Under the Assads, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language at school, or even from speaking it in the military. The result is a generation of Syrian Kurds, many now in late middle age, who can't write their own language.

The dead cannot speak. But hitherto unknown information has emerged from the confidential archives of the Syrian presidency and foreign ministry, published in a new book by Bouthaina Shaaban, who spent ten years as Hafez's interpreter and is still an adviser to his son Bashar.

As soon as the legitimate Lebanese government is convinced that the conditions have ripened and that Lebanon is able to maintain stability on its own... Then, the Syrian forces will return to their homeland.

Among the achievements celebrated in Trump's first 100 days are the 59 cruise missiles launched at the Syrian airfield from which the gas attack on civilians allegedly came, and the dropping of the 22,000-pound MOAB bomb in Afghanistan. But what did these bombings accomplish?

Moscow and Washington have evolved a delicate process for 'de-confliction' in the tight Syrian airspace, where accidents or miscommunication could be disastrous.

ISIS is in many ways a creation of the Syrian regime.

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

That U.N. Security Council resolution requires getting Syrian troops and intelligence officials out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese can have elections here this spring that are free and fair and free of outside influence.

When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defense rush in.

I have also been saddened, though hardly surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime.

The fall of the Syrian regime is in the interest of America and Israel.

I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.

Syrian influence has not ended yet. It is going to be a very long path.

A majority of the Syrian people believe in the regime and support Bashar al-Assad.

The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.

ISIS and radical Islam have declared war on us not because of anything we have done - not because we are a friend to Israel and not because we have not yet toppled the bloody Syrian dictator Assad. ISIS and radical Islamists hate us for who we are. The irony is, we ourselves do not know who we are.

We know that ISIS desires operationally to use the Syrian refugee program to infiltrate countries, to use migrant flows as a way to gain an operational foothold in other countries.