Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 955

Obama Considers a 'Limited, Narrow Act' Against Syria

Just after Secretary of State John Kerry laid out the administration's case against Syria, President Obama addressed reporters over the newly-released intelligence summaries seen as the justification for a possible military strike against Bashar al-Assad's government. Repeating that he has not yet made a decision on Syria, Obama described the possibility of a "limited, narrow act" against the country in response to a chemical weapons attack last week that the U.S. now believes killed over 1,400 people. Obama added, "We're not considering any open ended commitment. We're not considering any boots on the ground approach."

According to the pool report from Dallas Morning News's Todd Gillman, Obama also addressed what he termed the "war weary" attitude of many people, including himself, going into the prospect of a new military intervention. “A lot of people think something should be done," he said, "but nobody wants to do it.” He continued: "There is a certain weariness, given Afghanistan. There is a certain suspicion of any military action post-Iraq. And I very much appreciate that."

As for the justification for military action in this instance, the President said:

"It’s important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal."

Here's the video, via CNN:  

       

The Failed Public Relations Campaign of Bashar al Assad's Family

Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday afternoon that at least 1,429 people were killed in the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria, including at least 426 children — evidence meant to bolster the case for an American military strike in Syria to deter the Syrian government from launching any more poison gas attacks. But if President Bahar al Assad is concerned with assuring the world he takes civilian deaths very seriously, his family isn't helping. Assad's 11-year old son, Hafez, allegedly posted a Facebook status on Thursday daring Americans to attack Syria. And Asma, Assad's wife, is counting calories. 

When Assad first came to power in 2000 (he was 34), he and Asma were hailed as a modern, cosmopolitan couple who could be reformers for Syria. Asma was born in Britain, graduated from King's College, and worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan before she was married. Now, it's becoming increasingly clear that Asma is standing by her husband's leadership and contributing to a propaganda campaign that ultimately has made the family look worse. Their son, Hafez, isn't helping matters.

A boy purported to be Hafez posted this missive to Facebook on Thursday, daring Americans to attack the country his father leads:

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He writes, "I just want them to attack sooo much, because I want them to make this huge mistake of beginning something that they don't know the end of it . . . Syria forever and everr [peace sign emojis]."

Asma, meanwhile, has been featured prominently in her husband's Instagram account, serving food at soup kitchens and playing with children. Many commenters aren't buying it: one wrote, "Shame on you! Did they not teach you the word 'genocide' while you were at Kings College??" Another said, "Clearly..Asma and Bashy have lost all sense of reality..they are living in a dream world..I can not believe some of their fotos on this site!!..insanity!"

In one of the Instagram photos, Asma looked to be wearing a Jawbone UP, a $129 bracelet that tracks how many calories she burns and how much she sleeps.

CNN reports that the first lady is currently just "hunkered down in Damascus." She could be online shopping — leaked e-mails between Asma and Assad show that she was "shopping online for jewelry, art and furniture" during massive anti-Assad demonstrations in 2012. Asma is known (and often criticized) for her penchant for Christian Louboutin heels. 

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A 2011 Vogue article that ran online called Asma a "rose in the desert," praising her style. The piece was published after anti-Assad demonstrations had begun in Syria, and it was as much of an oops for Asma as it was for Vogue (the magazine ultimately pulled it from the website without explanation). Still, the profile offers a peek into the Assads' isolated, expensive life. The three children all attended Montessori school at the time, and watched American movies on iMacs. The photo at left, from the Vogue shoot, depicts Assad, Asma, and two of their children casually playing on the floor of their home. Joan Juliet Buck, the writer who penned the profile, defended herself thusly: "I wondered how this English woman I had met who so believed in the youth of Syria could stand by and not do anything. I fell for the line this woman fed me."

In April, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a long-ranging profile of King Abdullah II of Jordan for The Atlantic. In it, Abdullah discusses the problems that arise when royal family members get too accustomed to being in power, which are all too relevant here.

"No, members of my family don’t get it. They’re not involved day-to-day. The further away you’re removed from this chair, the more of a prince or a princess you are. That happens in all royal families, I think. The further you are from this chair, the more you believe in absolute monarchy. That’s the best way of describing it. And that just doesn’t work."

For Asma, it may not be that she doesn't "get it," but that she doesn't want to. Before Syria was swept into civil war and her husband's power threatened, she spoke out for human rights. In 2009, she told CNN that the civilian death toll in the Gaza War, a a three-week bombing and invasion of Gaza by Israel, was too high. "This is the 21st century," she said. "Where in the world could this happen? Unfortunately it is happening. As a mother and as a human being we need to make sure that these atrocities stop."

       

Liz Cheney Is the Only Cheney Who Opposes Gay Marriage

It wouldn't be surprising for a the more conservative candidate in the Republican Senate primary in the very Republican state of Wyoming to come out against gay marriage — if that candidate were anyone except Liz Cheney. Cheney's sister, Mary, is married to a woman, with whom she has two children. Her father, of course, is Dick Cheney, the former vice-president who lobbied the Maryland state legislature to pass gay marriage in 2012. Her mother, Lynne Cheney, supports gay marriage too. It seems a little cold, but that seems to be Liz Cheney's style.

A push poll reportedly asked Wyoming voters, "Are you aware that Liz Cheney supports abortion and aggressively promotes gay marriage?" As The Daily Caller's Alex Pappas reports, Cheney responded with a statement saying, "I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage." The statement goes further than the usual states' rights argument against the Supreme Court forcing states to accept more liberal laws on social issues:

"I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves."

Not even by legislators? Someone has to make the laws. Perhaps this means Cheney only supports making marriage laws through voter referendum? 

That Cheney is willing to risk personal relationships for the sake of her political career fits a pattern. Cheney is running against three-term Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, who has known the Cheneys for years. She called him a "terrific senator" just last year. After she declared her primary campaign against him in July, Enzi told The Washington Post, "I thought we were friends."

       

Black Budget: Bigger Than The Justice Dept., Park Service & Head Start Combined

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MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL Pelosi: I Don't Want to be Speaker Again The Dark Phantasmagoric Netherworld Beneath the Capitol The U.S. May Be Ready to Bomb Syria, But Can You Find Its Capital

President Obama rarely discusses the nation's vast surveillance and security apparatus by choice. He'd rather talk about lifting families out of poverty, protecting the environment, or modernizing the nation's crumbling infrastructure. But when it comes time to put a price tag on policy values, it turns out that surveillance spending dwarfs funding for programs that are more often featured in the president's stump speeches.

Surveillance spending is now more transparent because of the "black budget," a new leak from Edward Snowden analyzed by The Washington Post. As The Post writes, the $52.6 billion budget

maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.

For the first time, we can really see exactly how this money is spent. Here's the breakdown of requests by program, obtained by The Post:

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That comes to around $14.7 billion for the CIA (which, The Post notes, is nearly 50 percent larger than the budget for the National Security Agency), and is greatly above outside estimates), $10.5 billion for the National Reconnaissance Program (largely to the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs spy satellites), and $11 billion for the Consolidated Cryptologic Program (which includes the NSA).

Those budgets are all vast. But it's when you compare them with other programs and agencies that the differences slip into orders of magnitude, particularly when compared with what the president is proposing to spend on programs his liberal base cherishes:

The Black Budget Is...

1.6 times larger than The National Institutes of Health budget: Obama is asking Congress for $31.3 billion in 2014 for the National Institutes of Health, the federal government's premier medical-research organization.

1.9 times larger than the Justice Department's budget: The Obama administration has proposed a fiscal 2014 budget of $27.6 billion for the Justice Department. Justice does, however, get a 6 percent taste of the black budget. Still, the 2013 CIA budget alone is equal to more than half of the department's total 2014 request.

5 times larger than the Head Start budget: Obama's proposed 2014 budget for the Health and Human Services Department requests $9.6 billion for Head Start, an early-education program aimed at infants and toddlers from low-income backgrounds.

6 times larger than the budget for high-speed and other passenger-rail programs: The Transportation Department's 2014 request includes an average of $8 billion per year over the next five years for freight, high-speed, and intercity passenger rail, part of the administration's aim to give four of five Americans access to the nation's high-speed rail network within 25 years.

20 times larger than the National Park Service budget: The 2014 Interior Department budget request includes $2.6 billion for the National Park Service, the agency in charge of protecting the nation's 400-plus national parks and managing 84 million acres of public land.

31 times larger than the Securities and Exchange Commission budget: Obama is asking for $1.674 billion for the SEC, an independent board in charge enforcing many of the anti-financial-fraud and—since 2010—partially overseeing the regulatory overhaul mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law.

34 times larger than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget: The 2014 Interior request includes $1.55 billion for the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency tasked with protecting most of the 1484 domestic species on the Endangered Species List, as well as managing 500-plus National Wildlife Refuges.

106 times larger than the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau budget: The CFPB—the Elizabeth Warren-designed consumer watchdog—says it plans to spend $497 million in 2014. The agency, which was born out of Dodd-Frank and charged with protecting consumers from predatory lending and other threats, has been a political flashpoint since it was created in 2010 and is a frequent feature of Obama's stump speeches on protecting the middle class.

But there's always a bigger fish...

But big though the "black budget" is, it can't stack up to the giants of federal spending: entitlements and defense.

The Congressional Budget Office projects the U.S. will shell out more than $500 billion to fund Medicare in 2014, along with another $300 billion or so for Medicaid.

The Defense Department's fiscal 2013 base budget request was for $525.4 billion, and—due to continuing budget resolutions—the department ended up netting $527.5 billion. And that doesn't include funding for Operation Enduring Freedom, which spent $86.5 billion in FY 2013, mostly in Afghanistan.

       

The Primate Picasso: How to Teach Chimps to Paint

Brent, a 37-year-old chimpanzee at the Chimp Haven sanctuary in Louisiana, might not know it, but he has just won $10,000 for an original painting. That's a sample of his work above. He made it using his tongue in lieu of a brush—his preferred method of artistic expression.

As the Associated Press reports, Brent's rising profile in the art world is thanks to an online contest organized by the Humane Society of the United States. While it would be fun to point at the award-winning humans bested by this prodigious chimpanzee, the contest was in fact only open to chimps. Here's a quick look at just how you go about holding an art contest for apes.

Embrace stylistic innovation. As we've already said, Brent paints with his tongue. Others employ brushes or point to the colors they want to use. Past chimpanzees, such as the late Congo from the London Zoo, have been known to paint with their long arms. Congo eventually completed more than 400 paintings, which were praised by the likes of Salvador Dali and Picasso. 

Hold on to the canvass. You can't give them too much artistic freedom. You just can't, okay? According to the New York Times, "the canvases that chimps paint on are generally held up to their cages while they work." Otherwise, the animals are liable to "throw it around and step on it."

Let the chimps decide when they are finished. Congo, the London Zoo chimp, apparently grew angry when rushed. According to Desmond Morris, a scientist who studied him, it was even worse when he was asked to continue work on a completed painting:

On the rare occasions when attempts were made to encourage him to continue working on a picture that he considered "finished," rather than on a new one, he lost his temper, whimpered, screamed, or, if actually persuaded to go on, proceeded to wreck the picture with meaningless or obliterative lines.

Get Jane Goodall involved. Because of course you should. In this contest, more than 27,000 people voted, but Goodall was also permitted to choose her favorite. It was by a chimpanzee in Florida named Cheetah; his painting came in second place in the vote and won an additional $5,000 due to Goodall's endorsement.

Don't expect any gratitude from the winner. Brent was unavailable for comment, according to AP. Said a spokesperson: "I think he's asleep."

Don't actually give the award money to the chimpanzees. It's not just that they wouldn't know what to do with it. It's that they're not in it for material rewards—they're in it for the creative outlet. When he was rewarded with a treat for painting, Congo reportedly seemed to lose interest in the work. In other words, chimps aren't capitalist pigs like you are. Which is why Brent's prize money is going to Chimp Haven.

Treat winners and losers alike with kindness. These chimps have been through a lot. Like his fellow Chimp Haven chimpanzees, Brent is a retired laboratory animal. Cheetah, the second-place winner, suffered 19 years of medical research, during which time he reportedly went through hundreds of liver biopsies. These animals have more than earned their retirements.

       

Ten Things We Learned from Pop Culture This Summer

For school kids and teachers and really everyone else, summer ends this weekend. Meaning it's time to reflect. What did we learn this season? Well, pop culture certainly taught us some things. Here are ten of them. 

Only Batman gets to be dark. It was great when Christopher Nolan took an already brooding superhero and turned him into a seriously grim and gloomy night crusader. But when that same brush was applied to someone as uplifting, can-do all-American as Superman? It just didn't work. The Nolan-produced Man of Steel had its moments, but most of it felt way too serious and heavy-handed for our high-flying hero. Director Zack Snyder should have let all the moody operatics to Batman and let Superman soar.

Netflix is a real network now. Sure House of Cards and Arrested Development got a lot of attention. But they were always going to. House of Cards was a $100 million production with huge names. Arrested Development was a resurrection of a cultishly beloved, canceled-too-soon network series. But Orange Is the New Black? That came out of nowhere. With only a minimal amount of marketing and very few bold-faced names attached — Jason Biggs is maybe the most famous person in the cast — Jenji Kohan's women's prison dramedy became something of a grassroots phenomenon this summer. (Mostly because it's really good.) Which means that Netflix can create a truly organic hit. And that feels like a big deal.

Pharrell Williams really wants to have sex. Between his two smash summer hits "Get Lucky" (with Daft Punk) and "Blurred Lines" (with Robin Thicke) it's become eminently clear that Pharrell Williams very much enjoys sex and would like to have more of it. Possibly with you! Crooning and grooving beautifully on both tracks, Williams provided the lusty background score to this sweltering season. But hopefully he satisfied his urges and can cool out a bit this fall.

People are still afraid of women. The reaction to Miley Cyrus's lightning rod performance at the MTV Video Music Awards was twofold. Some criticized Cyrus for appropriating, and objectifying, certain aspects of black culture. That's a legitimate, interesting debate and one certainly worth having. But then there was the contingent that was freaking out about a young woman (but not that young; she's 20!) displaying overt sexuality on stage. So we got a tiring lesson this summer that good old fashioned sexual double standards are still in play. No one bats an eyelash when Justin Bieber humps the air, but one errant twerk from Miley Cyrus and suddenly our children are doomed. Ugh. 

A troubled production doesn't always mean trouble. After months of reports about what a disaster World War Z had become — the entire third act was reworked, requiring extensive reshoots; star Brad Pitt reportedly clashed with director Marc Forster — pretty much everyone was convinced that, upon release, the zombie epic would prove an expensive dud. And yet, much to our surprise, it was one of the most enjoyable blockbusters of the summer, and went on to become Pitt's highest grossing film ever. The lesson being that often dreaded reshoots aren't always a sign of catastrophe. Sometimes they actually work.

But sometimes it does... Everyone was expecting the worst from The Lone Ranger. And guess what! It was really bad. The Lone Ranger ended up being an overlong, over-the-top slog of a movie, featuring a shtick that Johnny Depp's still selling but no one's really buying anymore. Audiences stayed away, as they should have. Depp and company pointed at mean old critics to explain the movie's terrible box office, but really, The Lone Ranger team had only themselves to blame.

The Daily Show doesn’t need Jon Stewart to survive (and thrive). When it was announced in March that host Jon Stewart was going to be leaving the Daily Show desk to go make a movie, we were worried. Stewart has become so synonymous with the Comedy Central show that it was hard to imagine that it could possibly function in his absence. But over the course of the summer, fill-in host John Oliver (a longtime correspondent) proved brilliantly that the show can carry on, and even flourish, in Stewart's absence. Some are even caleling Oliver the show's "heir apparent." Obviously, Oliver had a lot of great material handed to him this summer—his native Britain's royal baby, the return of Weiner and Spitzer, Edward Snowden—but he did it all with unique and surprising aplomb. We're excited for Stewart to return next week, but we also feel comfort in knowing that it would be fine if he decides to take another extended break. Or, y'know, retire. 

The summer's not just for blockbusters. If the beginning of the summer got us down, what with all of those empty, repetitive explosions, then the latter part of the summer restored our faith in the power of great storytelling. From the charm of The Way Way Back to the deftly conveyed sorrow of Fruitvale Station, the indies that made waves this season were more than worth the price of admission. Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, featuring a mind-boggling Cate Blanchett, is deservedly in more movie theaters than any Allen film ever, and Brie Larson's performance in Short Term 12 is nothing short of astonishing. Sure, Man of Steel's senseless destruction and The Lone Ranger's terribleness might have grabbed headlines, but these small films made a real impact on the people who saw them. 

Dome is a really funny word to say. CBS may have had a big hit with their Stephen King adaptation Under the Dome, but our big takeaway from the show was simply that "dome" is just a great word. Twitter was rife with Under the Dome jokes this summer, partly because the show was just so silly, but mostly because it's so easy to pun on the titular word. Vulture even hosted a Dome pun contest. Okay, so we didn't actually go seek Dome out when Time Warner Cable cut CBS from our televisions, but we still eagerly read what was being written about the show just to get a giggle. (Darren Franich's recaps at Entertainment Weekly were particularly good dome-reading.) This wacky show had domes inside of domes and we didn't even have to turn on our TVs to get a kick out of it. #dome. 

Shailene Woodley is the weirdest/best new star. Shailene Woodley gave a great performance in this summer's indie The Spectacular Now and may look forward to Jennifer Lawrence-style celebrity thanks to next year's Divergent, but the real reason we're smitten with her is because of her lovably kooky personality, which she's not afraid to reveal in interviews. Woodley seems to be part human part woodland creature. She's obsessed with herbs and wears Vibram FiveFingers shoes. Her Twitter bio reads: "gaia. aloha. rewilding. sacralizing the feminine. gratitude." She talks about her chaga mushroom tea and how she makes her own toothpaste, cheese and medicine. Oh, and she dreams so many dreams. She does. We can't wait for more. Never stop, Shailene. 

 

       

Do We Have Iraq PTSD?

[image error]Former President George W. Bush said "I refuse to be roped in" to the debate on Syria in an interview on Fox and Friends on Friday. Too late! Nearly every aspect of the Syria discussion — the strength of American intelligence, the role of Congress, the support from other countries, the long-term consequences — has been framed by the question of whether we're making the same mistakes we made in Iraq all over again. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday the government had reviewed intelligence on chemical attacks in Syria, and "I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment." On Thursday, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof argued that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "have left us with society-wide PTSD," making us too hesitant to use military force to stop the slaughter of Syrians.

The appeal of then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 was not just that he opposed the Iraq war, but that he'd opposed it from the beginning, calling it a "dumb war." The assumption was that in office, he would be smart enough to stop America from doing something so dumb again, even if almost the entire political and media world was pushing for it to happen. So it is not irrational that people are asking whether this Middle East intervention might be a repeat of history, given that one major difference between Syria and Iraq is that our ousting of a dictator caused a civil war in Iraq, while in Syria, one started without our assistance. 

White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest vigorously denied there was any similarity between Iraq and Syria in a press conference on Thursday. "We are not talking about regime change here," Earnest said. "We are talking about enforcing an international norm" — that governments cannot use poison gas on civilians. The Bush administration struggled to come up with evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but "we don't have to search high and low for that evidence," he said. There's even evidence of a mass chemical attack, he said, on "social media." On Wednesday, President Obama told PBS that action in Syria will be "limited, tailored" — "Not another repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about."

You can't really blame Americans for having Iraq PTSD, since so many old friends from the Iraq war have been popping up to endorse a military strike in Syria or suggest that war-mongering isn't as easy as it looks. On Wednesday, Donald Rumsfeld emerged to say that President Obama hasn't made a compelling case for "what our national interest is" in going to war in Syria. "Bush's attack on Iraq was multilateral. [Obama], who attacked Bush for being a unilateralist, will make a unilateral attack on Syria," former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted on Thursday. On Thursday, Politico's Jim VandeHei imagined what Dick Cheney would say, in the form of a Saturday Night Live skit in which Obama faces all the arguments and problems of Bush's invasion, but with a liberal tint. (Weirdly, Dave Chappelle beat VandeHei to this concept by several years, though Chappelle had a somewhat different artistic vision.)

Reuters' David Rohde asks, "Has Iraq shackled American power?" He writes:

Publicly debating the difficult choices that the United States faces in Syria is vital. It may help exorcise the ghosts of Iraq. Or it may show how that war shackled American power forever.

But the Iraq experience will be embedded in the way we talk about war for a very long time. It's sort of like how a few Iraq veterans I know would say we needed to "go 'Nam in Iraq," which would inevitably devolve into a debate over whether we fully went 'Nam in 'Nam. Take, for example, how American intelligence officials used a reference to Iraq to express doubts about the intelligence on Syria, telling the Associated Press it was "no 'slam dunk.'" The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reports this story was the result of an email investigative editor Ted Bridis sent to colleagues urging them to be skeptical of the administration's intelligence assessment so they would avoid making the same mistakes the media made in the run-up to the Iraq war. It seems reasonable to hope Obama does the same.

(Above, Obama at Camp Victory in Baghdad in 2009.)

       

John Kerry Makes the Case Against Syria: 'It Matters If Nothing Is Done'

In a fiery address to the media today, Secretary of State John Kerry laid out a strong and aggressive argument for taking military action against Syria. Kerry's speech was delivered at the same time as the State Department released a brief declassified report on the official U.S. assessment of the attack. 

Beginning with a lengthy list of "what we know," Kerry asserted the U.S. has evidence of not only the weapons used, but the location they were fired from, the location they landed in, and all backed up by satellite imagery and witnesses accounts. They also have numerous reports from hospitals in Damascus that treated patients displaying telltale signs of gas poisoning. He also claimed there was evidence that Syrian chemical weapons experts were on the ground before the attack making preparations and ordering soldiers to take precautions, like gas masks. In all, he said there is "high confidence" that the Assad government is responsible for the attack.

White House released this map regarding areas in #Syria affected by chemical attack on Aug 21 pic.twitter.com/hi82rPfERm

— Circa (@Circa) August 30, 2013

Most importantly, Kerry cited the hundreds of videos and photos taken immediately after the attack ("all hell broke loose on social media") and later corroborated, that became key pieces of evidence for the international community. He stated that the U.S. puts the death toll from the August 21 attack at 1,428, with 426 children killed. 

After laying out the legal case, Kerry moved on to make the moral case for striking back. Calling Bashar al-Assad a "thug" and a "murderer," Kerry said that "It matters if nothing is done." He also argued that American credibility was on the line if the U.S. is not willing to do what it says it will. Vowing that the response would not be a repeat of Iraq or Afghanistan, Kerry urged Congress and the public to support the action saying that, "The American people are tired of war… but fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility" and the nation must ensure that "the most heinous weapons will never be used against the most vulnerable people."

Right now @mitchellreports asks important question: Kerry's case so strong, does actual attack that is coming match that strength?

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) August 30, 2013

You can read the entire government report below, via The Washington Post. You can also watch Kerry's full speech via The New York Times website.

U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons by The Washington Post

       

Why We Need American Reporters in Syria

Despite all the coverage of Syria this week, there are only two American journalists on the ground — Wall Street Journal reporter Sam Dagher and CNN TV correspondent Frederik Pleitgen. The danger, along with how difficult it is to get the necessary visas to report in Syria, limits the West's ability to report from the scene, but the journalists on the ground tend to add something crucial to the story — the perspective of actual Syrians. While most Syria coverage wonders what the U.S., France and the U.K. think of a strike, Dagher and Pleitgen's reports have been more concerned with what Syrians on both side of the war hope and fear. 

Many Syrians fear the moment #UN chem. weapons inspectors leave tomorrow #US will strike #Syria #Damascus

— Sam Dagher (@samdagher) August 30, 2013

In an article and accompanying video published earlier this week Dagher interviewed Mounir and Samir Fandi, members of the pro-regime National Defense Force. The two brothers joined the Homs, Syria branch of the NDF after their father was killed. Dagher wrote:

Mounir worked as a technician at the country's telephone company. Samir was a traffic cop.

Life for the 40-year-old brothers changed abruptly 20 months ago. Their 85-year-old father and another brother were killed by rebels at a fake checkpoint in Homs—the Fandis believe for no other reason than belonging to the Alawite minority that dominates the Syrian regime.

Another Dagher report found that many anti-regime Syrians are also wary of a U.S. strike. "I am not with [Assad] and I do not like him, but I want to live. I fear for my wife; I fear we won't be able to leave our homes because of the chaos," a well-to-do merchant residing near Assad told Dagher. "The U.S. will only bring us more problems," an activist in a rebel-held town told him, adding that the U.S. should provide the rebels with better weapons instead.  

In an email to The Huffington Post, Pleitgen emphasized that both sides of the Syrian Civil War have the support of the people. He wrote: 

I think, especially at the beginning of this conflict, it was often portrayed as though it was the Assads and their military against the people. But there are many here who support the regime even though they are very critical of it. They are afraid of the alternative, and afraid of losing their very secular and open way of life.

Over 15 Western journalists have gone missing from Syria in the last year, and even The Washington Post has been unable to secure a visa for more than a year. But the journalists who manage to report from Syria are answering the questions the world hasn't been asking. 

       

How to Get $280 from Apple for Your old iPhone Right Now

Today, Apple is launching its long-awaited iPhone trade-in program, meaning you could get up to $280 in credit toward a new iPhone. (If you read this post on how to play your cards right, that is.)

That $280 is reserved for people with 16GB iPhone 5s in optimal condition, which, let's be honest, is not a "gently used" phone. Most consumers won't get that $280: The best an iPhone 4 or 4S owner can hope for is $120, according to TechCrunch's Mathew Panzarino. Even so, with a little luck and our assistance, readers might get enough money to help cover the cost of one of the new devices — rumored to be an updated iPhone 5 and a cheaper version called a 5C — said to hit stores in just a few weeks. Here's how to get the most bank for your device:

Step 1: Have a Working, on-Contract iPhone 4, 4S or 5

Apple will only accept in-use iPhones with current wireless company contract. That means: No unlocked phones, phones with lapsed contracts, or water-damaged devices that won't turn on. In addition, it doesn't sound like Apple will give store credit for models older than the iPhone 4 — at least the pilots of this program mentioned by Panzarino didn't offer any money for anything older than the 4.

Step 2: Clean Your iPhone

According to 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman, to evaluate a phone's worth, an Apple employee will judge how new it looks and feels, including the following: "Display quality, button quality, overall hardware damage, engraving, and being able to be powered on and used normally." Some of that stuff will depend on the overall wear and tear of the device, but a shiny screen can't hurt.

Step 3: Bring the Squeaky Clean iPhone to the Apple Store 

The new effort, called the "iPhone Reuse and Recycle Program," differs from Apple's former recycling initiative in that it takes place right in an Apple store. Rather than mailing in used phones, dissatisfied iPhone owners can get gift cards right at the Apple store after going through the trade-in process, which we'll detail below. 

Step 4: Detail How Careful You Were with Your iPhone 

The in-store employee evaluation will include a "series of questions about the condition of the device," adds Panzarino. It's unclear what the Apple Genius will ask in addition to his or her examination of the phone. But, just like a job interview, it's advisable to present the best version of an iPhone's history to get the most out of it. 

Step 5: Obtain $280 Gift-Card

After the evaluation, an Apple employee will punch in all the collected information into Apple's EasyPay terminals, which will then determine a value. That amount, which is hopefully something close to $280, will come in the form of an Apple gift card to be used for the purchase of a new iPhone. (And nothing else.)

Step 6: Buy Brand New, On-Contract iPhone 

No doubt that Apple is offering the program in part to keep its customers buying iPhones, rather than switching over to other, increasingly popular options like the similarly-priced Samsung Galaxy S III and S IV or the HTC One. Ergo, the "gifted" dollar amount can only be used for another iPhone. In addition, Apple is also require upgrading iPhone owners to sign or renew contracts with wireless companies. Even with all those stipulations, consumers who get the full $280 will get a significant discount on an iPhone. New iPhones generally cost $600, or so. So, that's about half off the retail value.

Once you trade in your old iPhone for the new one, an Apple store employee will take your SIM card and set up the new phone. And, just like that: You got a deal.