Here is the deal. Western media (with few exceptions from outside the US media--of course, Anthony Shadid was such an exception) automatically and pavlovianly vomits whatever they receive from the Qatari-funded Syrian opposition media. No questions are asked and no verification is required. Now after months of denial, the media finally acknowledges that the opposition (or many elements of it) is armed: hell, there are two rebel armies, not one. Yet, in the daily tally of the dead that Syrian Observatory of Qatari-style Human Rights and other Ikhwan-run media outlets, the victims are always civilians. Of course, the Syrian regime habitually and callously and carelessly kills civilians but are there ever victims who are combatant on the Syrian rebel side? So if Salafite fighters or Free Syrian Army fighters are killed, they are simply listed as civilians, and probably listed as "women and children". And if you protest the propaganda nature of the coverage of Syria you are immediately accused of covering up the crimes of the regime, and in Arabic you are labeled as Shabbih.