Epstein Secrets

rtners in very strong term terms. And we believe we did. That does not mean that negotiations are dead. That means negotiations have hit a snag: As Mark Twain rightly pointed out, the news of their demise is greatly exaggerated. So I believe we need to have a reassessment of how we want to proceed — every

said to be American-supplied. This humiliating defeat shows the rise of the Islamist rebels, most of whom oppose political dialogue with President Bashar al-Assad's regime and call for the establishment of a Qur'anic-based state. It also demonstrates the near-collapse of the FSA, which the west had hoped would

s no military solution for Syria, although that may be self-evident, I do not believe that every player in this game believes that. Does President Assad believe that? President Assad believes that at the end of the day you need a political solution. But I believe that those who are pushing for a U.S

ng whatever role he and Russia are playing in this process. And it fails to address the risk that what happens in Ukraine does not end in Ukraine. Mark Twain observed that while history never repeats itself, it does sometimes rhyme. In the combination of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the collapse of

ing Saudi, the kingdom is nervous of what might be next. Similarly with Syria, where, with a second refugee camp being built in Jordan and with the Assad regime looking like exerting control again, that would leave hundreds of thousands of refugees permanently in Jordan, which is already vulnerable.

oratory, you couldn't have done much better. Syria presents a profoundly different situation. U.S. policy has always been driven by the hope that the Assads would change and the fear of what might replace them if they fell. Three additional realities ensured a U.S. response quite different from the one fo

ng different. There simply is no reform option, and there never was. Genuine reform means dislodging the bricks holding up Assad- Makhlouf authority. Bashar Assad's open-ended presidency, the crony capitalism practiced by his cousin and other members of Syria's elite, the abuse practiced by the all-powerful secur

by Brooke Allen Paul Dry, 259 pp., $16.95 (paper) June 9, 2011 -- "Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives," wrote Mark Twain after visiting Syria's capital in the 1860s. "She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more befo