Posted on 07/26/2012 3:28:58 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The BBC's Ian Pannell travels with cheering rebels in Aleppo. His report contains unverified graphic images of the victims of Syria's conflict
Syrian rebels in Aleppo have begun stockpiling ammunition and medical supplies as government forces prepare outside the city for a major battle.
Artillery and helicopter gunships have resumed attacking rebel targets and 14 people have been killed, activists say.
Troops and tanks are said to be ringing the city and reinforcements are reportedly on their way to join them.
In Damascus, activists said the army had pounded the capital's last rebel-held areas and 20 civilians had died.
Five children and four women were killed, according to London-based pro-opposition group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, when shells hit the Yalda area. Helicopters also attacked the nearby district of Hajar al-Aswad.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
You gotta love the way the rebels are using civilians as human shields. Of course, unlike Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, Syria’s Alawite troops probably don’t give a damn about collateral damage, given that unlike us, they don’t actually have smart bombs to surgically remove the rebels they want taken care of. It’s also amusing to see a politically-favored group like Sunni Arabs get a lot of attention, as well as loose talk about NATO intervention after less than 20K dead in a civil war, when Sudanese Sunni Arabs enslaved hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese and slaughtered 2m (15% of the population) South Sudanese Christians and animists over 20 years without a peep about foreign intervention. As far as I’m concerned, wake me up when the Sunni Arab death toll hits 1.5m (or about 10% of the Sunni Arab population in Syria).
There’s probably also a “one for them, one for me” dynamic going on here. Sunni Arabs probably figure that since we took out a Sunni Arab dictator ruling over a majority non-Sunni Arab population in Iraq, it’s their turn to win one - by turfing Assad, a non-Sunni Arab ruling over a majority Sunni Arab population.
Identity politics is right out of Obama’s playbook, so your analysis is likely spot on.
What is BBC frequency used and can it be heard at all hours or does it skip depending on weather, satellites.
I'm in Texas and would like to keep up with Syria.
There was a public webcam on top of a hotel (I think it was a hotel) in Iraq. You could see the street was a roundabout and you could come in on one of the roads and leave out of any three or reverse yourself back to where you came from.
At a “Watch the Iraqis” on Free Republic, we kept seeing the same dam white car entering and exiting the roundabout.
We kept wondering what the heck was up, until someone came up the answer: It WAS NOT the same car. With crushing heat in the Middle East, it made sense to get a white car to reflect some of the heat.
Learn something every day!
Bush’s fault!
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