Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
The Scourge of Hama...
admitted in an interview with Germany's Spiegel news magazine that his government had made "mistakes" in the country's brutal conflict.
But he again denied that his forces used chemical weapons in an August 21 attack that led to threats of a U.S. strike and eventually the U.N. resolution requiring Syria to turn over its arsenal.
A team of disarmament experts from the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based in The Hague arrived in Damascus on Tuesday and began their mission on Sunday.
In the interview published Sunday by Spiegel, Assad said his government was being "very transparent" with the U.N.-OPCW team.
"The experts can go to every site. They are going to get all the data from us, they will verify them, and then they can make a judgment about our credibility," he said.
He also dismissed assertions by U.S. President Barack Obama
Jedi mind meld...
that Syrian forces carried out a chemical attack that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburbs in August.
"We have not used chemical weapons. This is wrong," Assad told Spiegel.
"And so is the picture you're drawing of me, of someone who kills his own people... Obama presents not a single piece of evidence, not a shred of evidence. He has nothing to offer but lies."