Assad Continues Crackdown as Hama Protests Ongoing Brutality

Bashar al Assad's regime continues brutally cracking down against protesters throughout Syria, but it can't seem to crush the opposition in Hama.

You can expect Bashar to turn to his dog-eared copy of the Hama rules any day now to bring on the pain, misery, and murder of those who dare oppose his regime. The city of Hama is the focus of the crackdown because they continue protesting Assad's regime and brutality.

With more than 300,000 people taking to the streets there, this isn't some passing fancy demonstration. It's self-sustaining, and it's growing precisely because Assad's brutality in attempting to thwart further protests is leading to still more protests; his security thugs attack funeral processions for those killed in previous clashes between the security forces and those opposition protesters.

Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted media coverage, making it nearly impossible to independently verify events on the ground. But witness accounts, including interviews with refugees who have fled to neighboring countries, indicate that the regime is cracking down hard on the protest movement.

Also Tuesday, a Syrian activist said buses carrying security forces had been spotted heading to restive, mountainous areas near the Turkish border. Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which track the protests in Syria, said witnesses told him the vehicles were rushing to the area where the military has been trying to prevent the opposition from establishing a base.

About 10,000 Syrians have fled to Turkey amid the crackdown.

The exodus has been a source of embarrassment to Syria, which has tried to tightly control coverage of the revolt. It also has strained ties with Turkey.

On Tuesday, the head of the Syrian Red Crescent, Abdurrahman Attar, urged all Syrian citizens in Turkey to return home, Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency said. Attar visited the Turkish city of Hatay along the countries' border but did not visit the refugee camps, the report said.

Rep. Dennis (the Menace) Kucinich could not be reached for comment.

Kucinich Can't Be Reached For Comment as Assad's Thugs Continue Brutal Crackdown

If it's Friday in Syria that means that protesters again have taken to the street demanding that Bashar al Assad leave and Bashar al Assad's thugs are busy with their brutal crackdown, including murdering still more Syrians in northern towns.

About 1,000 anti-government demonstrators gathered before they were attacked and dispersed by pro-government demonstrators.

T[h]anks and helicopters opened fire and reportedly killed a number of civilians as military forces swept through several northern villages. The crackdown comes just days after the government allowed a small gathering of opposition activists in Damascus. Around 1,700 people have been killed in Syria's violence so far, and around 10,000 have fled to refugee camps in Turkey.

Assad's troops keep murdering protesters at funerals for those slain previously by the regime.

These protests aren't going away, including in the Damascus suburbs, but Assad's crackdown hasn't subsided either.

Recall that Democrat Dennis Kucinich was busy claiming that Assad was withdrawing troops from cities as proof he was really showing some kind of respect for human rights and Syrian rights to protest.

Assad's security forces continue murdering Syrians opposed to the regime - just in different towns than the ones his security forces were in just a few days ago. Those forces simply redeployed to deal with opposition groups elsewhere in the country. They haven't stopped the brutality.

There's a term for people like Kucinich - useful idiot - and he wears that term well.

Assad Continues Pacification of Opposition; Kucinich Continues Shilling For Assad

Bashar al Assad's security forces continue their crackdown against opposition groups and protesters throughout Syria. They've chosen new targets to strike out at - hitting new and different towns without regard for the importance of local shrines of historical significance:

Syrian tanks and helicopters opened fire and killed at least two civilians as the military advanced through a series of villages in northwestern Syria on Thursday, a push that sent residents running for the hills, several villagers said in phone calls with CNN.

"I can see smoke rising from the surrounding area," said a man named Omar Wahid, who spoke by telephone after he fled his home to a neighboring village. "It feels like a battlefield."

Syria has been engulfed by more than three months of anti-government discontent.

The crackdown on anti-government protests in the Jabal Zawiya region of Syria's Idlib province comes just days after Syrian authorities allowed a historic opposition conference to be held in the capital, Damascus.

Villagers said they saw helicopters sweeping in, dropping commandoes into the area from ropes Thursday morning.

They also said tanks and helicopters bombarded ancient Byzantine ruins in Al Bara. Al Bara is the site of a famous "dead city," a destination for tourists fascinated by fifth-century Byzantine churches, monasteries, and an iconic, fully intact pyramid-shaped burial chamber.

"They attacked the old church," said Mohamed Smail, a farmer who fled his home and spoke to CNN from the hills around Al Bara. "We are calling on international organizations to protect our ruins. They are destroying our cultural heritage."

For all the claims that Assad is allowing reforms to go forward, his security forces continue to add to the butcher's bill.

All the while, we've got Rep. Dennis Kucinich running around meeting with Assad on what he's billing as a fact-finding mission, but which has amounted to a propaganda bonanza for Assad.

With the House not in session, Kucinich has been in Syria, where he was quoted by the state news agency saying kind words about President Bashar al-Assad, whose government has killed its own people. "President al-Assad is highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians," Kucinich said, per the news outlet.

Later, Kucinich said he was misquoted. But he received this blistering criticism from the Washington Post's editorial page:

Mr. Kucinich, who has fiercely opposed the U.S. intervention against Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi, traveled to Damascus over the weekend to huddle with Syria’s dictator, who is desperately seeking to avoid being isolated and labeled illegitimate by the outside world. Thanks to the slaughter by his security forces of at least 1,400 people — the vast majority of them unarmed civilians — Mr. Assad has few friends these days: The European Union and United States have sanctioned him personally, and even his regime’s most faithful allies are close to abandoning him... But Mr. Assad still has a friend: Mr. Kucinich.

Kucinich today issued a press release, stating: "I don’t support the violence, I don’t condone the violence and by direct appeal to President Assad and in supporting those who are seeking freedom and serious reforms, I am working to end the violence. I appealed to President Assad to remove his forces from the cities. He told me he would, and today we learned that he has begun to do just that."

Assad didn't remove troops and cease hostilities; he simply moved them from one location to attack others.

Kucinich is the epitome of a useful idiot by his very words and actions.

What Is Dennis Kucinich Doing Meeting With Assad?

What exactly is Dennis Kucinich doing meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad? He's gone to Syria ostensibly on a fact-finding mission, but it's all too likely that he'll be used as a useful idiot by Assad's regime to spread the regime's propaganda.

Sana said al-Assad has briefed the two men on the current events in Syria and the process of an overall reforms Syria is passing through, underscoring the importance to "distinguish between the people's righteous demands, which the government is meeting through the endorsed laws and decrees, and the armed groups that take advantage of these demands to foment anarchy and destabilize the country."

It added that the two men have expressed keenness about Syria's security and stability "which is the basic pillar of the entire region's stability."

Syria has been gripped by more than three months of anti- government protests, however, the protestors' demands have snowballed from modest reforms to the downfall of the leadership who ruled the country for about four decades.

Syria blames the unrest on "armed extremist groups" that aim at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and establishing an Islamic emirate instead.

The Syrian government said 1,300 members of security forces have died since the eruption of protests in mid March, including 120 last week in north Syria, meanwhile, according to activists, more than 1,400 civilians have died and some 10,000 have been detained during the government's alleged crackdown on protests.

Assad continues his brutal crackdown against opposition protesters and for all the talk about reforms, Assad's actions show the cynical hypocrisy at work. Everything Assad does is in furtherance of trying to remain in power. Everything he's saying and doing is to remain in power. Leaked documents show just how Assad was trying to control the flow of information by limiting Internet accessibility.

The meeting with Kucinich was a calculated move to try and curry favor with the US that the regime is engaging in as brutal a crackdown as Khadafi's in Libya.

The Congressional Clown Circus

The Democratic leadership in the House, led by Nancy Pelosi said that they wouldn't engage in impeachment talks, and yet here comes Rep. John Conyers provides yet another Congressional clown circus by providing a forum where the participants all but initiate the articles of impeachment. Conyers, who wouldn't mind presiding over an impeachment hearing, is instead using the House Judiciary Committee as a forum to impugn President Bush at every turn.

He basically ceded the floor to Rep. Dennis "The Menace" Kucinich and his articles of impeachment, which everyone realizes will never leave the committee.

Just when you think the Democrats would realize that obstructionism and pushing the impeachment meme that is quite popular with the extreme left of the Democratic party (well, the party base), it's not an issue with most Americans, who are more concerned with the fact that the Democrats idea of an energy policy is to see just how high they can send the price of oil.

"I am really astonished at the mood in this room," commented one witness, George Mason University School of Law professor Jeremy Rabkin.

"The tone of these deliberations is slightly demented," Rabkin said. "You should all remind yourselves that the rest of the country is not necessarily in this same bubble in which people think it is reasonable to describe the president as if he were Caligula."

Professor Rabkin hasn't been paying attention nearly as much as his fellow Americans. Americans consider this to be the worst Congress ever, going by poll ratings in the past few months. Single digit approval ratings speak to this.

They rate Congress even worse than President Bush, and this is just part of the reason why. All this Congress appears capable of doing is engage in investigations of the Administration, holding kangaroo courts and providing a forum for Kucinich to hold sway.

Kucinich couldn't garner more than a few percent of the vote around the country in his failed bids to become President of the United States, and yet he gets to shop around his articles of impeachment that will make the Democrats look utterly foolish because they are all spawned from one inalienable fact - the Democrats, after approving of the Administration's decision to go after Saddam Hussein and provided authorization for the use of military force, decided to get into a policy snit with the Administration the moment things got rough, and claimed that the Administration lied.

Others appearing at this craziness include Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Vincent Bugliosi who's busy peddling a book, and Cindy Sheehan (late of her visits to Hugo Chavez and sucking up to anti-American leftists everywhere, but who has apparently been having trouble drumming up support for her campaign to take on Pelosi for her House seat).