Part Two: Bashar al Assad: The Eye Doctor Who Murdered a Nation

You know, it's a true friend who sees you digging your own grave and grabs a shovel and it's like, yeah, let's fucking make this whole bigger. It's a mark of friendship. Now. And you know, we had a lot of fun. No we didn't. Uh you're the co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast, I am, and uh we're talking about Bashar al Assad. So my favorite um probably micro penis holder. Oh my god, if you added six inches to his dick, you'd still need tweezers to find it. It's probably non existent,

which is why he's so angry. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's why he wanted to get his eyes. You know, he wanted to fix everyone's eyes so they could see his penis because he's being like to see it. So maybe I'll become an optometrist. Maybe someone will fucking see my penis everybody. I was going to go on this thing about how we shouldn't like demonize micro penis is, but then you made a really fucking good joke, and uh, we should have seized micro penis is because if you

have one, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters the fact that you can still you can still come, and that's all that matters. You can still have child. And if you can't come, that that's fine too. Uh, we're getting way off the subject of Bashar al Assad here. Well, I feel like I'll only demonize it if you are someone like Bachar la saw who who takes it out on other people by murdering yeah yeah, children, Like I would never make fun of anyone for having a squeaky voice.

But if you're like a little fascist media personality who argues about how all Muslims are monsters and you have a voice that sounds like you've been in haling helium for the last thirty years and your name is Ben Shapiro. I might make fun of that, like, hey, I'm popular, so anna. Uh do you know the name Mohammed Boiseiz No. Well, he was a twenty five year old man in the year two thousand ten. He worked as a street vendor

in Tunisia. His father had died when he was young, and Mohammed wound up supporting his family through a very rough economy, even managing to pay for one of his sisters to attend university. He seems to have been a real stand up guy, dropped out of school, you know, put his own dreams on hold in order to take care of like several brothers and sisters and like a couple of elderly relatives. Uh. Now, for some reason, local

police officers took a dislike to Mohammed. Uh. They regularly confiscated his wares, likely because he could not afford to bribe them not to do so. One day in mid December two thousand ten, this happened again, and Mohammed tried to seek redress through the organs of his local government. But Tunisia was a state ruled by an autocratic dictator and an ossified bureaucracy. That existed primarily to let people with family connections make money by fucking over poor folks

like Mohammed Boisiz. His quest ended at the governor, who refused to talk to him, even after Mohammed said, if you don't see me, I'll burn myself. Mohammed immediately left to do just that. He acquired a can of gasoline from a nearby station and lit himself on fire in front of the governor's office. He died on January fourth, two thousand eleven, after days of unspeakable agony. But in death, the governor and the dictator, a real president of Tunisia,

could not ignore Mohammed Boisiz. His death is generally seen as having ignited the Arab Spring, which overthrew the president of Tunisia as well as the dictators of Egypt and Libya. For a time, Bashar al Assad thought he would be safe from the fires of revolution sweeping through the Arab world. David lash is the writer who spent a lot of time with Bashar. We heard about him in the last episode UH. He wrote a book called The Fall of the House of Assad. It cites several articles that the

regime published during this time. Both in its own magazine Forward and in a Wall Street Journal interview with Assad quote. Both articles in the February issue reflected the presidents and the regime sense of immunity from the virus of protests spreading elsewhere in the Arab world. The editor in chief of the magazine, Dr Samim will bay It, is a professor of international relations in the country and one of its foremost commentators. He has access to high places in Syria,

and therefore his essays often reflect regime sentiments. For this issue, he wrote a piece entitled Lessened from Egypt West is

not best. In it, Mbaiad repeatedly hammers home the point that the dictators in the Arab world who had either fallen by then President Bin Ali and Tunisia or were on their way out President Hostnu Mobarik of Egypt and President of Doula, Sala and Yemen were being run out of office by widespread popular protest, primarily because over the years they had been the lackeys of the West, particularly

of the United States. So Assad and his cronies at first thought they would be safe from the Arab spring, because, of course, Assad hadn't been an American lackey Mbaiad's article ends ironically by accurately describing the forces then sweeping the Arab world, which they just didn't think We're gonna come for them. Quote. What is so beautiful about the Tunisian and Egyptian stories is that this time it wasn't flamboyant

and inexperienced young officers toppling the young king norma. Was it turbent clerics toppling an autocratic and aging royal like Iran nineteen seventy nine. It was also not US tanks rubbling into Tunisia, as was the case with Baghdad in two thousand three. It was the people of Tunisia, the young and the old, the innale actual and the unemployed. It was the glorious people of Egypt who said enough

is enough. What mubay It and other Assadus did not see is that the exact same forces that had made Tunisia right for revolution and demi crushing corruption that robbed young people have paths towards a decent life and left them hopeless, underemployed, and enraged. That was present in Syria

as well. While assad had opened up the economy somewhat, every reform was calculated in one way or another to benefit his core supporters or gain him new supporters, because every dictatorship in every country is just a gigantic gangster enterprise when you get right down to it. Wait, so they he thought that his people hadn't noticed what he was up to. Basically, he thought his people loved him and that they would not revolt because he hadn't been

a lackey of the US. He thought the Arab spring was people being angry at dictators in their region, uh doing what the US wanted. And he was like, well, I'm I don't like the US, so people will back me, Like obviously they're going to keep loving bashar God. These dudes. That's what's crazy, is like they have no sense of what's going on around them, Like not at all. No, that's what happens when you have the bat like arresting and torturing everybody who is like, maybe things could be

less corrupt. I guess you don't pay people to tell you anything negative. You pay people to tell you we have arrested X number of dissidents and they are in a dark hole instead of being like just f y, I like, so we took a survey and it looks like, um, people like think you're shady. Yeah, people don't like that we throw so many people in the dark holes that actually the dark hole approval rating is like eight percent. No no one in this yeah, no one almost no

one's we like the dark holes. That's the eight percent is the is the Macabat vote. They vote for dark holes, but everyone else really against the dark holes that we throw dissidents into. It looks like we're not We're not getting the numbers we were hoping for dark holes. We're thinking of rebranding the dark hole that we throw dissidents into. What about this rainbow circle? I love it? I love it. That's the I forget which one of us now is

the brand name? Yeah. In February two th eleven, Maria Siasna, a fourteen year old kid, was hanging out with his friends in the Syrian town of Dara. Tunisia's dictator had just been forced out of power, and these kids were ornery, so they scared up some red paint and daubed your Turn Doctor on the walls of their school. Now Dara is a fairly small rural town near the border with Jordan's At that point, Syria was in the grip of an intense drought, which had reduced crop yields and crippled

the already stumbling economy. Youth unemployment was particularly bad, and Maria and his friends had little hope of growing up in a world with many options for them if things continued on the way they were going. So they painted a threat against their dictator on the wall of their school, and soon after that all hell broke loose. Assad's men quickly arrested the tenth graders and sent them back to Damascus to be brutally tortured by a bunch of Nazi

trained torture experts. This was a pretty normal move from Mikabarat, but unknown to Bashar the in those secret policemen, the winds of the world had just changed. The people of Dara were quite suddenly unwilling to accept this kind of bullshit. On March of two thousand eleven, they took to the streets. Hundreds of people, many of them relatives of the arrested boys,

protested the regime. The crowd grew to thousands. B Shar's police opened fire, killing four and dispersing the crowd, But the next day, twenty thousand furious Syrians took to the streets, and the days that followed things grew more violent, and Mukabarat offices were vandalized, more protesters were murdered in larger numbers. Funerals of the dead became protests, and so the regime banned funerals. Yeah, when you're banning funerals, you might be

uh monstrous statalitarian dictating. Yeah, I mean it's crazy that these kids had no I do what they were about to literally like domino effect into but like how could they have possibly known? So, I mean you're banning funerals, it's like, then stop fucking killing everybody. Maybe like taking as a goddamn hint. If people are this upset, maybe you shouldn't be easy to reduce the funerals. Stop killing people. I guess common sense isn't a thing within regime, So

I don't know what I'm even saying. Yeah, I mean it's a type of common sense within the logic of murdering people, within regime logic where you're like, well, yeah, says that we, you know, have to murder everyone who stands up to us. Yeah, if you're a regime, it makes sense. Yeah, none of this work to stop the growing unrest. A single act of childish graffiti and Dara wound up being the spark that started the Syrian Civil War, which is so far at the deadliest civil war of

the twenty first century. According to David lesh Quote, it is almost certain that Bashar al Assad absolutely shocked when the uprisings in the Arab world started to seep into his country in March two thousand eleven. I believe he truly thought he was safe and secure and popular in

the country and was beyond condemnation. But this was not the case in the Middle East of two thousand eleven, where the stream of information via the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and mobile phones could not be controlled as it once had been. On March two thousand eleven, but Shar al Assad addressed his nation over the continuing unrest. He promised vague reforms, which of course he could not actually

deliver upon. Any reforms to reduce corruption would be taking money out of the pockets of his supporters, which of course he could not afford to do at the moment. Any actual political openness would be seized upon his weakness and lead to his fall from power. So he promised nothing, and ended his speech with quote, I shall remain the faithful brother and comrade who will walk with his people and lead them to build the Syria. We love the Syria. We are proud of the Syria, which is invincible to

its enemies. You know, I do wonder if he like he just was in over his head and started I mean not that I'm in any way defending LA, but I wonder if he was over his head and then just started to panic, like just being like yeah, yeah, yeah, kill it, kill kill mall yeah. And then now he's like, ship, Well, now that I've like in my panic have started acting like a full psycho, I guess I just have to

keep it going. Yeah. You know there's a version of this where that is what goes on, where he's kind of like a Czar Nicholas figure, and like the initial bloodletting is more accidental because of how the regimes set up, that's how the security forces respond. You the leader are left grappling with it. But then things hit a certain point and it's like, well they're gonna kill me or

I can kill all of them. Yeah. There is kind of like a vibe, like a really dumb vibe where he's like, I guess I'm a dictator now, Like it's like, you fucking idiot, But he had been before, like you operated Nazi torture dungeons, then let the CIA use them like Bashar wasn't. Yeah, it's he's there's definitely an aspect of this that is a guy like obviously he didn't want this. Nobody, no, none of these people want there to be a civil war because there's a chance that

like you get thrown out of power. Um, I don't know, you know, we'll we'll talk about that more by the end. We'll see what conclusion you come to about how how his journey on this. For most of the world, Friday April one was April Fool's Day. In Syria. In two thousand eleven, it was the Friday of Martyrs. This was the name given to a day of furious protests across the country, conducted in the name of the dozens who had been shot dead by security forces and the hundreds

who were currently being tortured. This time, but char al Assad ordered snipers up on the roofs of cities around the country. They fired randomly into crowds of activists and shot anyone who broke curfew. Next, according to Lesha's book quote in New May and June two thousand eleven, the regime continued to engage in a schizophrenic response to the protests.

While can hinduing to make some concessions and announce reform measures, the military and security forces intensified their crackdown in cities across Syria that were hit by demonstrations. To the outside observer, this approach may seem contradictory and indicative of fissures within the ruling elite on how to respond to the crisis.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the shar in his inner circle, it could be seen as two sides of the same coin in a way that came to be expected of the Assad regimes old and new. It was something of an axiom of power politics that one offers concessions only from a position of strength, never

from a position of weakness. Therefore, while there was also a practical side to the Assad approach in terms of repressing the unrest, it also clearly indicated that the regime wanted to portray itself is only making concessions and offering reform measures from a position of strength. Mhm, so he just okay, sorry and yeah, no, I mean he he wants to He's willing to give people concessions, but only

if he stays in control. And the only way to stay in control is to kill people, right, But he didn't really like what were the concession Like, did any did anything come of that? Yeah? No, not really, Like it was the same as the concessions he offered at the start of his reign, where it's like, I'll open things up, but like you already did that and then closed them down again because it was bad for you. Like why would you trust Bashar al Assad at this point? Uh? Yeah.

One of the people who died so but schar could offer reform from a position of strength was Hamza al Katib. He was thirteen years old when he went missing on the twenty ninth of April. His battered and abused corpse was returned to his family a month later. His family shared pictures of their boys torn up body on social media, and raged at his murder, spread viral. E Asad's government, of course, denied torturing the child. They had a doctor

who worked for the government examined the body. He concluded that all of the scars and holes and injuries were not consistent with torture. Bashar al Assad made a big show of visiting the family to share his uh sadness that this tragic and inexplicable death that he and his security apparatus had no role in the Like, Yeah, yeah, it looks like no no torture here, So sorry about your boy. What a mystery. Yeah, you know, based on you know, my work as an optometrist, I can see

there is no torture. M hmm. Yeah, his eyes look great, look good. Good piece of ship, yeah, real piece of ship. This photo up with the grieving family of a murdered boy did not shockingly reduce opposition to the Assad regime. A Facebook page was created in his name, garnering sixty thousand supporters. One commenter wrote, there is no place left here for a regime after what they did to Hamsa.

On July eleven, seven Syrian Arab Army officers defected from the military, forming the core of the Free Syrian Army. By November, the f s A was strong enough to launch armed attacks on the regime itself in this way and stops and starts the protests and street activism and violent state repression gradually escalated to full fledged warfare. In January of two thousand twelve, Neustra Front and his Lamist

rebel group declared their opposition to the regime. Whole cities wound up an open rebellion to the state in February two thousand twelve, but Shar had his army assault Holmes, the third largest city in Syria. Four hundred people, virtually all of them civilians, were killed on the first day. You see, Assad's army crumbled fairly quickly in the face of the rebellion. It had never been a particularly potent force, and many of its men had deserted for the other

side once the fighting started. At one point, he had less than five thousand soldiers in the whole country, so Assad relied heavily on random artillery strikes and equally random bombings by his air force, which was the one thing he had that the rebels did not. The Syrian air force was from the beginning Assad's greatest weapon against his own people. In August two thousand twelve, the regime was filmed dropping its very first barrel bomb on the city

of Halms. Now, and you know what a barrel bomb is Um, I'm gonna guess most people have heard the term. Yeah. It's probably the iconic weapon of the Syrian Civil War, and it's essentially a huge metal barrel packed full of high explosives and shrapnel, nails, metal bits, whatever. It all functions the same with a few dozen pounds of r d X behind it. A barrel bomb is the kind of weapon you deploy when you don't care who you kill. And uh, yeah, it's there's a video on YouTube that

I would recommend listeners watch. If you just type in a sod barrels, you will find it. Um it's horrific. Uh, one of the worst things I've ever seen. Like the wake of these bombings is um, almost indescribable. Uh. It's it's worse than what I've seen in the wake of US air strikes, which is pretty horrific in and of itself, But an explosive like this, it's just like a particularly awful way to wage war, like even worse than a hell fire missile. It's like I don't understand, Like he's like, oh,

you know, that's what's crazy. Like he's he says, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna give concessions I'm gonna work with you guys, so you don't keep protesting me. And then he just goes and like kills a town. What's what's the issue with the regime, what's everybody's problem? I'm gonna drop just barrels of death on you guys. Why is it? Why is nobody like me? Yeah, it's like, dude, like fucking read the room. Yeah, read the room. What are

we doing here anymore? I don't even this is it's so crazy, Like it's so hard to wrap your mind around someone who in a way, like when you first think about it, like he didn't want to become the leader. He had so much potential to just be a good human being in an office running a country, like coming from his point of view of being like I don't really want to run a country, like I just want to be this regular doctor like blah blah blah. It's like I could just be an easy going guy who's

like one of the people. Um. I mean, honestly, it goes back to bad parenting. Uh, but this is insane. It's like so insane that he was like, all right, let's just turn this around and kill everybody. Yep, Yes, I'm murdering. Yeah, and uh, he got right to murdering. Um. I'd like to quote from a Doctor's Without Borders article about the use of barrel bombs primarily in the city

of Aleppo during the fighting there. Barrel bombings and Eastern Aleppo were so unpredictable and widespread that they have sown fear throughout the city. It is extremely difficult for someone to take measures to protect their families and improve their safety. What contributes to higher levels of psychological stress. You never know when a bomb can happen. This is the problem. You could be at home having dinner, you could be sleeping, you could be walking to the shop. At any time

it might happen. Especially coming to Turkey. For those who have to go to Turkey for work or two unite family members, it is a very scary route as you don't know who you might meet and what might happen. You don't know if you will return home safe or see your family again. That's a quote from a Tarik,

a health worker in Alsama, Aleppo. So but Charlasad punished Aleppo and other cities for their disobedience by leveling the vast majority of the buildings there with endless reigns of barrel bombs during the four year battle for Aleppo, residents would celebrate whenever the weather was cloudy, because it meant that they would at least get a few hours break

before the next bombs fell. One staff member told Doctors Without Borders quote, one day when we were working at the hospital in eastern Aleppo was the day of a high number of barrel bombings. It was like the city was in chaos, and lots of people were being brought to us, dead and alive. I remember when two bodies were brought in, an old man and his small grandson. They both had the same name. They must have been

together when the bomb hit. The family was searching for them in all the hospitals of Aleppo, but couldn't find them. Their neighbors had also been bombed, so there was no one to ask about the whereabouts of these two. Finally they came and the bodies were identified. It was all just one instance, but still we all felt so sad. Yeah, yeah, no, one, that's so sad. There's like just no, you just don't know. You don't know what's going to happen at any point

at any time. You just live in fucking fear that the man who runs your country just may like casual decide to bomb your town or your home. Yeah, you're just like, oh, well, you know, one of those days. Oh, thank god for the clouds so we don't get barrel bombed. The president can't murder us today unless the clouds go away. Yeah.

Chris kozak Assyria research analysts for the Institute of the Study of War, explains that the regime's strategy with barrel bombs is to quote, inflict mass punishment against opposition supported populations or populations that were perceived to be supportive of the opposition in order to prevent the formation of a viable alternative to the regime. And it really seems to

have worked. Like the Free Syrian Army at the start was a really secular force run by a lot of really brave men, and it's sort of degraded into kind of a lot of bandits and extremists at this point, just because everybody at the start of the civil war who was like providing a viable alternative to Bashar's government

and like was a hope of civil society. Like he killed them all, um, Like that was a big part of his strategy is like, oh, they want to run Syria without me, Well I'll just murder everybody who can run Syria without me. Yeah, everyone's gone, Yeah, everybody's everybody's gone, and all the survivors are too shell shocked and terrified to do anything but hide. That's a strategy. Do we know how many people are left in his army? No? I mean at this point, he's conscripted a lot more,

and it's it's it's up to a higher level. But there was one point where they were essentially militias and gangs that were allied with the regime were way larger than the actual Syrian Erab army, you know, especially if you're talking like two fourteen. Yeah, he's got like help from Iran in other places, Yeah, yeah, a lot of yeah, help from Iran, help from his blah, help from help from Russia. Um B Shar's favorite target for his barrel

bombs outside of the crowdit apartment buildings as hospitals. On one day, he struck a left post in tent hospital with two barrel bombs, two cluster bombs in one rocket. Now, striking hospitals is a war crime, but Assad figures what's the harm in committing war crimes when you know nobody is ever going to punish you. They're not really crimes, then are they. He also loves bombing elementary schools, and one two fourteen attack he killed twenty five small children

with a single bomb. When interviewed by the BBC, Bashar al Assad denies his regime has ever deployed barrel bombs, saying it's a childish story that keeps repeating in the West. If someone who is against his people and against regional powers and the great powers in the West, how did they survive? If you kill the Syrian people, do they support you or do they turn against you? As long as you have the public support, it means you are defending the people. If you kill the people, they turn

against you. It's commons sense. You can watch people drop barrels out of Syrian Air Force planes on the buildings, but you know there's no like he's bombing hospitals because they're like treating people who aren't for him like that because they're in rebel controlled chunks of the city and kill them all. Yeah, a big part of it is just completely destroying any kind of resistance to the regime. That's the kind of war he's waging. Like, I was not against when the US went and bombed what they

thought were his chemical weapon factories. Everyone was offended by it, being like we're going to war. I was like, no, we're fucking doing something. Fuck this guy. It's one of those things. I mean, we didn't actually like I'm against it because it was completely useless and accomplished nothing. I'm not against attacking the Syrian regime and trying to destroy

their chemical weapon stock piles. But if you're talking about the Trump administration's cruise missile attack, like it just didn't fucking do anything, but it was I like that it was something to be like, we fucking see you, bro. Yeah, yeah, it's at least it's it's not nothing. Um So I'll give it that, like it's better than nothing. But I will say it didn't accomplish anything other than maybe scaring

him a little bit. But I don't even know how much it scared him because the next day he fucking released that photo of himself walking through with a briefcase, which is like, motherfucker, were you even carrying a briefcase? What are you keeping that briefcase? Like you fucking asshole. Fucking b shoe you you baby, you've got nothing. You know who's not an asshole walking with a briefcase through the ruins of his destroyed airfield. Anna, the advertisers who

support this show nice. Yes, that's the behind the bastards guarantee. None of our advertisers are bashar all assade. And watch the fucking next ad that gets randomly. It's going to Damascus Airport now open for business again, see the wonderful beaches. I would love to see Damascus if there was a way to do it without you know, putting, putting putting. Well no, I mean it's pretty safe for travelers. It's just you'd be putting money into the regime and I

don't want to do that. But Damascus is a city I've always wanted to say anyway, Yeah, it's incredible. My my Arabic teacher was a Syrian and he was from Aleppo, and this was back in two thousand six. Um. I just remember how much he would talk about how beautiful his city was, proud he was of his country, about how we created the alphabet, like that's a real thing that the Syrians aim. Yeah, fucking made math. Yeah, horrible tragedy.

What's happened not a horrible tragedy? Are our products and services? Was that a good ad break, Sophie? Do we do it right? No? Well it's done. Products, we're back, We're back after what I have to assume is the best ad break anyone has ever done. Um, it's gonna be like, do you like regimes? You're gonna love but charlads And you're like, wait, what just literally an ad for places on our side? He's like, hey, guys, I get a

lot of heat. But what you don't know is I'm actually quite self deprecating in a real fun guy and people love my giggle. He's actually he's hosting a new podcast about Phil Collins. That would that would be so wild. He's like, guys, I love Phil Collins and my first guests are Brad and Angelina. Check it out on the Sadcast podcast. I hate to say it, but that's a it's a solid it's a solid name. So we make that podcast. No, under no circumstances should we make that podcast? Cool?

You're not? Okay? Yeah, let's uh, let's not make that podcast. So. Yeah. You can watch dozens of videos of Assad's regime dropping barrel bombs if you want to see that yourself. For some reason, at least a hundred and eighty one thousand, five hundred and fifty seven civilians have been killed in battle by the Syrian regime, which is ninety five point seven percent of the total combat death toll in the Syrian Civil War. These are just confirmed dead, with total

expected fatalities over half a million. The real number is much likely higher. The regime has killed at least eighteen thousand, four hundred and fifty six children, nine three point six percent of the children who are known to have died in the Syrians Civil War. Now, that number leaves out a hundred and twenty eight thousand people who have been missing, in many cases for years, inside the secret prisons run

by the Bashar al Assad government. According to the New York Times quote, government memos smuggled out of the country show that officials who reported directly to Mr. Alissad ordered the crackdowns on civilians and new of atrocities. They ordered a harsh treatment of specific detainees, and complained of increasing detainee deaths as corpses piled up and decomposed. One government memo urged personnel to complete paperwork and protect officials from

future prosecution. Detainees are regularly beaten, hung by their wrists, beaten while crammed inside tires, shocked with electricity, and sexually assaulted. More baroque forms of torture include forcing detainees to act like animals, beat or kill one another, and dousing them with fuel and burning them. It's possible that more than a hundred thousand people have died that way, yeah, which

is for reference in Libya since two thousand eleven. If you include all of the deaths in the fighting to overthrow Kaddafi and all of the deaths in the violence since Kaddafi's overthrow, two nineteen fifty people have died from

the violence in Libya. But char Alassa it has tortured twice that many people to death, not counting the barrel bombs, not counting the chemical weapons, not counting gunfire, not counting mortars, not counting rockets, not counting Russian airplanes, just torturing people to death twice as many people as have died in Libya since two thousand eleven fighting God bless all them people, because fighting for what you believe in in the Middle East is suicides. Yeah, it's always for the most part,

not going to get the way you would like. Has not in a while. Uh now, after all this horrifying brutality, all these senseless deaths. I know what you're wondering, Anna, how has this war been for Bashar and his lovely wife Ozma. Well, your your face, you skin cancer. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like cancer, get your boys like this. These are the people to to happen to. But they'll probably both live to a hundred and three. Um, but I know you're curious as to

what their daily life has been. The good news is that thousands of their emails were leaked to The Guardian, so we actually have a pretty good idea of what they got up to in between all the barrel bombs and such. First off, so how did their emails get leaked? I don't know, It's just just something that happens. They confirmed it. The Guardian confirmed it with a number of different people, including recipients of the emails, that they were

legitimate and stuff. Um, you know, it's one of those things. How did fucking you know, shiploads of people's emails get leaked out these days? It's just the how what happens got the hackers out there? Them hackers. Now, Uh, first off, you're gonna guess what the assad's favorite TV show has been during the Civil War? Oh know, like what like Friends on Netflix? America's got talent? Oh my god, yea, they are such trash. They are basic bitches. I feel

comfortable saying that. Uh. Also big fans of the Harry Potter movies. There was some worry at one point that they wouldn't be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part two because of the war, but they did get a copy. So I'm actually not surprised by that because I bet but chars he's a lot of himself and like Baltimore, like, you know, this guy makes a lot of good points. This guy is making a lot of He's saying all the right things.

He was death eaters, Yeah, good luck. Yeah. Here's the Guardian quote in one email, all a sad laughs at democratic reforms. When his wife tells him she'll come home early one day, he quips, this is the best reform any country can have. That you told me where you will be. We are going to adopt it instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media and that funny how about you fuck you don't like his dictator women? Am I right? It's like, get the fuck out of here,

you're killing people. Al Assad joked with how deal al Ali, one of his media consultants, while Arab League monitors were in serious seeking to bring it into the carnage. Al Assad ridiculed the mission, sending al Ali a YouTube parody of the violence that uses children's toys. Check out this video, he wrote. She responded with ha ha ha ha ha o MG exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, what m this bitch? And there was a sad fucking looking up

YouTube videos while his forces are murdering, bombing hospitals. Yeah. The only vague suggestion one gets that Bashar might have something that approaches a conscience comes from an email he's sent on February five, two th twelve, on the day after his artillery had killed four hundred civilians in the city of Halms, pulping flesh and bone and concrete into a powdered slurry. If broke and lives, Assad sent his wife an iTunes download of a country song by Blake Shelton.

He wrote out some of the lyrics in the email. I've been a walk in heart heartache. I've made a mess of me. The person that I've been lately ain't who I want to be. Are you? I am fucking serious if that is not a reason to fucking blow his brains out, Like what are you even talking about? There's nothing relatable about you, fool, No fucking Blake Shelton, Like I would say, listen to Chris Christofferson, but Chris Christofferson's music would like destroy itself before it let it

self into a dictation. Honestly, I'm actually not surprised because he probably agrees with like Blake Shelton's like skittles are for gay people, tweets or something that Blake Shelton, he makes it. Yeah, exactly, Fucking Blake Shelton. You should be a shame too. Blake Shelton, You're a part of the problem. You're a part of the problem. I would be so bummed out if it turned out a dictator was a fan of any of my work like that. Would that

would be such a fucking bummer. Oh god, yeah, I'd be bummed out if I was JK rowling to know that they were watching movies based off my books even though like, you know, you didn't do anything wrong there, but like still bummer. Like the producers of America's Got Talent, like, oh no, they've been playing to the Assad demographic for years. That's a critical part of America's Got Talent. Do you think he's ever tried to make like a serious got talent?

I bet that's coming once the warrants and everyone's like performing at gunpoint, or it's trying out his hobbies. Him doing like a tight five. Yeah, it's guess who wins bar every single time every year. It's you again. But his wife is the judge, it's the talent, and it's him versus the memory of his dead brother. Yeah, he's just like, looks like he can in because he's dead. Oh, looks who's better at computers now? Bessel, Like, oh boy,

what a sad, sad, sad experience. In July of two thousand eleven, when tens of thousands of Syrians were taking to the streets to protest the hopelessness of life under the rule of the Assads and the brutality of the state security apparatus, Ozma al Assad ordered through her cousin bespoke jewelry from a small jeweler in Paris. She ordered four necklaces quote, one turquoise with yellow gold diamonds and a small puff on the side, one full black onyx

and amethyst and white gold diamonds. She stated that she hoped it would be ready in September, but she said that she understood if it took longer, telling her cousin, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to find jewelry. She ended the letter by saying, kisses to you both, and don't worry. We're well. See, someone needs to like take it upon themselves to um fill that jewelry with like poison gag us that comes out when they put

them on. She would be nice. I assume they have the jewelry by now, but if you can poison the Assades jewelry, clearly she's gonna buy more. I would say, do it, yeah, yeah, she's gonna buy If you're a French jeweler, just poison all your jewelry that probably we shouldn't be shouldn't be urging that. I assume other people buy French jewelry, only jewelry that's going to the ASSAD regime.

Only jewelry that's going to the Assad regime. Another email, sent in December of two eleven, as the protest campaign broke out into a full fledged civil war, Ozma messaged her husband quote, if we are strong together, we will overcome this together. I love you. Shortly thereafter, she ordered

a three thousand dollar of oz from Herod's Cool. Yeah, I don't like reading shops while this is all going around, she shops a ton and reading all this, I'm reminded of a quote I came across in a CNN article from former Bush administration officer Flint Leverett. He said of shar Al Assad, quote, I think whim and Mary says

a good deal about him. I think that he was actually correct, like the fact that he's married to Marie Antoinette here really really looking at photos of them together right now, and they kind of look like their siblings. They do a little bit, right. Yeah. They have like the same face, yeah, yeah, the same little randy face. Now, you'll notice that we've made it through nineteen or twenty pages of b char lassade history without talking about chemical weapons.

There's a couple of good reasons for this. One of them is that for the last couple of years, a pernicious series of myths and lies has cropped up, helped along by incompetent, senile, or outright ethically compromised journalists, claiming that the chemical weapons attacks by Baschar Lassade on his own people were false flags. These rumors have spread on the far right because actual fascists love Bashar al Assad since he is a fascist and he's doing what they'd

like to do to all of their political opponents. The same rumors have spread on the far left because it allows leftists to have an easy justification for why they don't think any action should be taken to stop the Shar from carrying out the greatest mass killing of the

twenty first century. There is no truth to this nonsense. However, I wanted to make it super clear that even if Bishar had never ordered a single chemical weapon strike, he is still the single greatest monster of the twenty one century. Even if he had never launched any Sarah, never dropped any chlorine like that ship is fucking icing on the piece of ship Dictator Cake, Sophie is h is putting two fingers in front of the camera, which means that this is clearly a great time for an ad break.

Nothing gets advertisers excited like talking about chemical weapons attacks. Now she's flipping me off, and I don't understand why. Anna, you look very uncomfortable. You know I will not get involved. You don't want to. You don't want to get involved with mommy and daddy fighting. No comment on what just happened, No comment on what just happened. Well, what's about to happen is products and services. I'm happier about the services and the products. Are we on break? I mean no

we I haven't said products yet. And the voice that I say, are you are you ready for us to be on break? Anna? Are you bored? No? But I was going to tell you something during our break. Oh okay, well products, we're back. And uh. The thing that Anna was going to tell me is that asthma al Assad does have cancer. Now she has breast cancer, so sometimes cancer gets it right. Yeah, that's it's fascinating. It's kind of funny that we said that and then all of

a sudden she got cancer. I hope it spreads to her husband. I'm sure it's aggressive karma because apparently I was just looking that she was offered asylum to get out of there, and she said no, and then she like came out against the like air strikes, being like so irresponsible for you guys to strike our chemical weapon factories. It's like, what, dude, what bit funk off with your

fucking I have an idea, suck a dit dude. Yeah. No, it's one of those things where I did look into it to make sure she had so many opportunities to get the funk out. And in fact, there's even suggestions that at one point, when the war was going more against the regime, they actually tried to flee the country, but she still stood by her man, so to speak, like she she was. There was at no point where she was like, bar, maybe we shouldn't be mass murdering people.

Maybe we could just take our ill gotten money and go live in France or something. They could have worked that deal out right. Also, I just saw a thing part of the emails that leak that she was saying that she's the real dictator. Yeah, she's joked about that a number of times. What the fuck, dude, you're such a bit. She's a monster. Trust beautiful people in power. No, no, no, no, no,

it's always bad. It's always bad. Uh, Yeah, they're just too damn sexy, which is why I did not support Barack Obama's election now, but but it did worry me how good looking he was. Um. Thankfully, now that we have an ugly man as president, everything's on the up and up. There's the same problem with George W. Bush. Too much raw sexual power was just I know, I know, we all did, we all did. Everyone at the press pool was just tweaking their nipples during his briefings. It

was it was. It was a problem now. The deadliest of Bhar's chemical weapons attacks occurred in two thousand thirteen, when he launched a barrage of rockets containing seren nerve gas on Gudha, a rebel controlled suburb of Damascus. Undred people were killed. The un confirmed, overwhelming and indisputable evidence of saren used at the massacre. Gary Quinlan, the Australian UN Ambassador and President of the UN Security Council, is

set in the report on the attack. Quote confirms in our view that there was no remaining doubt it was the regime that used chemical weapons. A more recent two thousand seventeen chemical weapon attack on kane Kun killed eighty six people. Doctors without Borders independently confirmed the use of chemical weapons in this attack. This attack prompted the Trump administration to fire cruise muscles at a mostly empty air base. Uh, Like,

there's a lot. Like you can go in a rabbit hole and read a bunch of people putting out like, oh, look at this detail of this picture means that these attacks were fake, or that there wasn't a chemical weapon, or that it was the rebels that did it. It's the same if you have spent a lot of time

looking at nine eleven conspiracies, it's the same bullshit. The difference is that some respectable journalists like Seymour Hirsch have gotten caught up in it because in his case, he's fucking old and doesn't know anything about chemical weapons, and uh is one of those people who is reflexively going to be like whatever America says isn't the truth. Even it's like fucking I've I've seen the US commit war crimes there have reported on them like fuck everything, but

fuck pretending these chemical attacks aren't real. There's been like three hundred and thirty documented chemical weapons attacks, like percent of them have been the Syrian regime. There have been a couple by like isis and whatnot who have like made like chlorine gas bombs and ship But it is

very well documented. You can what you can do, like go to the Bell and Cat articles documenting some of the more recent attacks where they've dropped gas canisters through roofs and like go through every picture of it and look at the documentation and trace back the research for

yourself if you really fucking want to. But doctors without Borders and the fucking you in observers who have tested like the fucking soil and people's bodies and done thousands of hours of research into this are all on the same page. And it's that the Assad regime is repeatedly deployed chemical weapons against its people. Fuck, I get angry about this. It's very fucked up. Shows how we keep

they really are. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's and this is I think one of the reasons there's a conspiracy around this is because a lot of people can't understand why Bashar al Assad would deploy chemical weapons on his own people in risk foreign intervention. There's this idea that like, oh,

it's just so risky, why would he do it? And I think the answer is that he took the measure of the United States during the Bush years, and for eight years he balanced helping the US with hindering it, and he watched our occupation of Iraq turned into a quagmire, and he came to a very clear and very accurate conclusion that the United States no longer had the guts to intervene seriously in a situation where intervention might cost American lives. And he gambled on that gut feeling and

he won it as simple as that. It's like Hitler gambling on fucking annexing the Sudetan land, like it was a gamble. It could have fucked up. He had, by some accounts, more to lose than to win, but everybody else was a fucking coward, so we won. That's how it works with dictators, Like I know, it's it's that's why I'm like, you know, I have no problem with us. Yeah,

I mean, I don't even know. Let's send it at this point, at this point, there's Honey Potter's and yeah, like at this point, I mean the Syrian regime in the Russian air forces pounding a province called i Lib which has like three million people in it. The vast, vast majority of humor civilians. I support trying to enforce some sort of no fly zone to stop those people from being massacred because the same fucking bombings, saturation bombing

is happening there. But like there's no good in two thousand eleven twelve, a good thing could have been worked out. That's that there's no possibility. Now there's too many people are dead, Like everything's fucked now, we didn't do a world Yeah. So um. The other reason he deployed chemical weapons is a little bit cannier. At the very start of the uprising against his rule, Assad had claimed that the forces behind the rebels were not Syrians but foreigners

trying to undermine his country. Lesh, who's probably the Westerner who knows Bshar's mind best, says that once Assad was able to convince himself of this, any kind of violence was justified, especially since his forces didn't have the manpower to fight street district to take back the country. Quote, so they need to use the asymmetric methods like chemical weapons to brutalize them. There's a good courts article tracking

out Asad's decision making on this. It quotes a couple of Syrian dissidents, who suggests that Assad was quote invoking something akin to medieval Western monarchs belief in the divine right of kings. Like his father, he always believed that he had the right to do whatever he wants to his own people, to kill them, torture them, disappear them. They are my own people, and that's the sovereignty I have explained siata Asad, he says, sees himself as the

father punishing his errant sons. The father is allowed to do whatever when the sons make mistakes. He doesn't understand that there's a social contract between the Syrians and elected officials. Yeah, don't kill innocent people. Don't massacred women and children and old people with poison from the sky or fire from the sky. Anyone could well, I mean it's a lot of countries do that. It's not as obvious a lesson. Not that I'm defending them, but like we could stand

to use that lesson too. Yeah. Whatever. The truth of Assad's thinking, time has proven him right on the bet that the US and the international community would never be willing to take a stand against him. In two thousand eighteen, Bin Rhodes, President Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor and host of Pots Safe America Right, he's one of the hosts of that. Wrote an article for The Atlantic titled Inside

the White House during the Syrian Red Line crisis. He traces out how the Obama White House went from shock and rage in an impulse to do something at the Syrian chemical weapons attacks, to gradually conferring with other world leaders and backing down. There are a number of reasons

for this. Fear of being drawn into a disaster like a rack, fear of having the Republicans use intervention against them as they had in Libya, concerns about Assad's chemical weapons winding up in the hands of terrorists, and the picture been paints. By the end of the decision making process, the ideal logs and the administration had been beaten down

by real politique. They had all been inspired by writings Obama had put out prior in his presidency arguing that the US could have saved lives by intervening in Rwanda during that genocide. But after weeks of debate over whether or not to enforce the Red Line in Syria been and the President had this conversation quote, maybe we never would have done Rwanda, Obama said the comment was jarring.

Obama had written about how we should have intervened in Rwanda, and people like me had been deeply influenced by that in action. But he also frequently pointed out that the people urging intervention in Syria had been silent when millions of people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There's no way there would have been any appetite for that. In Congress, you could have done things short of war, I said, like, what like jamming the radio signals they

were using to incite people. He waved his hand at me dismissively. That's wishful thinking. You can't stop people from killing each other like that, He let the thought hang in the air. I'm just saying, maybe there's never a time when the American people are going to support this kind of thing. In Libya, everything went right. We saved thousands of lives, we didn't have a single casualty, and we took out a dictator who killed hundreds of Americans.

And at home it was a negative. I saw what he had been doing, testing Congress, testing public opinion to see what the real maneuvering room was for his office. When it came to intervention in Syria. It was the same thing he'd done in situation room meetings on Syria and in his mind, testing whether anything we did could make things better there or whether it would turn out to be like Afghanistan and Iraq, if not worse. It

wasn't just politics he was wrestling with. It was something more fundamental about America, our willingness to take on another war, a war whose primary justification would be humanitarian, a war likely to win badly. People always say never again, he said, but they never want to do anything. You know. There's a real darkness to all that, obviously because politics is

all dark. But the idea that we were so damaged by what happened with the Iraq War and the Bush administration and Cheney that now like any sort of step of like we're going to another country, it doesn't matter if we're helping or what we're doing, sending troops, no matter what, there's such a negative reaction to it that that we can't do anything to help these people because the American public loses their minds, like we can't see

beyond what Dick, Cheney and Bush did. And so now all these people are basically just gonna die and we can't. We're just like literally like tiptoeing around being like should we can we Like it's it's actually very insane, how

literally I mean. It all goes back to fucking piece of shit asked the Bush dynasty and Dick Cheney and the fucking devils they were have ruined anyone's chance of wanting to go into Syria and being like, wait, let's go stop this, And it's it's a lot of that playing on a bit of racism too, even among people on the left, to where this idea of like, well but look at Iraq and it's like they're two different countries and two completely different groups of people. They're not

the same country, they're not the same place. And it's it's also not the same like why did Iraq go so badly? Well, you can kind of trace it back to the fact that the day after we conquered it, we fired the entire army and put half a million men out of work with their guns and they made an insurgency. Like a lot of it you can tie back to that, Like it's it's number one, the fact that like nobody in America has a very nuanced understanding

of these places or these struggles. Um. And it's like one of the things I tried to do in this episode is really trace out how the civil war evolved UM out of protests into fighting, because one of the things I hear a lot when I argue with people who are on the left is like, well, you know, the US was funding the rebels the whole time, and it's like, no, dude, Like we eventually started giving them some aid and it was too little, too late, and it was mostly shitty and small arms, and it was

like like, yeah, we funded some of the rebel groups, Like, but the people started the civil war by wanting to not have a dictator murdered them, and they were active in the streets four months, fighting and building connections between one another and building a revolution. Like and it's fucking racist to say that the Civil War only happened because the US came in and gave them money. No people are able to rise up against their dictators without us. They did it in Libya. We just helped them not

get massacred by Kaddafi's planes. They've done it everywhere. That's what people to get upset and be like, no more of this ship has nothing to do with us. It's the thing where like you pould be like, you know, the White Helmets are just like American plants because they've

received international funding. And it's like any given person who has done that job is braver than anyone who has made that complaint will ever be like you fucking cowards, like accusing them of faking attacks when they are running out every and pulling I've seen people do that job, pulling corpses from rubble. It's the worst fucking thing I can imagine. And fuck you for accusing them of being anything but heroes. Like It's I get really heated when I talk about this. I mean, what type of person

goes and does that? You know? It's like it's not someone who's here is. It's incredibly frustrating to be like, you don't know what these people do every day. You can't know what they see for every day, especially since most of them and I guess the only dead body you've seen is maybe at a funeral. You can't imagine what these people are going through, Like you just can't. Uh And I I'm so angry at everyone all the time because of Syria. It's uh so shout out to

my Syrian homies. Sorry, the real bastard at the end of this episode is is everybody. And I guess that's one of the things that that is really telling to me. It's like, you look at Barack Obama is a man who I have intense disagreements with, but I believe has always wanted to do the right thing. But he's also a really really smart guy and a fundamentally a scholar, and he thinks through everything too much. And Bashar al

Assad did not. He gambled. He's willing to gamble. Dictators usually are because it's the only way they can prosper, and Barack Obama was not willing to gamble, and as a result, half a million Serrians died. That's what it comes down to. And you can say Obama was right or wrong, that's your opinion. But this is the reason. This is the same basic logic that let Hitler get

as far as he did. Dictators being willing to do the reckless thing and gamble and brave conscience or not brave, but conscientious, decent, smart men not being willing to gamble and letting them get away with murder, right, yep, which is nevill fucking Chamberlain. Yeah, how do you even like

reconcile any of that? It's like, Wow, he really didn't step up because he was fucking thinking it out, like thinking of all the ways it could go wrong and what would happen, and it's like you can't do anything, Like there's nothing, you know, there's nothing. It's it's it's incredibly tough, and like it's one of those things where I do like I would say his failure to respond adequately in Syria is the single worst thing that Obama did.

But if I'm tracing it back, which American I blame most for Syria, it's still going to be George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Like you know, they're a team there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't, you know, I don't. I am one of those people that will push back a little bit and giving too much credit to Cheney and not enough to Bush because I think he was a more active partner than he a lot of people give him credit for. But both of them, I mean, he was

a fool, but he got to where he was somehow. Yeah, And I ironically having a little bit more of that shoot from the hip, gut attitude that Bushhead might have been helpful in Syria if like their positions had been reversed. But if we never invaded Iraq. Yeah, if only we'd picked the right country to invade and not fucked it up. I don't know, like that's even dumb to say, like all of it's dumb. Everything's fucked up. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of my Upbeat and Fun podcast.

You know, it's another reason why I say, uh, currently, because we're in such high tensions with Iran. Guess who's in bed with Iran? Syria a psycho path. So don't go after Iran unless you want, you know, some ally heat from like Syria and Russia. It's not great. We're not a great place. Let's not funk with the evils.

You know. This is part of the thing where it's like it makes it so hard with like picking a press residents, like you want to say, pick not a crazy person, but then we get the sanest man who's ever been president. I think that's probably is Barack Obama, and he's sometimes too careful and people pay the price for it. And now we've got a funk. I mean, it's certainly having a lunatic in charge is not the right thing, because who knows what the funk Trump's gonna do. Um.

But maybe presidents are a bad idea. Should just have like a parliament, like so classically European. Yeah, that'll work. I don't know, maybe so European. They don't have dinner to like eleven pm, like so European. That'll fix our problems. Or we just make a dog president. It would be funny. No war woof, couldn't be worse. Bud, buddy, you're so great, you're to do a boy said, you go president, So you go president. The dog still has not appointed a

Supreme Court. Or if the dog just makes everyone on the Supreme Court be dogs. M and then you just trained Supreme Court dogstice m. He peed on the lawyer. I think that means the case is thrown out. Classic move by spot m hmm. Chief Justice Spot spots court. Really groundbreaking legal precedent, not in channel, you know what I mean? Literally groundbreaking because he dug a lot of holes in the yard of the of the court. Yeah. Well,

did you enjoy this very fun episode of Behind the Bastards? Anna? Look honestly like you know me, I love me episodes about Syria. Oh boy, oh no, it's you know, a lot of this um starting from like how it started. You know, we talked about on our show. UM, a lot of the background I did not know, which, you know, it's very interesting. Of course, the brand Jelina hanging out with them is probably the most shocking thing I've ever

learned in my life. Um. And you know what a second I felt bad saying I hope asma Alissa gets cancer, but then it's like, now that she has it, it's like, oh wait, no, that's just how karma works. Like, if you're a horrible person, we might not be able to get to you, but here's praying that some sort of natural disease or cause comes for you. Because you don't seem to care about human life, So why should we

care about your human life? You know, like you're not you compared to the millions of innocence of like babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandparents who have died. Who the fuck are you? You don't deserve ship. Yeah, that cancer diagnosis is the most uplifting thing about this episode. Yeah, good for you, honey, good luck, good luck with that good stupid bitch, you know, I'm the real dictator. It's like, honey, that's not funny.

Millions of people are dead, Like, fuck you, you're that's not the joke to make when you're haspen is literally a dictator. Yeah, but I don't like these pure trash ass bitch anyway, you want to plug some plugables? Yeah, dropped down zone. Um podcast dictator here Anna, UM. You know I have a podcast Ethnically Ambiguous with Green Units. Check it out if you like news in the Middle East.

We have an episode called we Are Syria. When We're we talked, it was right after the air strikes happened that we kind of break down our feelings and what happened. If you want to go check that out, and then you know, of course all the other episodes. You know, currently we are talking about the year on US tensions situation.

If you want to listen to that. Um. Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Anna host n A N N A H O S S N I E H. You know, I'm constantly constantly talking politics and other good stuff and you know The Bachelor because that's where my interests lie in Middle Eastern politics and the Bachelor. And something interesting I noticed recently Robert does not follow me on Twitter, so I burnt. All right, all right, I'll I will correct that bad at social meds and I'm

mostly just ship post and argument. Yeah yeah, and I am a podcast viceroy. I always wanted to be a viceroy podcast general. No, I want to be a viceroy that seems like more fun, less responsibility, and more than Parliament will consider it. We'll let you know what we have decided on. Thank you well, Uh podcast Viceroy Robert Evans signing off. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Bastards pod. You can find uh this podcast

on the web at bond the Bastards dot com. I have another podcast called it Could Happen Here about everything that happened to Syria if it happened in America, which actually part of why I made the show was just a backdoor way of trying to make people empathize with the horrible things happen against Syria. Um. And also, you can find to shirts ont public. Some of them are ours, others or not. You can buy whichever ones you would like. Uh, Sophie,

do I have to say anything else? I do love about of you, and I love a d percent of the poison room that's sitting behind Anna right now. Oh my god, I love poison. We all we're all big poison stands, all right. Uh, listeners, chill out, enjoy some poison of your own, and or don't because that might be me inciting you to, uh to do horrible things. Don't do horrible things. UH, do good things or at least neutral things. Uh. But sometimes being neutral is you

know what the episode has done. It's over, Go do something else.