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Editor – American Pendulum:  The full interview seems to be buried at ABC, with only snippets of commentary on the interview easily accessible. The interview is probably there someplace.

Syria’s Bashar Assad Speaks to Western Press

by Tony Cartalucci  |  Land Destroyer Report

December 11, 2011 – Before watching this full 46 minute interview by ABC News with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the disgraceful behavior of ABC’s Barbra Walters it would [be] useful to note several facts completely dispelling the false premises from which Walters is operating from.

1. The UN human rights report on Syria consisted of no evidence, simply interviews of alleged witnesses produced by Syria’s opposition and interviewed in Geneva. The report itself was compiled in part by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.

2. Violence amongst protests was confirmed and documented by even the mainstream press as early as April 2011, where protesters were committing arson on public buildings including administrative centers and police stations. Reports of snipers attacking protesters and troops simultaneously were also reported. These gunmen are now claimed to be working amongst the “Free Syrian Army.” As early as June, hundreds of Syrian troops had already been reported dead.

3. It is confirmed that Libya’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG, listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, #26) led by Abdulhakim Belhaj is on the Turkey-Syrian border preparing militants to fight the Syrian government with the assistance of Turkey’s government. This hardly constitutes a “Syrian uprising,” but rather a foreign funded and facilitated invasion by proxy led by NATO and consisting of a very real terrorist threat.

4. Regime change in Syria was a foregone conclusion as early as 1991. General Wesley Clark in a 2007 speech in California relayed a 1991 conversation between himself and then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz indicated that America had 5-10 years to clean up old Soviet “client regimes,” namely Syria, Iran, and Iraq, before the next super power rose up to challenge western hegemony.

5. The unrest in Syria from the beginning was entirely backed by Western corporate-financier interests and part of a long-planned agenda for region-wide regime change. Syria has been slated for regime change since as early as 1991. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil.” It would be later revealed that Bolton’s threats against Syria manifested themselves as covert funding and support for opposition groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations.

In an April 2011 CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, “We’re not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we’re trying to do in countries around the globe. What’s different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people.”

Toner’s remarks came after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and continued until today.

In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course is the “Arab Spring,” and in Syria’s case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention.

With these facts in mind, viewers can fully appreciate the frothing duplicity, discourtesy, and intellectual depravity displayed by Barbra Walters who “saw pictures,” read a fraudulent UN report written by authors with ties to US corporate-financier interests, and listened to an Obama speech and therefore is an expert on the premeditated, US-facilitated chaos sweeping across parts of Syria. And even as she sits in Syria’s calm capital of Damascus, invited in by Assad who has been accused of barring foreign reporters (foreign journalist Dr. Webster Tarpley’s interview while in Syria can be found here), she still insists the nation is in utter chaos, irrationally closing itself off from the world, and with a population completely turned against the Syrian government.

For the record: Assad’s reference (at 33:30) to the 1992 LA Riots and the US using troops to restore order, it should be noted that indeed the US Army and Marines were deployed, and between military and police, they killed 10 during operations to restore order throughout the city. Barbra Walters either out of ignorance or additional duplicity, claims the US didn’t kill anyone.

Full Interview President Bashar al-Assad with Barbara Walters from ABC News

The following is the transcript of the interview ABC’s Barbara Walters conducted with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It was his first American interview, and the president was asked about Syria’s role in the Arab League and how he is treating protesters in his country.

ABC’s Barbara Walters: Mr. President, you have invited us to Damascus and you have not given an interview to the American media since this crisis began. What is it you want us to know?

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: I would like to reiterate what I used to say after 11th of September, to every American delegation I met, first of all I think the American people, people should know more about what’s happening beyond the ocean, second the American media I would like them to tell only the truth about what’s happening in the world, and for the American administration. Don’t look for puppets in the world.

Walters: Don’t look for puppets?

Assad: Only deal with administration that, on people that can tell you know about the truth, because what’s happening in the world now is taking the world toward chaos, what we need now is we need to deal with the reality. So the message now is about the reality.

Walters: Tell me what the reality here is your country is. What is the reality?

Assad: It’s too complicated, it takes hours to talk about… so let’s be specific.

Walters: Not long ago you were widely seen as a fresh pragmatic leader, a doctor whose life was in healing people, now sir, much of the world regards you as a dictator and a tyrant. What do you say to that?

Assad: What’s important how the Syrian people look at you, not how you look at yourself. So I don’t have to look at myself. This is… second, it’s about the system. You have a dictator and you have dictatorship, there’s a big difference between the two, dictatorship is about the system, we never said we are democratic country, but we’re not the same, we– we are moving forward in, in reforms, especially during the last nine month, so I think we are moving forward, it takes a long time, it takes a lot of maturity to be full fledge democratic country, but we are moving that, that direction, for me as a person, whatever I do should be based on the will of the people, because you need popular legitimacy and this is against dictatorship for person.

Walters: But you talk about the support of your people. You did have the support of your people, and then began these demonstrations, which I will discuss in more detail and crackdowns, and you have people now who don’t want you to lead. You don’t have the support of your people.

Assad: You always–

Walters: Of all of your people.

Assad: You always have people that don’t want you to be in that position, that’s self-evident, that’s normal, you cannot say that having the support of the people. All the people support you means something absolute. You’re talking about the majority, and people are against you, they’re not majority, when they are majority you don’t have to stay in that position.

Walters: But you have people who are against you who are protesting every day. It started with people marching with olive branches and with their children asking for more freedom, for freedom of press, for freedom of expression, and much of the country now, sir, is not supporting you, that’s what these, that’s what your crisis is about.

Assad: Yeah. That’s why we had the reform started quickly, after the very beginning that you described as simple, so we didn’t take the role, we didn’t play the role of stubborn government, they say they need more freedom. We right away had new party laws, new media law, new election law, new local administration law, and we are revising our constitution now.

Assad: Showing your opinion, whether you like somebody or doesn’t like government or president or whoever, should be through the election, the ballot box, this is the only way.

Walters: If you have elections, will they be elections for president?

Assad: No, no, we are going to have first of all the local administration election this month…

Walters: Local administration, but what about the president?

Assad: Yeah, after that, we are going to have the parliamentarian election, which is the most important. Talking about presidential election, it’s going to be in 2014, this is the…

Walters: People don’t want to wait that long, till 2014.

Assad: Which people?

Walters: The people who are protesting.

Assad: How, how, how much, how many, are they majority or not, that’s why you need, you need to wait first of all for the parliamentarian election, these election will tell you are you going to have majority or minority, then when you can think about presidential election, but not before, before that you don’t have any indication, any clear indication.

Walters: In 2014, when there are presidential elections, will you allow opposition parties?

Assad: That’s why we are changing the constitution.

Walters: OK. And if somebody else wins, will you step down in 2014?

Assad: If he wins he’s going to be in my position, I don’t have to step down, he’s going to be president. So you don’t step down. He will win the election, he will be president. So step down means you leave, while if you win the election, he’s going normally, he’s going to be in that position instead of me.

Walters: Mr. President, you once had positive things to say about President Obama. Now President Obama says, and I quote, “President Assad has lost his legitimacy to rule, he should step down.” What do you say to President Obama?

Assad: I’m not a political commentator. I– I comment more on action rather than word. At the same time if I want to care about something like this I would care, I would care about what the Syrian people wants. Nobody else outside Syria is part of our political map, so whatever they say we support, we don’t, he’s legitimate, or he’s not, it’s the same for me. For me what the Syrian people want, this is the popular legitimacy that put me in that position, and this is the only thought that can make me outside, so anyone could have his own opinion, whether president, official or any citizen, it is the same for me, outside our border.

Walters: Public opinion doesn’t matter?

Assad: Outside Syria?

Walters: Outside Syria.

Assad: No. It’s Syrian issue.

Source: Land Destroyer Report