Syria Live Coverage: Airstrikes Continue Around Damascus

Photo: AFP1942 GMT: Fighting Near Border with Lebanon.

NOW Syria reports from the border village of al-Qasr, just inside Lebanon, where insurgent fire hit for the first time:

Al-Qasr [did not] feel like a place hit by lethal rocket fire just two days ago. Despite an army statement Sunday declaring its increased presence in the area, there wasn’t so much as a routine checkpoint impeding our entrance. In the village center, all shops were open; adults and children alike going about their business as usual. It could have been anywhere in the Beqaa.

Except, of course, for the two crumbled walls near the main mosque, results of an unprecedented series of rockets fired Sunday by Syrian rebels that, for the first time, left one resident dead and up to nine injured (another was killed by the same attack in Hosh al-Sayyid Ali, a nearby village on the Syrian side of the border). The blood of 23-year-old Ali Hassan Qataya, light brown by now, still spans the width of the street where he died.

“He was just visiting,” said a local resident who did not give his name. “He lived in Beirut, and came here to visit his fiancée.”

Why, then, was Qataya killed? The Syrian National Coalition, the opposition body recognized by over a dozen countries as the representative government-in-exile, said Monday that “the Free Syrian Army was forced to respond to [the] repeated aggressions” of Hezbollah, whom it accused of carrying out “military operations on Syrian territory.”

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Syria Live: Mass Deaths from Airstrikes

Sudden demonstration in the Mehdat Basha Souk in old Damascus on Sunday

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Sunday's Syria Live: Assessing the Insurgency

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2006 GMT: Lebanon. Insurgent commanders have confirmed their forces responded to Hezbollah strikes by firing shells into Lebanese towns on Saturday and Sunday, but said there were no attacks on Monday.

"If we have to, we will target civilians just like they do. Our civilians are not less valuable than theirs. Hizbullah is killing arbitrarily in Syria," one commander said. Yesterday, we responded. We hit back at Hizbullah's positions."

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Syria Live: Assessing the Insurgency

Claimed footage of a "barrel bomb" that killed between 12 and 24 people in Saraqeb in Idlib Province on Saturday

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Bahrain (and Beyond) Live: Protests Build Again Before Grand Prix
Saturday's Syria Live: "We Are Stronger Than Those Who Would Divide Us"

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1655 GMT: Protest. A sudden demonstration in the Medhat Basha Souk in Old Damascus:

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Syria Opinion: The Danger of Confusing "Islamists" and "Jihadists" (Khan)

Mass demonstration last month in Raqqa, soon after the city was taken by insurgent forces including Islamists

See also Syria Special: The Media Creates the "Al Qa'eda Myth"
EA Video Analysis: The "Al Qa'eda Myth" and Syria

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The commander --- a Dutch dentist of Syrian origin who called himself simply ‘Doctor’ --- was a member of the Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful Islamist group in the vast array of factions fighting against the Syrian regime. His was a common perspective amongst the Salafi Islamists I met in northern Syria: measured, well-thought out and intellectually consistent, drawing on the realities of a war inexorably descending into factional chaos. Syria is on a knife’s edge, they told me. The regime will fall but most didn’t expect the fighting to end there. They feared a larger sectarian war and were practically begging the international community to help them prevent it.

It was a stark contrast to the few jihadists I encountered, whose only cerebral quality seemed to be their proficiency with weapons. Those men, aligned with the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al -Nusra, spoke in terms familiar to a Western audience: global jihad, the re-establishment of the Caliphate, and, most frighteningly, perpetual war until their rule over Muslims is achieved.

Conflating the two groups is like mixing Christian fundamentalists with the Amish. And yet, Western governments continually cringe at the thought of Islamists, particularly Salafis, gaining a foothold in the various revolutions playing out in the so-called Arab Spring.

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Syria Special: The Media Creates the "Al Qa'eda Myth"

One of the pictures accompanying the scare stories of Al Qa'eda taking control of part of the Syrian insurgency (Photo: AP)

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This is the story of a story.

Or, rather, this is the story of the creation of a myth --- the myth that Al Qa'eda has taken over parts of the Syrian insurgency.

This is the story of how that myth --- based on failure to consider sources, let alone evaluate them; built by exaggeration and distortion --- points to the media's failure to responsibly cover important developments. More importantly, it indicates how that failure can have political consequences which are counter-productive and dangerous, contributing to poor decisions by policymakers.

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Syria 1st-Hand: The Gazans Who Fight with the Insurgency (al-Ghoul)

Rally in northern Gaza for the Syrian opposition, January 2013

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On leaving the house of the Salafist leader, who insisted on remaining anonymous, I was able to get an interview with the families of two Salafists who had participated in the battle in Syria, and who were declared dead by al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra on the Internet.

When I reached the house of the deceased Muhammad Qunayta, his brother refused to talk to me, despite having earlier confirmed the meeting.

However, the women poured their hearts out to me, expressing their sorrow for the sudden and tragic death of their son.

The sister of the deceased said, “Before he traveled, he was watching several videos from Syria and bitterly crying for the souls of children, women and wounded people. Then, he told us he was going to Turkey for trade purposes. We found out later that he went to Syria to carry out a martyrdom there.” She added that her brother’s conscience pushed him to fight in Syria. In his last days, he used to repeat, “My conscience cannot rest with all this injustice in Syria.”

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EA Video Analysis: Obama Re-Brands the War on Terror to "Associates of Associates of Al Qa'eda"

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Five minutes --- prompted by a Washington Post article, fed by the Obama Administration, which received far too little attention --- on how the Obama Administration is expanding the authorisation for the use of deadly force to "associates of associates of Al Qa'eda":

So President Obama, his military, his CIA --- they don't have to go out anymore and say, "Will the real Al Qa'eda please stand up?" They just have to say, "Whether you're standing up of sitting down, you're a target."

US Feature: How the Obama Administration Killed 3 US Citizens in Yemen (New York Times)

See also EA Video Analysis: Drones, President Obama, and Rand Paul's Filibuster --- "More Macbeth Than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"

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Abdulrahman al-AwlakiThe missile strike on Sept. 30, 2011, that killed Mr. Awlaki — a terrorist leader whose death lawyers in the Obama administration believed to be justifiable — also killed Mr. Khan, though officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted. The next month, another drone strike mistakenly killed Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father. Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose.

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US Politics Video and Transcript: President Obama's State of the Union Address

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PRESIDENT OBAMA: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow Americans, 51 years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power, but partners for progress.”

(APPLAUSE)

“It is my task,” he said, “to report the state of the union. To improve it is the task of us all.”

Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.

(APPLAUSE)

After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years and less foreign oil than we have in 20.

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US Feature: Justice Department --- Yes, We Can Kill American Citizens Overseas with Drones (NBC and DeYoung)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel Maddow features the Justice Department paper, "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen"

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The United States can lawfully kill a U.S. citizen overseas if it determines the target is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document.

The document defines “imminent threat” expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being “continually” planned by al-Qaeda. “In this context,” it says, “imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity” as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.

It says that such determinations can be made by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

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