Epstein Secrets

ages and towns that abut it suggest a process of ethnic cleansing to prepare the way. An Alawite coastal ministate that folds in the port cities of Latakia and Tartus, home to the Russian navy's key warmwater port, may not be viable in the long run, but that doesn't mean the regime's core won't try for

fact that Mr. Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has tried to focus instead on how details be

unities in the cities. Between 1943 and 1957, Alawite migration tripled the population of Hama, and between 1957 and 1979 it quadrupled the size of Latakia. Many Alawites also joined the military. Since Ottoman times, Sunni Arabs had largely spurned army careers, but Alawites welcomed the opportunity

bout drone strikes that have successfully taken out enemy combatants in the War on Terror. The RQ- 170 Sentinel was deployed in the raid that killed bin Laden, and U.S. officials boast of eliminating two more of Al Qaeda's top operatives in Pakistan in recent months. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has cal

n my eyes, worth all the palaces in this world." He had pined to leave that poverty; he had come down from his mountain village to the port town of Latakia, on the Mediterranean, to get a secondary-school education; he had made it to the military academy, and the uniform had given him all that was now

ous successes, most notably the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Relations with Russia, which had become quite t

tarian war is one of the regime's preferred tactics. In March, Syrian friends have told me, its shabiha militia tried to spark social breakdown in Latakia by pretending to be a Sunni mob while it shot up Alawi areas and an Alawi mob as it terrorized Sunni neighborhoods. Syrians say the regime is armin

2 months. Tellingly, Obama already gave public voice to their rationale. "We will begin a transition this summer," he said a week ago. "By killing bin Laden, by blunting the momentum of the Taliban, we have now accomplished a lot of what we set out to accomplish 10 years ago." In other words, most of th