Anne Barnard reports from Beirut for the New York Times on the war on Syria. The Angry Arab has several times called out her biased and misleading writings. But today's report on Syrian air attacks is probably the worst she has ever written:
In Talbiseh and across Syria, insurgent fighters who oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the foreign-led militants of the extremist group called the Islamic State are being pummeled by a new wave of attacks and assassination attempts.
…
Insurgents of all stripes, except for the Islamic State group, say the Syrian government appears to be stepping up its attacks on them ahead of the threatened American air campaign. Pro-government and antigovernment analysts say Mr. Assad has an interest in eliminating the more moderate rebels, to make sure his forces are the only ones left to benefit on the ground from any weakening of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.Mr. Assad has maintained from the start of the conflict that he and his allies are the only force in Syria capable of battling the extremists effectively. But Islamic State activists in Homs said on Wednesday that there had been no recent government airstrikes against the group, adding to opposition suspicions that Mr. Assad prefers to focus on attacking his other opponents while letting the Islamic State’s unchecked brutality argue the case to Syria and the world that his rule is the best alternative.
Barnard is insinuating, not for the first time, that the Syrian government is not hitting ISIS but is solely hitting other insurgents. The "moderate", human liver eating insurgent groups the U.S. supports have claimed several times that there is some truce between ISIS and the government.
But that is a lie and Anne Bernard knows it is one because even her paper, the New York Times, reported on intensified Syrian air force attacks against ISIS targets only some ten days ago:
Raids by Syrian warplanes killed at least 25 people, most of them civilians crowding into a bakery, in the northeastern province of Raqqa on Saturday as government forces continued air attacks on territory controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the extremist Sunni militant group.
The Syrian government has increased airstrikes on the group in recent months after it took over government military outposts in Raqqa in a series of newly assertive attacks.
Guess who wrote that report, just ten days ago, about "increased airstrikes on the group in recent months". Yes, the same Anne Barnard who now quotes and supports the false claims that the Syrian air force does not hit ISIS.
If there is something like journalistic honor Anne Barnard surely lost it.
There is of course a reason why Barnard is lying about the Syrian air-force attacks on ISIS.
Those attacks have indeed intensified and have become much more precise. During the last months Russia delivered new Yak-130 traing jets to Syria which are modified to enable ground attacks. The Syrian air-force MIG and Suchoi jets were update too and are now much more capable of precise targeting. The Syrian air-force is by now said to fly more than 100 sorties per day.
These new capabilities make it, of course, completely unnecessary for U.S. planes to attack ISIS targets in Syria. The Syrian air-force is quite capable of doing that on its own. Where it could need additional help is in intelligence on ISIS targets.
But the U.S. aim is "regime change" in Syria by whatever means and with total disregard of the consequences. Admitting that the Syrian air-force is capable and willing to attack ISIS would take away the pretense for those U.S. air strikes that are meant to destroy the Syrian government and to achive "regime change".