Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, President Barack Obama cautioned against judging recent barbaric attacks by ISIS as unique to Islam. He pointed to (among other things) depredations committed by Crusaders over 900 years ago.
On January 15–just four days before the commemoration of General Robert E. Lee’s birthday–The Daily Beast ran a story claiming Lee would have approved of the removal of Confederate battle flags from Washington and Lee University and that Lee wrote in a “self-serving” manner, post-Civil War, to cover his tracks on secession.
A video recently surfaced that allegedly shows a branch of the Syrian army forming a platoon of suicide bombers. The video, uncovered and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on December 30, has not been independently verified outside of MEMRI experts.
Lebanon has implemented a new law requiring Syrian refugees to retain a visa before entering the country in an attempt to limit the prodigious flow of refugees from war-torn Syria into their nation.
The government of Libya, a state currently fighting a civil war, has banned all Palestinians, Sudanese, and Syrian nationals from entering their country.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited his Syrian troops in Jobar to discuss the damage various anti-government factions have done to the state. Speaking just northeast of Damascus as the beleaguered country entered its fourth year of a civil war, he had little hope to offer his troops.
