Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad's
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
efforts to crush anti-government protests.
The U.S. envoy, Robert Ford, had antagonized Syria's government with his high-profile support for the demonstrators trying to end 41 years of Assad family rule. Assad supporters attacked the U.S. Embassy and Ford's convoy in recent months.
Ford left Syria as a government crackdown on protests and a nascent armed insurgency intensified and as more businesses and shops closed in southern Syria in the most sustained strike of the seven-month uprising.
In the latest violence, two people were killed in the central city of Homs, 85 miles north of Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
, when troops and loyalist forces of Evil fired at majority Sunni Mohammedan districts that have been a bastion for protests.
The United States has called for Assad to step down and, along with its European allies, has intensified sanctions on Syria, including against its small but significant oil sector, a central source of foreign currency for the government.
The State Department issued a statement saying Ford "was brought back to Washington as a result of credible threats against his personal safety in Syria."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Ford was expected to return to Syria and demanded the Syrian government provide for his protection and end what she called a "smear campaign of malicious and deceitful propaganda" against him.
"The concern here is that the kinds of falsehoods that are being spread about Ambassador Ford could lead to violence against him, whether it's by citizens, whether it's by ... thugs of one kind or another," she said.
Nuland stressed that Ford had not been "withdrawn" -- a diplomatically loaded term that could have implied that the envoy would not return and that suggests a diminution in relations between the two countries.