“Syria” on The Daily Caller

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the hacker group Anonymous succeeded in penetrating a computer server belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad, leaking hundreds of confidential files online Monday.  (more)

Vladimir Putin, once viewed as an adept politician, is stunningly out of touch. His close confidants are fleeing in droves, revealing the systemic corruption in his government. His poll numbers are dropping, raising the possibility that he may not win on the first vote in the upcoming (and rigged) presidential elections. And on Saturday, a record number of Russians defied freezing temperatures and threats of persecution to call for his removal. (more)

Syrian opposition groups are stepping up calls for the Arab League to seek foreign intervention in Syria, since critics say the League’s observer mission failed to curb violent outbreaks there. (more)

Saturday marked the one year anniversary of when a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit and vegetable street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi fatally lit himself on fire in protest of government oppression, sparking a year of regime-ending revolutions many believe were sustained and nurtured by social media. (more)

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Daily Caller that he could envision using American military force as a part of a broader coalition to stop Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from continuing to attack his people. (more)

BRUSSELS (AP) — EU foreign ministers failed Thursday to reach an agreement to impose an oil embargo against Iran — a measure that some argued would have choked off funding for Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons. (more)

The USS George H.W. Bush, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, has reportedly parked off the Syrian coast. The move comes as the U.S. embassy in Damascus urged Americans to “immediately” leave the country. (more)

Foreign policy, as Barack Obama has been showing for almost three years and some Republican presidential candidates are showing every day, is not something one picks up without real effort. (more)

BEIRUT (AP) — Jordan’s king said Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad should step down for the good of his country, the first Arab leader to publicly make such a call as Syria’s neighbors close ranks against an increasingly isolated regime. (more)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad warned the Middle East will burn if the West intervenes in his country’s 7-month-old uprising, threatening to turn the region into “tens of Afghanistans.” (more)

Syrian security forces have killed eight people, including two children, activists said, as UN Security Council permanent member China urged President Bashar al-Assad to accelerate promised reforms. (more)

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Jordan on Sunday that the United States may consider military intervention in Syria akin to the NATO-led intervention that toppled Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. (more)

Imagine that it’s the middle of the Cold War. In an Asian country there’s a revolt against a dictator. The opposition wants international recognition, so it seeks U.S. help. And the American government turns over direct management of this process to … Communist China! The resulting coalition is largely dominated by China’s allies, the Communists, whose numbers far exceed their proportional role in the revolution. Some anti-Communist activists walk out in protest, but it makes no difference. (more)

Islamists are far less likely to come to power in Syria than in Egypt if the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad ultimately falls, respected Middle East experts tell The Daily Caller. (more)

“I’m sorta amazed that they’re not fucking crazy,” said Robert Ford, America’s chief diplomat in Syria in an atypically undiplomatic moment. (more)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces riding in vehicles mounted with machine-guns raided neighborhoods outside the capital, Damascus, before dawn Tuesday as Turkey’s prime minister said he was concerned Syria could descend into a sectarian civil war. (more)

VIENNA (AP) — Syria has reneged on a promise to quickly cooperate with a U.N. probe of its nuclear activities, saying it won’t be able to provide more information to challenge an assessment that it tried to build a plutonium-producing reactor until October, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday. (more)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrians should not take up arms in their uprising against President Bashar Assad or invite foreign military action like the intervention that helped topple the government of Libya, a prominent activist group warned Monday. (more)

(Bloomberg) Syrian security forces have killed at least 25 protesters in the past two days as activists and opposition groups prepare for a conference aimed at presenting a united front against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. (more)

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” — expressed misgivings. (more)