[Our man in washington]

Okay, let’s pretend we’re Assad:

AIDE: The Americans are planning a two-day strike on you for using chemical weapons.

ASSAD: Okay, let’s think what options I can have. I can say I’ve learned my lesson, lay off the rebels, let them win, and then get tortured and hung. Or I could find a good hideout for a few days and keep doing what I’m doing. And with any luck, Obama’s bombs could kill a few kids and I could send the images all over the world and inflame the Muslims agains the U.S., which is never very hard to do. My choices here aren’t exactly difficult.

AIDE: But if you ignore Obama, he could get very angry.

ASSAD: And what’s he going to do about it? The Americans don’t want to get bogged down in another Middle East war. Worst case, it’s another round of bombing. And if the Russians and the Middle Eastern community back me, Obama would probably back off even that.

[Yosemitest]

SYRIAN CHRISTIAN: WHY IS OBAMA BACKING ISLAMIST REBELS WHO ARE KILLING US ?

The United States and Syria?:

Behold,
Damascus is taken away from being a city,
and it shall be a ruinous heap.
The cities of Aroer are forsaken:
they shall be for flocks,
which shall lie down,
and none shall make them afraid.
The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus,
and the remnant of Syria:
they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel,
saith the LORD of hosts.
And in that day it shall come to pass,
that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin,
and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
And it shall be
as when the harvestman gathereth the corn,
and reapeth the ears with his arm;
and it shall be
as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it,
as the shaking of an olive tree,
two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough,
four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof,
saith the LORD God of Israel.
At that day
shall a man look to his Maker,
and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands,
neither shall respect that which his fingers have made,
either the groves, or the images.
In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough,
and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel:
and there shall be desolation.
Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation,
and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength,
therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants,
and shalt set it with strange slips:
In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow,
and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish:
but the harvest shall be a heap
in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
Woe to the multitude of many people,
which make a noise like the noise of the seas;
and to the rushing of nations,
that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters:
but God shall rebuke them,
and they shall flee far off,
and shall be chased
as the chaff of the mountains before the wind,
and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
And behold
at eveningtide
trouble;
and before the morning
he is not.
This is the portion of them that spoil us,
and the lot of them that rob us. "

[garjog]

“And with any luck, Obama’s bombs could kill a few kids and I could send the images all over the world and inflame the Muslims agains the U.S”

ASSAD: Come to think of it, let’t move as many kids to the chem weapons factory as possible. Get those cameras ready. Evil Americans — killing innocent children.