A wave of suicide bombings hit goverment installations in Damascus earlier today, which the regime blamed on an alliance between al-Qaeda and the "Zio-American conspiracy." Maysaloon, after dimissing the daft official explanation, can't decide if the responsible culprit is one of Assad's cronies or an opposition group. Robin Yassin-Kassab is inclined towards the former view. Daniel Serwer looks to the consequences:
I share the natural inclination to disbelieve the regime, which has established for itself a clear and consistent record of lying about everything. But it may not matter: these bombings represent an enormous escalation of the level and kind of violence in Syria. It will encourage both regime and protesters to ratchet up their rhetoric and intensify the physical conflict. While I might hope that will cause massive defections from the Syrian army, I think it far more likely it will reduce the numbers of people willing to go to the streets and improve the regime’s chances of repressing the demonstrations. The regime will target Sunni Islamists. Some of the Sunnis will respond by targeting Allawites, Christians and other regime loyalists. From here it is easy to go in the direction of sectarian civil war, no matter who was responsible for this morning’s bombings.
Adding to Serwer's worries, human rights organization Avaaz has come out with a new, significantly higher death toll estimate of 6,200, about 10% of the murdered dying after being tortured. Mitchell Prothero examines how Assad may be spreading the horrror to Lebanon. These Homs residents chant for help from the security council:
This man's eyes were gouged out by Assad thugs:
What happened to this man appears to be equally brutal:
The Dish 