cia
Amid all the reporting on the horrors happening inside Syria, former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst John McCreary has been taking a contrary view on his NightWatch blog. His analysis shows, he believes, that the violence is isolated and that a lack of any apparent threat in Damascus, the capital, means Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power is tighter than many of us think:
Readers are justified in wondering why the government in Damascus has not collapsed. The reason is that the government is not now and has never been threatened by a governate-level insurrection. The fight is in local neighborhoods and most are on the political or geographic periphery of the governates, posing little threat to central authority…there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army. There is unrest in Syria, but there really isn’t much of an insurgency.
If McCreary’s former DIA colleagues are reaching the same conclusion, it’s no wonder the Pentagon is leery of getting involved.