Syria war is a very dirty war , war crimes are occurring / committed by both sides. Despite media spin and cheerleaders , the rebels aren't angels and formerly killed American and western soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan .......once Assad falls , where will the rebel islamic guns be pointed next ?

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/20128262302872922.html

Syria accused of 'massacre' near Damascus

Opposition claims more than 200 bodies found in Daraya, alleging victims killed "execution-style" in government raids. Last Modified: 26 Aug 2012 10:26 inShare2 Email Print Share Feedback

Several hundred bodies have been found in a town near Damascus after a ferocious assault by the Syrian army, according to a watchdog group, as activists accused government forces of a gruesome "massacre". A grisly video issued by the opposition showed bodies piled up wall-to-wall in a mosque complex in Daraya after a massive offensive by troops battling to crush insurgents who have regrouped in the outskirts of the capital.At least 320 corpses were found on Saturday and Sunday, the victims of a five-day onslaught by the army on rebel fighters in Daraya, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), a network of activists on the ground in Syria, described it as a "massacre" by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and said people in Daraya had been summarily executed and their bodies burned. Human rights groups have accused the regime of committing many atrocities since the uprising against Assad's government first erupted in March last year, and a UN panel said earlier this month it was guilty of crimes against humanity. Ant-government fighters issued a video on YouTube entitled "Massacre at the Abu Sleiman Addarani Mosque in Daraya" showing dozens of bodies lined up in dimly lit rooms. "An odious massacre committed by the gangs of the Assad regime in the Abu Sleiman Addarani Mosque. More than 150 innocent martyrs fell in a brutal campaign by the criminal gangs against the city," said the commentary with the video, whose authenticity could not be verified. State television said Daraya, a mainly Sunni Muslim town of some 200,000 people, was being "purified of terrorist remnants." Anti-government activists said that many of the bodies showed evidence of having been shot by snipers, while others appeared to have been shot at close range. They said that the army had killed the people "execution-style" in house-to-house raids. Abu Kinan, an activist in Daraya, told Reuters news agency that he had witnessed the death of an eight-year-old girl, Asma Abu al-Laban, who was shot by army snipers while she was in a car with her parents. UN investigators said in a report this month that both sides in the conflict had performed summary executions - a war crime - but that Assad's troops and militia loyal to the president had committed many more offences than the rebels. Violence across country The LCC said on Saturday that more than 400 people had been killed in violence across Syria on Saturday, primarily in Damascus and its environs. It also reported deaths in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Deraa, Hama and Homs provinces. Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road shelled the southern neighbourhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into Saturday night and fighting raged in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, residents said. The Syrian army retook Daraya, one of many towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday, after three days of heavy bombardment, opposition activists said. Combat helicopters and tanks also pounded rebel-held areas of the battered northern city of Aleppo, an AFP journalist and monitors said, as the army pressed on with its war against fighters there. Lebanese citizen released The UN estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad's government began in March 2011. The conflict, which began as a series of peaceful protests, has turned into an armed rebellion that has forced more than 200,000 Syrians to flee the violence, and resulted in spillover into neighbouring countries. On Saturday, a Lebanese man who had been abducted with a group of 10 other pilgrims in Syria in May was released and arrived home. He had been kidnapped by armed members of the opposition, who said his release was a "goodwill gesture". and..... http://www.infowars.com/bbc-in-war-crime-cover-up-controversy/ BBC In “War Crime” Cover-Up Controversy Broadcaster lies in claiming its reporter didn’t characterize forced suicide bomber incident as “war crime” Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Friday, August 24, 2012 The BBC has dug itself a deeper hole in the aftermath of a censorship controversy which saw the broadcaster pull a video about Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become an unwitting suicide bomber, with the BBC claiming its reporter never characterized the incident as a “war crime” when in fact the opposite is true. As we highlighted yesterday, a video clip showing a prisoner being made by Syrian rebels to drive a truck full of explosives to a military checkpoint in Aleppo was pulled from both the BBC website and the official BBC channel on You Tube hours after it was published. Bloggers were able to capture and upload a copy of the video which can be viewed below. BBC World News editor John Williams responded to the controversy in a blog post on the BBC News website by noting that “the story has generated much interest across the Arab World and beyond.” Though Williams fails to address why the BBC has sent the story down the memory hole, he does attempt to explain away the fact that the events depicted in the footage clearly represent a war crime, noting that the attempted murder of a captive has been defined as such by Amnesty International. “Some pro-government news agencies in Syria have suggested the BBC and the New York Times have termed the act as a “war crime”. This is not true,” claims Williams.

And yet it is true.

At the 2 minute 13 mark in the clip embedded above, BBC reporter Gordon Corera clearly states, “Using prisoners as suicide bombers would certainly be considered a war crime.”

So in fact yes, the BBC did term the act as a “war crime” and John Williams is being brazenly dishonest.

Why is the BBC lying in claiming they didn’t characterize the act as a war crime? Perhaps it’s because their removal of the story constitutes covering up for a war crime. Maybe it made the lawyers and senior editors nervous.

Recall that this is not the first time the BBC has been caught manipulating reporting of events in Syria to push a pro-NATO regime change agenda. Back in May we exposed how the BBC has used a years-old photo of dead Iraqi children to depict victims of an alleged government assault in the town of Houla.

The photographer who took the original picture, Marco Di Lauro, posted on his Facebook page, “Somebody is using my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to prove the massacre.” Di Lauro told the London Telegraph he was “astonished” the BBC had failed to check the authenticity of the image.

The BBC’s excuse for removing the shocking story about how western-backed Syrian rebels are using unwilling prisoners to carry out terrorist attacks is shaky to say the least.

“Under the terms of the agreement with the New York Times we only had the rights to use the material on broadcast outlets. However the material was used online in error. As soon as we realised the error we immediately took steps to remove the online material,” responded the BBC.

So we’re being asked to believe that the world’s largest news organization doesn’t have a procedure in place where it checks with other major news organizations before using their material.

Even if we are to accept this dubious explanation, the fact that the BBC is now openly lying to its audience in claiming its reporter never characterized the incident as a “war crime” when the opposite is true emphasizes once again how the NATO-aligned media is desperate to uphold the image of Syrian opposition forces as glorious freedom fighters when in fact they are being led by Al-Qaeda terrorists while metering out acts of brutality on a par with anything Assad’s forces have been accused of.

and....

http://rt.com/news/syrian-rebels-blockade-christians-549/

Syrian Christians in 2-week blockade by rebel fighters, residents desperate

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Published: 25 August, 2012, 17:01

REUTERS / Khaled Al Hariri

TRENDS:Syria unrest

TAGS: Conflict, Crime, Religion, Human rights,Opposition, War, Syria

An estimated 12,000 people have spent two weeks blockaded in the Christian town of Rableh, Syria, near Homs in the south. Experiencing a shortage of food and medical supplies, residents could not leave as rebel snipers were shooting at them.

The town, close to the border with Lebanon, was liberated by Syrian government forces on Friday, according to Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen satellite channel. These reports are yet to be verified. Sixty militants were reportedly eliminated.

For about two weeks Syrian rebels maintained blockade of the mostly-Christian town, refusing entry to food and medical supplies, according to the Aid to the Church in Need Catholic charity, which tried to deliver supplies to the city.

“We have organized ourselves so we can stand by each other and we are sharing everything so we can survive. We need all the help we can get. Please help us,” a local priest told the Caritas, a Lebanon-based Catholic humanitarian organization, during a phone call from Rableh. 

After a two-week blockade the basic necessities were reportedly running out in the town because the bridges around the settlement had been blown up and roads were made impassable. 

Snipers were waiting for those who thought about leaving the town in search for food. Those who dared to leave in search for food were shot at. Three men who made attempts to leave the disaster zone were shot dead, informed the charity’s representative Father Waldemar Cislo from Beirut.

There were motorcyclists who made an attempt to carry bread into the village, but they were also shot at, though managing to escape the firing line unhurt.

Electric power supply has also been disrupted in the area as the conflict between the Bashar Assad government’s forces and the rebel militants intensified.

Those Syrians who finally made it to the other side of the border described the situation back home as critical. 

“Some people are starting to feel the hunger, children’s milk is running out, [there are] no canned goods, even children’s diapers no longer exist,” they said.

Both Syrian and Lebanon Catholic authorities have also been calling for urgent help to the people in Rableh.

Aid to the Church in Need, previously active in Damascus, Aleppo and Homs (Syria), and Caritas (Lebanon) had formed a small – about 800 kilograms – emergency aid delivery consisting mostly of food, medicine and milk powder, hoping to get it to the town if militants agreed to let it pass, but troops made it to the scene first.

Electric power supply to Rableh has already been restored, reports Al-Mayadeen satellite channel.

According to the UN estimates the total number of Syrian refugees has already exceeded 200,000 as the fighting continues between the government and rebel forces.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad said the country’s capital has been freed from the militants and the mop-up operation in the financial hub of Aleppo is getting close to the end. 

Syria’s neighbors report of a refugee exodus from the country. 

Turkey has claimed 3,500 refugees crossed the Turkish-Syrian border in the last 24 hours alone. According to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate official, Ankara has received 78,000 Syrian refugees on its territory.

Another Syrian neighbor, Jordan, reports a record 2,200 people coming from Syria overnight to find refuge in the Zaatari camp in the north of the country, informed the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Adrian Edwards.

As of now, there are no independent sources of information to deny or confirm the Syrian refugee statistics.

Still, many Syrian civilians deny the very idea of fleeing abroad.

"If you go as a refugee you won't get any respect," a 20-year-old student in Bustan al-Qasr settlement, not far from the frontline, told Reuters. “For most people here, self-respect is the most important thing,” he explained.

The UN estimates the death toll of the 17-month conflict in Syria exceeds 18,000 victims from both sides.

Globalist Rag Gives “Two Cheers” for Terrorism

Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
Aug 24, 2012

Foreign Policy published a recent article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” In it, general editor of the Neo-Con Middle East Forum Gary Gambill concedes that the Syrian government “would not be in the trouble it’s in today were it not for the Islamists,” revealing what the West and its media houses have attempted but failed at obfuscating – that the violence in Syria is the work of sectarian extremists, not “pro-democracy activists.” The latter’s existence was amplified by the Western media specifically to provide cover and legitimacy for the violence and subversion of the former.

Image: Must be seen to believe – screenshot of FP’s article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” The writer, Gary Gambill, comes from the Middle East Forum which regular features the warmongering rants of Neo-Cons like Daniel Pipes and Islamophobia-propagandist Robert Spencer.

….

Gambill continues his “two cheers” for terrorism in perhaps the most perverse statement found to-date in the Western press on the subject:

“Islamists — many of them hardened by years of fighting U.S. forces in Iraq — are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts. Assad has had extraordinary difficulty countering tactics perfected by his former jihadist allies, particularly suicide bombings and roadside bombs.”

Gambill is gushingly praising men who have killed Western troops, admiring their prowess on the battlefield through their use of indiscriminate terrorist tactics which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the Arab World.

The Big Lie

Gambill continues by stating, “The Sunni Islamist surge may also be essential to inflicting a full-blown strategic defeat on Iran,” before concluding at length as to why the US should support terrorism in Syria:

“For the foreseeable future, however, Iran constitutes a far greater and more immediate threat to U.S. national interests. Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran unthinkable, it won’t have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington.

So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies, we should quietly root for them — while keeping our distance from a conflict that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames. ” -Gary Gambill, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists,” (2012)

In this, Gambill divulges the true agenda behind destabilizing Syria – the isolation and undermining of Iran to the east, and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the West. Gambill also mentions the destruction of Syria as a means of realigning Iraq to US interests.

Gambill disingenuously claims that the US can do “little about” what he calls the “political ascendancy” of these sectarian extremists, portraying the rise of violence across the Levant and the miraculous resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab World as coincidentally aligned to American interests, and something that should be allowed, even encouraged, to run its course.

Gambill fails to mention, however, that this “political ascendancy” was planned, funded, armed, and organized by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia as far back as 2007, according to a detailed, 9-page report published by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker titled “The Redirection.”

In the report, it explicitly states:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.” -Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)

Hersh’s report would also include:

“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.” -Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)

In essence, Gambill’s gushing support for terrorism – and in particular, terrorists who have fought and killed Americans – is but the latest in an attempt to spin and repackage Al Qaeda and the fraudulent “War on Terror” as public awareness outgrows the fallacious “humanitarian pretenses” the operation has been couched within hitherto.

Gambill’s material support for terrorism echos a recent article titled, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a premier Fortune 500-funded US think-tank, which stated:

“The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime’s superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.”

Why is Gambill Writing This?

Consider the audience of Foreign Policy. It is not propaganda fit for the masses. Rather it is for aspiring, as well as low to mid-level members of the global corporate-financier establishment. Western involvement in both Libya and Syria have undermined the governments, institutions, and organizations many of these people work for, and as public awareness (and anger) grows, it will be these low to mid-level members who bear the brunt of the system’s collapsing legitimacy. Many are already expressing doubts over the viability and nature of the West’s global agenda as it unfolds.

It must be remembered that the terrorists Gambill is “cheering” for had ensnared millions of Western troops for over a decade in the so-called “War on Terror.” It has killed thousands of troops, tens of thousands were maimed both physically and psychologically, and hundreds of thousands have forever lost time they could have spent at home with their loved ones. As public awareness grows of Western support for these very terrorists, it would be almost inconceivable that there would not be a profound, perhaps even violent backlash against people like Gambill and the establishment he represents.

Gambill’s cheerleading is designed to rally the lower ranks of the establishment around this new narrative as he and fellow warmongers attempt to flee forward through Syria and then into Iran. Eventually, the reckless promotion of terrorism Gambill and others are committed to will once again call US soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen into harms way – either to fight nations defending themselves against US-sponsored terrorism, or to liquidate US-supported terrorists when their services are longer needed.

Gambill by causally saying, “there will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames,” means specifically more US troops will be deployed, and will most certainly die, all in the pursuit of corporate-financier interests in the Middle East. Gambill specifically refers to “hegemonic ambitions,” not any conceivable threat to US defense, as the impetus for cheering on terrorism, a theme that is omnipresent throughout US policy papers on Iran.

Legendary US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once said “war is a racket.” For an increasing number of people worldwide, they are beginning to understand why.