By Chris Marsden - 16 August 2012

US efforts to bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria focus on collusion with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)...Turkey is the only regional power that could successfully front a proxy war with Syria, behind which Washington could call the shots. The AKP is also viewed as the best political force to head a Sunni-based regional alliance movement incorporating Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Assad controls most parts of Syria. Insurgents were routed from Damascus and Aleppo. They shift from some locations to others. Unknown numbers have been killed, injured or captured.

If wars had labels, Syria's conflict would be called Made in America.

By Eric S. Margolis - August 11, 2012

We could be observing the beginning of a twenty-first-century version of the 1930s’ Spanish civil war, which became a proxy struggle between Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. The only thing we know for sure about Syria’s civil war is that it is extremely dangerous to the entire region. Its outcome is entirely unpredictable. Meanwhile, the West keeps fueling the fires.

Views contradicting state policy are prohibited. Constraints prevent truth and full disclosure. Public thinking and perceptions are manipulated and controlled.

By Seumas Milne - August 10, 2012

The destruction of Syria is now in full flow. What began as a popular uprising 17 months ago is now an all-out civil war fueled by regional and global powers that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East...Driving the escalation of the conflict has been western and regional intervention...[T]he sharp increase in arms supplies, funding and technical support from the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others in recent months has dramatically boosted the rebels' fortunes, as well as the death toll.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

The growing acknowledgment within official circles that Al Qaeda is playing a decisive role in Syria’s civil war exposes both the real nature of the US-backed bid to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the fraud of Washington’s “war on terror.”

Washington is ravaging another country to control it.

By SHAMUS COOKE - Counterpunch

Because the Free Syrian Army did not emerge from a popular revolution — but instead the pocketbooks and arsenal of Saudi Arabia — the war to destroy the Syrian government had to be waged as an ethnic-religious war. Saudi Arabia has a long history of exporting its rare extremist form of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, as a political tool to help overthrow unfriendly governments.

Since early 2011, Washington waged proxy war on Syria. Daily it continues down and dirty. Targeting civilians is policy. So are atrocities grave enough to make some despots blush.

On August 3, the UN General Assembly ignored rule of law principles. It passed a non-binding Syrian resolution 133 - 12. Thirty-one nations abstained. Cowardice defines their failure to do the right thing.

By Ismail Salami - August 3rd, 2012

Interestingly, the West has undergone a mystical experience in defining who the rebels really were. Until a few weeks or months ago, they described them as “a disorganized, almost chaotic, rabble” but now that they have entered into an unbreakable alliance with their pseudo-enemy al-Qaeda, they have fallen to confessing that the rebels have made “noticeable improvements in terms of coherence and effectiveness in the past few weeks”.

Washington continues to wage naked aggression on Syria.

Syria's conflict isn't an uprising, revolution or civil war. It's lawless Western aggression. It targets an independent government and its people. Doing so violates fundamental international law.

By ISRAEL SHAMIR - July 30, 2012

Israel retains its ability to control the Syrian ‘Islamist’ rebels. Netanyahu is not worried about Syria’s possible disintegration. Despite the received wisdom claiming that Israelis prefer a stable and familiar Assad to the great unknown of Islamic guerrillas, the new and sensational information we received points out to the opposite, namely: Israelis prefer the Somalisation of Syria, its break-up and the elimination of its army, as this will allow them to tackle Iran unopposed.