At the end of November, groups aligned with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) or the “Levant Liberation Committee” and previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, launched significant attacks on the Syrian government in the Idlib and Aleppo regions, taking part of the city of Aleppo. The Syrian Arab Army has mobilized to push back against HTS...
Americans want to feel good about themselves by giving money to charities that claim to be helping the Syrian people. But they are being duped into supporting terrorist forces that have brought misery and violence to the country—while crippling U.S. sanctions accentuate the humanitarian crisis. Are major charitable organizations supporting...
United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Take the case of Syria. The people and groups one would normally...
Alawites to the grave; Christians to Beirut.-- War slogan of anti-Assad militants As this article was written, Syria experienced the worst days of violence since Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—formerly the al-Nusra Front of al-Qaeda—took power from President Bashar al-Assad. Friday, March 7, 2025, is the date it may be said a...
During her confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard was grilled about having been a purveyor of “Putin’s talking points” about the U.S. supporting al-Qaeda in Syria.   Of course, Gabbard responded, there can be no doubt about the veracity of such claims.    Thus, Gabbard cited the fact...
As It Did with Castro in Cuba and Noriega in Panama, the “Mighty Wurlitzer” of U.S. Propaganda Defused Antiwar Sentiment by Painting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a Brutal Animal Who Had to Be Removed. In 1991, famed MIT linguist Noam Chomsky published a political pamphlet called Media Control: The...
U.S. media accounts of the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria failed to disclose that the U.S. had engaged in a thirteen-year-long operation that started with the Arab Spring and continued with the launching of Operation Timber Sycamore by the Obama administration, the largest covert operation...
On March 4, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, made a surprise visit to U.S. troops stationed in northeast Syria to the chagrin of the Syrian government, which said the visit was “illegal" and a “flagrant violation of the country’s sovereignty.” The Syrian Foreign Ministry said...
Will Congress ever hold the CIA to account for this and other crimes by ordering a Church Committee-type investigation? In August 2017, The New York Times reported on the Trump administration’s shutting down what it termed “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the CIA”—the $1...
Part of a pattern of media omissions and deception in its coverage of Syria On December 8, 2024, Syria’s long-standing ruler Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia after being deposed by Sunni militia forces in what New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman called the “biggest…most game-changing event in the Middle...