Anne Barnard spins the car bomb in Damascus: in praise of car bombs, yet again

By the way, the deadly car bomb in Damascus yesterday was highly expected if you have been reading Arabic.  Many Arabic newspapers and websites speculated that the Syrian armed groups would respond by car bombs or typical indiscriminate shelling of the capital in response to the setbacks suffered (but unreported in New York Times) by armed groups over the last few days.  And the square where the bombing took place (the Seven Lakes square) has been nicknamed the square of "regime supporters" in opposition lingo because massive demonstrations in support of Bashshar took place there.  I was waiting for my digital issue of the Times today to see how Anne Barnard would spin this event, knowing full well that she would exonerate the the armed groups even from deeds that they even brag about.  First she tells you in the headline that "both sides" are unhappy about the car bomb thus implying that the side that sent the car bomb is unhappy about its own car bomb.  She then starts her propaganda work in earnest: "The use of these powerful and indiscriminate weapons — rejected by some rebel factions..." She does not tell us who are some of the rebel factions are when all of them have at some point or another claimed responsibility for car bombs.  Unless she is implying that sometimes they lie about car bombs when they find it hard to justify them.  She then does what she does best: obediently parroting the lies of the opposition armed groups:  "Some in the opposition said they suspected the government of setting the bombs to tarnish the uprising." She does not even bother to assess the varsity of the claim that the regime bombs itself in order to tarnish the rosy image of the armed groups.  She then tells you that there is a split: "That led to one of the first signs of the split in the armed opposition, between those who said they were defending themselves against a violent government crackdown and a minority who called for an Islamic state."  But she does not tell you that both sides have in fact resorted to car bombs over the last two years.  She then takes you back to a previous car bomb invoking her own justification of the time of that car bomb:  "In November, a car bomb hit the Damascus neighborhood of Mezze 86. News media speculated that the neighborhood had been chosen because it includes military families and members of Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect."

PS Forgot about her further justification in the following page of the article: "No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which struck just off the Sabaa Bahrat, or Seven Lakes Square, where a year ago dozens of Assad loyalists rallied and danced the dabke, a traditional line dance."