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Rob Wallace / ABC
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad sits down with ABC News Anchor Barbara Walters for an interview aired Wednesday. It was his first on-camera interview with an American journalist since the uprising in Syria began last March.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied ordering his troops to kill peaceful demonstrators, saying in an interview that only a "crazy" leader would slay his own people.
"No government in the world kills its people, unless it is led by a crazy person," he told ABC News' Barbara Walters in an interview.
Peaceful protests against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, were met with massive force as soon as they began in March. Now Syria is creeping closer to civil war as armed opposition groups organize and move into some city districts.
Walters interspersed the interview with video of alleged fighting and pictures said to show evidence of the ongoing crackdown. The United Nations has accused Syrian forces of crimes against humanity, rape and other sexual crimes against protesters, including against children.
Army defectors ambushed dozens of Syrian troops and regime forces gunned down civilians. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
Syrian activists say around a quarter of the more than 4,500 deaths they have recorded in nine months of protest have been among the security forces. Most foreign media have been excluded from Syria, making it hard to verify events independently.
"There was no command to kill or to be brutal" in Syria, he said. "Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government, not the vice versa."
The White House rejected Assad's claim that he has not given any order to kill peaceful protesters.
"It is just not credible," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
"The world has witnessed what has happened in Syria. The United States and many, many other nations around the world who have come together to condemn the atrocious violence in Syria perpetrated by the Assad regime know exactly what's happening and who is responsible," he said. "I don't think anybody who watched that interview would find Mr. Assad's answers credible."
'Dictator by accident'
Assad conceded that some members of his armed forces had gone too far, but said they had been punished.
"Every 'brute reaction' was by an individual, not an institution, that's what you have to know," he told ABC's Barbara Walters.
After the interview, Walters described Assad as a "dictator by accident" and a "mild-mannered opthamologist."
The Arab League has threatened to impose sanctions on Syria unless armed forces are verifiably withdrawn from towns and cities and a political dialogue is opened with opposition representatives. Major Western powers as well as neighbors Turkey and Jordan are calling on Assad to step down.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that Washington and its NATO allies wanted Assad to make way for a government ready to establish the rule of law and protect "the rights of all citizens, regardless of sect or ethnicity or gender."
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Then YOU SIR are crazy. As 'leader' of your country you can stop your tugs from killing civilians.
Guess what Assad? Having made that statement, you just proved to the world that you are in fact crazy as a loon and way out of touch with reality!
Crazy people are not aware of their disease... By definition this guy is completely insane
Look at yourselves in the mirror, Power Leaders !!!..Look at what YOU Become; YOU LIE-ing, two- faced Ugly Bastards !!!........
Perhaps Mr Assad has very little control in his own country ....
It certainly not in American interest to see the current military leaders take over the country by a coup d'etat .... BUT any disturbances in this arena are in the interest of other states in the region, and can ultimately lead to a less organized Arab union ...
Reporting live from Creedmore, this is Barbara Walters
Will someone please fit this guy with a Hughie jacket and shoot him full of Thorazine please !!!!!! He has lost it . A nice padded room might help also .
He must think the rest of the world is as stupid and uneducated as the general populations who are forced to live under any of the many dictatorships in the Middle East.
Oh,...okay Bashar, i guess the Syrian military decided on it's own to undertake a brutal crackdown against civilian protestors and you had nothing to do with it b/c you're just the President.
Do you even realize that you have insulted the entire population of the Middle East? Can you explain the uneducated doctors, lawyers, students, etc., that protested in Egypt in Syria? I'm willing to bet the population of Egypt has just as many educated citizens as we do here in the U.S.
Thank you Ray for being realistic.
Only a crazy leader won't relinquish wrongfully attained power when the majority of his country is rioting over it and his own army is defecting.
Crazy, or simply deluded.
Truly funny...all leaders in the Middle East must be crazies! Most of them are Muslims.
In the Middle East?!!!
Someone give this man his prozac!
Just in total denial -- and afraid of losing his millions if his detractors ever overrun his palace. Just like Idi Amin, Josef Stalin, Adolph Whatshisname from Germany, Muammar Qaddafi, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez (is he still alive), and Mao Tse Tung. All delusional and very powerful because they controlled the GOLD!
What did they expect him to say. The world can judge his actions....and yes, he is a power hungry and crazy person!!! Along with being a LIAR!!
what he's saying is that he's a puppet of the party! not entirely impossible, but in that case he doesn't belong in the place that he's in now, unless again they hold him against his will and they threaten to kill him and his family, a little too far stretch of the imagination, but you never know with this crazy baath party.
Only a nation of 'nuts' fights Israel's wars agaisnt its many enemies to the tune of $2 trillion plus - Then continues threatening its remaining enemies. Remember 'before' Israel the US had no enemies in the Middle East.
"dumbass...they blew up your world trade center because US was in afghanistan."
Well, there's an interesting piece of revisionist history.
45?? Really? So your argument is one of actions from almost 70 yrs ago? The delorean was a popular car, Mel Price just finished 22 terms in office, Harry Truman, Tupperware was just invented, and first commercial flight to Europe occurred. Just a few things have happened since then so try to re-load and fire again.
morphine carnival has been on morphine way too long!
(((morphine carnival))) banned, rereg of multiple accounter Morphine Carnival/l/.
US/CIA & Israel/Mossad's incitements in Syria at a vost of millions bpaid by - guess who? have made the situation 'difficult' for Assad, that's true. But, as the United Snakes (US/Israel) attempt to reconfigure the Middle East to their strategic neeeds as they have done or are doing so in Libta, Iran, Stria, Somalia, Yemen, the going will get tougher and tougher and one day the US will rue the day they allowed that 1/2 of Zionist hell to formulate America's foreign policy. In the end, no matter how many people Assad kills, it will be but a tiny fraction of what the United Snakes (US, 5.9m in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Central America and now Somalia, Iraq, Yemen and now AF/PAK where millions have been murdered and savaged by the Great Satan, and tens of thousands murdered, maimed and left living on the bare ground where their homes once stood and more that will be murdered in the furure to accomodate 'that @!$%#ty little country' <As someone once said> in the Middle East).
After looking at your posting history, I can see you carry a tremendous amount of hatred for this country and Israel. There are other place to live in the world, you know, places that might fit your philosophy better. Might I suggest Switzerland or Japan?
He got a way to go. The last revolution under his father, over 10.000 people died. So far his is short about 5000 lives. History tells Assad he is going to win it since his father stayed in power after the last one. Libya didn't had that much of an army, Egypt, the Army stayed out of it and saved a lot of bloodshed, Syria has a larger and better equipted Russian made army so will last longer and they will have more casualties. A no-fly zone a military NATO intervention will solve the matter quick and save lives.
Insureance Man Dave: You must not get around much. You seem to blame America and Israel for the world's ills. no one else has anything to do with the current states of affairs, is that it? Do you really think Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are sitting on their hands? Look too at their foreign policy and their history before you criticize only America and Isarael. Do you remember a little thing called the cold war? That changed the world for ever and a day. You must think that apart from America and Isarel, the world is a vestal virgin living in Xanadu, Utopia. Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not a pergect world - it's not always a nice place to live. So, get used to it or move to Mars. America does what it does on the global stage as a means to secure its place in this world, which is the cornerstone to any country's foreign policy.
Nice guys finish last in world politics. Where do you want us to finish? Me, I'm glad we are in first place.
wow - you sure are JADED! and a white supremest without even realizing - WOW - let's stop with the PRETENDING - and start calling us KING OF THE WORLD now! The United States needs to balance its GLorious Mind with its Heart....but you got to find it first!
The cold war was caused by Americas Paranoia over the dropping of the Nuclear Bomb and their self ritious view of declaring war on Communism.
So, if we have too many Occupy People die, or too many virulent brutality videos, then that gives Cart Blanche to the rest of the world to over-throw our government for us? Don't you think a people DESERVES its government? Once again, this feels like OIL and World dominion, and our United States Presidency should not be a vehicle for WORLD DOMINATION - Quit sleeping with monsters who treat their wives lower than goats. I am sure just like ex-raying a body deep enough We Can find any Justification we need to Take over the World to save it from BAD Dictators...but we will be a GOOD one, right???
"only a "crazy" leader would slay his own people"
ipso facto
He's one crazy mofo
I bet they gave him about 5 shots worth of alcohol to calm him down before the interview before they discovered his dumbass is a lightweight.
Well, call him crazy then.
There was a previous comment about statements from Libya, that the government babbled these totally obvious lies and acted as if they believed them - kind of the definition of crazy. Here is the exact same case repeated.
Hate to say it, but Obama assassinated US Citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without a stitch of due process and not so much as a whimper from the US citizenry. Mossad, KGB, Stasi, Savak and now the CIA. Shows just how far this crazy country has gone down the rat hole. ... and then they came for me ....
Personally, I'm glad you said it. Anwar al-Awlaki won't be missed by anyone, anytime ever again. I'll buy the beer, you bring the fireworks! Far as I'm concerned he gave up his citizenship. If that makes me crazy in your mind, so be it.
Oh come on...you LOVED saying it...don't be coy with us!
Every nation has their secret societies that serve the special interest of the money men that does false flag attacks and kills citizens of that nation and then, blame it on the governmental officials that don't go along with the of the money men! We have those here in the United States, " CIA, Wall Street, State Department, and the Pentagon." Has anyone ever heard of covert missions; these small societies don't care about their own bothers and sisters of their homeland!
is this guy saying that his country is leaderless? who is ordering these deaths? is this then by definition a failed state? does the UN then as a result need to go in? the only thing i vagely remember about his late father is that he had twenty or thirty thousand people killed, if i'm correct.
People are so blinded and would like to judge a President and a country they have never been to. You don;t know what it is like in third world countries and to say it is impossible for the army or people from the government to do something without the order or the president is just ignorance. America has been known to go after oil country for decades! The majority of the Syrian people are not against their president, here is another IGNORANT remark. Unfortunately we cannot blame you people from believing that since the news CNN, HLN, Aljazeera.......ETC are all liers everyone knows that! Do some research you EDUCATED people and find out who owns those channels. Everyone does and says what benefits them. I can go on and on and tell you how uneducated and Ignorant these negative remarks are but it would take a lot of writing. Just FYI 90% of the Syrian people are actually Pro Bashar Al Asaad. I agree with the CRAZY ghaddaqfi going down or the execution of Saddam Hussein, not to mention many more CRAZY presidents. But all of you who don't actually do your homework will never know that U.S needs Syrian president out to rule the Middle East and use Isreal as there center field, WOW that is when they can control the oil. Here is a few links to educate you! read people. I advise you to educate yourselves. The government cares about there pockets not us Americans THE PEOPLE!!!
Hmmmm cant upload links.....I wonder why? Go to Wikileaks and search us secretly funding opposition groups in syria and read it! Educate yourselves and prepare your selves since we are the 99%.
Having been in all these countries, I call tell you they all want to come to America. They whisper it, but each young person over there in the middle east wants to go to America. They hate it over there. Somebody tells them they have to be a suicide bomber, martyr for the cause, drug grower, mason, carpenter, what ever, they have to do it. You want to learn to really appreciate America, go overseas. Go to the land of the peace loving and kind muslims. Demand your rights under the law. The governments over there are in power for one reason only, to stay in power. You question the government, they will arrest, torture, rape and kill you and your whole family. If there is any sanity in the mideast, I have never seen it.