Bleeding Syria and other notes

After running around all morning, including a fascinating meeting with the affable manager of Syrian TV (I will interview him later) one of the prime news presenters, quite a bit of walking, and catching up with the owner of the Bab Sharqi hotel where I’m staying, the bus ride from the old city to city centre is actually a relief. It’s largely not crowded when I get on, and while hot from the day’s searing heat when moving wafts of less-hot air help. Best, Fairouz is playing the entire 45 minute ride.

At the hotel earlier, I ask about the mortars I heard close by the Old City around 10 this morning. Staff at the hotel don’t have any news on today’s mortars.

But H, the hotel owner, tells me about a friend of his killed a few days ago. “My friend was martyred by a mortar three days ago. He was a pharmacist… at the pharmacy over there!” he said, gesturing towards a pharmacy a few doors down the street.

“He was at Bab Touma at the time, walking on the street, and a mortar fell there. Such a shame, he was such a kind man, so intelligent.”

Because I always feel it important to give name and face to the martyred, I ask about him. “He was around 60, married, had 2 kids.”

H is usually teasing and laid-back, but remembering his friend he becomes flat.

“They want to burn Syria from within, want to leave these factions fighting each until Syria is burned down and Syria is bled-out.”

Quoting from Tony Cartalucci’s June 2014, “Bleeding Syria is Now the Agenda: Elections are a Battle Won, but the War Goes On“:

The goal of “bleeding” Syria if regime change failed, was documented by US policy makers in Brookings Institution’s “Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change,” which stated:

“The United States might still arm the opposition even knowing they will probably never have sufficient power, on their own, to dislodge the Asad network. Washington might choose to do so simply in the belief that at least providing an oppressed people with some ability to resist their oppressors is better than doing nothing at all, even if the support provided has little chance of turning defeat into victory. Alternatively, the United States might calculate that it is still worthwhile to pin down the Asad regime and bleed it, keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention.”

Bleeding Syria is now the agenda – which is the only reason they are still arming and training terrorists on Syria’s borders, predominantly in NATO-member Turkey to the north of Syria, and in Jordan to the south.

Later, I read on Sana:

Terrorist mortar attack on al-Aqsaa quarter in Damascus claimed a life of a civilian on Sunday.A Police Command source told SANA reporter that terrorists fired 4 shells that hit near Burj al-Rous building, on Youhana al-Dimashqi school and near al-Soufaniyeh park in al-Qasaa.

A citizen was killed and another five injured when terrorists fired rocket shells on Mhardeh city in Hama. A source in the province told SANA that 8 rocket shells exploded in the northern and eastern neighborhoods of Mhardeh city, killing one citizen and wounding five, among them children.