Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Despoiler of Deraa...
was slowly losing his grip on power, citing defections and fighting raging increasingly close to Damascus
...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat...
Washington offered new support to its NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
ally Turkey after Syrian forces shot down one of its fighter planes and also pushed back on Russia's insistence that Iran should take part in a planned international conference on Syria.
"Clearly, Bashir al-Assad has been slowly -- too slowly -- losing his grip over his country," White House front man Jay Carney said on Air Force One as President Barack Obama
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today...
flew to a campaign event in Atlanta.
"I would note that recent high-level military defections to Jordan and Turkey are another testament to the regime's loss of control over the situation in Syria."
"It is clear, however, that Assad is desperate to hang on to power at all cost, as evidenced by his continued use of air power and Shabiha gangs."
A steady stream of high-ranking military officers have defected to Turkey in recent days and several pilots have made their way to Jordan.
Carney said it was also a "fair assessment" that deadly combat around elite Republican Guard posts in the Damascus suburbs between rebels and army units was a further sign of Assad's declining authority over his country.