{"id":187204,"date":"2013-05-15T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T23:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/15\/yes-we-have-to-get-deeply-involved-in-the-syrian-civil-war\/"},"modified":"2013-05-15T18:25:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T23:25:00","slug":"yes-we-have-to-get-deeply-involved-in-the-syrian-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/15\/yes-we-have-to-get-deeply-involved-in-the-syrian-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, We Have to Get Deeply Involved in the Syrian Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the putative &#8220;good guys&#8221; in Syria has  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-22519770\">been caught on tape eating a dead soldier&#8217;s heart<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,&#8221; the man says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier&#8217;s corpse. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Abu Sakkar is the leader of a group called the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, an offshoot of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Al-Farouq Brigades. He insults Alawites, the minority offshoot of Shia Islam to which Mr Assad belongs.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime,&#8221; Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, told the BBC. &#8220;This one particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, does <b>anyone<\/b> now think that it&#8217;s a good idea to choose sides in this clusterf%$#?<\/p>\n<p>Well,. anyone without a history of insanity, or members of the Senate with the last name of McCain, anyway? (But I repeat myself)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the putative &#8220;good guys&#8221; in Syria has been caught on tape eating a dead soldier&#8217;s heart: A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[981,1032,964,986,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-crimes-against-humanity","category-foreign-relations","category-middle-east","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}