Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
's regime in the lead-up to the Western military campaign against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group.
Officers from the agency have been conducting discussions in Damascus with members of Assad's intelligence network as well as senior Syrian diplomats, despite a recent assertion by British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond that a pact with the dictator would not be "practical, sensible or helpful," the Mirror newspaper reported.
The United States has also denied any coordination with the Syrian government or its close ally Iran regarding the air campaign against the Islamic State, which has carved out a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq and declared an Islamic caliphate there, killing thousands of people in the process.
"We warned Syria not to engage US aircraft," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
...a valley girl who woke up one morning and found she was spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State...
said on Tuesday. "We did not request the regime's permission. We did not coordinate our actions with the Syrian government."
"It makes sense that MI6 would try to make inroads with Assad by talking to his people, first through proxy channels like other Arab nations, but then directly," an unnamed source was quoted by the Mirror as saying.
"It may be there are no face-to-face meetings with Assad himself but behind the double-speak of foreign relations it is perfectly normal for them to see his senior people. It would be staggering if Britannia's intelligence agencies were not talking to Assad's people. The talks they have within Syria are of invaluable benefit to Britannia's security."
According to the report, Britannia is also acting under the assumption that Assad's agents could possess information on the British nationals who are in Islamic State captivity.