Stop press: dozens of Syrian children blow themselves up

Following the atrocity in Syria over the weekend, a spokesman for the regime stated "We never" and suggested that the opposition militia blew their own children up to discredit a misunderstood regime just trying to restore a little law and order into a country beset by armed Islamic gangs willing to kill their own people.

In 1993, during the siege of Sarajevo, the Serbs lobbed a high explosive shell into a crowded market place and killed 68 people in 1 terrible flash. They promptly blamed their opponents for "staging" the blast themselves. Later, much later, it was found to be a hideous lie: the Serbs were of course responsible for those killings, and countless others.

In the fog of war, there are usually at least 2 opposing stories circulating as to who was to blame, and observers struggle to remain "rational" and "balanced". Sooner or later we have to rub the scales from our eyes and recognise the truth when it is staring us in the face. Why should Syrian opponents massacre their own children? The answer: they wouldn't, and didn't. Those children were torn apart by cannons owned by Mr Assad, and were fired on his orders: the orders of a desperate man who has lost his way and clinging to a belief that he can threaten and bully his own people into submission. Such tactics cannot work for ever. He knows his own life is in jeopardy. If he wants my advice (which he probably doesn't) I'd suggest he takes his family to exile in some luxurious bolthole in Switzerland- it's what was offered to Saddam in 2003
; in retrospect it was an offer he should definitely have taken up...