Brutality of Syrian Rebels Posing Dilemma in West

[morningfog]

The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men.

The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.

“For fifty years, they are companions to corruption,” he said. “We swear to the Lord of the Throne, that this is our oath: We will take revenge.”

The moment the poem ended, the commander, known as “the Uncle,” fired a bullet into the back of the first prisoner’s head. His gunmen followed suit, promptly killing all the men at their feet.

This scene, documented in a video smuggled out of Syria a few days ago by a former rebel who grew disgusted by the killings, offers a dark insight into how many rebels have adopted some of the same brutal and ruthless tactics as the regime they are trying to overthrow.

As the United States debates whether to support the Obama administration’s proposal that Syrian forces should be attacked for using chemical weapons against civilians, this video, shot in April, joins a growing body of evidence of an increasingly criminal environment populated by gangs of highwaymen, kidnappers and killers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world/middleeast/brutality-of-syrian-rebels-pose-dilemma-in-west.html?_r=0

[Catherina]

1. Prince Bandar's cannibals. rapists, child-killers and priest killers have not been endearing

Prince Bandar's cannibals. rapists, child-killers and priest killers have not been endearing themselves to the population.

Leave it to Kerry to say those savages are moderates.

[KurtNYC]

2. Where is the "red line" for cannibalism ?

[morningfog]

3. IMO, there needs to be a big ass red line drawn around Syria that we do not cross in any

way with our military.

[MineralMan]

4. There are no good guys on either side of that civil war.

That's basically true everywhere in the Middle East. This is why the West fails in meddling in that region. The conflicts are centuries old, and still continue. The West has done nothing to improve the situation, which is why I believe we should pull out of the entire region immediately and let the people who live there duke it out as they will.

If the West arms one group, and it wins, those same arms will become the arms of the tyrant once again, and may be turned on us, if we are there and meddling. The West has no place in any of these conflicts. We should:

1. Withdraw completely.
2. Refuse to supply any armaments to anyone in the region.
3. Use economic means to starve the battle.
4. Not favor either side in any conflict.

Let the Middle East figure it out and deal with it. Will that mean that innocent people are killed? Of course it will. That has always been the case in civil wars and internal struggles. We cannot stop that, whatever we do.

[blazeKing]

5. no dilemma, nothing will stop us from war with iran

certainly not peace activists or concerned citizens

[Autumn]

6. This will be one major fuck up.

[JayhawkSD]

7. According to Kerry...

...these rebels are a very small minority and are located only in the north. The large majority of the rebels are very nice fellows who are setting up civil governments in the towns they control and are holding polite converstaions with the peoples in those towns, washing their feet, building houses for them, and restocking their libraries.

He said so at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearings on the Syrian issue and both Dempsey and Hagel, while remaining silent, nodded in a sage and solemn manner as he was speaking. Of course, they may have been falling asleep rather than agreeing with him, but...

[Jesus Malverde]

8. bump..nt

[Jesus Malverde]

9. In the video attached to the article you can see the soldiers were tortured before being killed.

Their backs, bear witness to the prolonged beatings they were subjected to before they were executed.

It's no surprise seeing as saudi and other arab states have emptied it's death row to fill the ranks of the "activists".

[Go Vols]

10. Syrian Jihadists behead Catholic priest

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Vatican updated the acount. The priest was shot with multiple bullets and not beheaded.It now appears those reports, owing to the nature of the conflict in Syria, were correct except that the attendant video may not depict the martyrdom of the friar after all. Instead, the video appears to show that another cleric, as yet precisely unidentified, was brutally murdered.

http://catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=51537

I didn't click on the link to the video as I don't care to see a man getting his head cut off.

[polly7]

12. I clicked on your link but no further.

Apparently there were two victims shown being beheaded, although Father François Murad wasn't one of them and was instead shot while defending the nuns.

[Union Scribe]

11. Every time I think I understand how utterly messed up this is

I find it's only the tip of the iceberg.

[pampango]

13. It should pose a dilemna as should the brutality of the Assad regime which

according to Amnesty International has committed the vast majority of the war crimes during this conflict.

The struggle in Syria began peacefully in spring of 2011, but after about half a year it turned violent when the regime deployed tanks and other heavy munitions against the protesters. Some of the latter took up weapons and turned to violence in revenge. Thereafter the struggle spiraled into a civil war, in which the regime showed itself perfectly willing to attack civilian city quarters and kill indiscriminately. The struggle has killed over 100,000 persons. As the regime became ever more brutal, the rebel fighters were increasingly radicalized. Now, among the more important groups is Jabhat al-Nusra or the Succor Front, a radical al-Qaeda affiliate.

http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/attack-syria-prolong.html