From Sami: "I just came across this form the British MP Tom Tugendhat speech today - I dont know what his position back then was, but weren't most Western medias claiming that Ma'loula's siege was fabricated by the Syrian regime and that the rebels were innocent and should be given weapons? He apparently knew all along that it was ISIS:
Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative, gave a moving speech earlier in which he spoke of his knowledge of Syria. It was important to fight Isis, he said.
This is an enormously sad moment for me, I grew up as a young journalist in Lebanon spending my holidays in Syria. I know the country well and I love the people dearly - they gave me a kindness that no one else showed, they gave me a warmth and a richness of culture and history. It has been the most extraordinary sorrow for me to watch the destruction of Damascus, of Aleppo, of Homs and Hama, to see the Christians driven from Ma’loula, to see friends of mine, priests and monks driven from their monasteries and murdered.And I know who is doing it, and we know who is doing it - yes, it is the Islamic State, the so-called Islamic State, this twisted perversion of Islam that is to Islam what fascism is to nationalism, that is to Islam what communism is to socialism. This vile, Stalinist death cult, this dreadful regime must, I’m sorry to say, be stopped, and sadly the only way to stop it is not through talks."
