More Logrolling on Syria from the Washington Poat

"None of the battles alone represented the kind of decisive military victory that the rebels need if they are to claim control of an entire city or province and prod the international community for greater demonstrated the capacity to capture any of the country’s major cities, and whether they will ever be in support. The rebels, most of them grouped loosely under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, have not a position to dislodge the regime from the heavily guarded capital without help is in question." Liz Sly

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It should be added that the menagerie of rebel groups has not been able to hold ANY ground at all against government forces when they wish to retake it.   It seems Sly knows which way the wind blows at the Post.   It is well established that that the editorial board of the Washington Post is in thrall to the neocons and the Wilsonians.  Now, it appears that front page "news" is also to be the instrument of interventionist propaganda that the rest of the paper has been.

I make it a practise at Washington meetings on Syria to challenge the data.  I do this because there is no accurate data except that held under secrecy by the US Government.  Such challenges are protested as unfair because there is much "data" broadcast by the rebel propaganda machine.  This propaganda is inherently unreliable.

Nevertheless, we now have two Washington analysts, Jeffrey White of WINEP and Joseph Holliday of the Institute for the Study of Warfare (a Kagan/Nuland dominated thinktank) proclaiming that the forces of the Syrian government are in decline.   Thus far they say that their conclusion is based on rebel "data."  White is a retired DIA executive and analyst and Holliday is a military reservist who spent some time in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I suppose he is a captain or a major in the reserves.  Are they really basing their estimate of the Syrian civil war's "direction" on BS from the rebels or do they have better information than that?  Surely they are not feeding us more BS from the IDF.  If not that, then what?

One would think that the rise of pharaonic rule tinged green in Egypt would give pause to the naive and the cynical.  Surely the analogy to Syria is clear.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-rebels-making-advances/2012/11/25/1cfcc8cc-372c-11e2-9258-ac7c78d5c680_story.html?hpid=z3