of Assad’s rule - could be growing uneasy with the relentless bloodshed and the hardline policies of Assad’s minority Alawite community, which dominates the regime’s inner circle. “The prime minister defected from the regime of killing, maiming and terrorism. He considers himself a soldier in the revolution,” the aide said.
That’s right, pent up squeamishness and delayed morality are precisely what drive Sunni politicians to defect at the 11th hour to the less bloodthirsty side of FSA/Salafi execution squads, whose most recent exploits include the execution of the Syrian tv presenter, Mohammed al-Saeed and the abduction of 48 Iranian pilgrims, a few of whom are now reportedly dead.
Gulf states and Turkey have strongly backed the rebel forces while Assad has counted on support from a dwindling list of allies such as Iran and Russia.
Dwindling list of allies? How have they dwindled from say 4 (Iran, Hizbullah, Russia and China) to the same 4? How is the number dwindling if it has remained the same as it was at the beginning of the crisis?
AP has indeed become a psych-ops tool; it doesn’t merely spread disinformation in order to deceive public opinion, but also to “lower adversary morale” as stipulated by the US’ military’s psycho-ops manual.
