In the wake of the collapse of the Syrian government, CNN reporter Clarissa Ward and her team were in Damascus last week, looking for any sign of American journalist Austin Tice, alleged to be held in a Syrian prison since 2012. Although they did not find Tice, they did find a man alone in a cell of an abandoned prison. He claimed to have been held there in solitary confinement for several months.
But Verify-Sy, a Syrian website dedicated to debunking propaganda, is reporting that this "prisoner" was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, also known as "Abu Hamza," a member of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence, which is responsible for the torture and murder of civilians.
CNN now admits that the report it aired was, according to The Associated Press "not what (the network) originally believed." Yes, events during war or other conflict are often chaotic. But Ward & Co. should've suspected something was up when Salama/Hamza emerged from underneath a blanket well-fed and with a neatly trimmed beard and clean fingernails. And, despite having spent the past quarter of a year in darkness, he was able to look straight into the sun, whereupon he said, "My God, there is light."
I know just how he feels.
The mood in America has been markedly different since Donald Trump was reelected last month. It's not merely that Kamala Harris went from dominating the headlines daily to being completely irrelevant overnight. It's not even that it doesn't feel like Joe Biden is the president anymore.
Frankly, it hasn't felt like Biden was the president throughout the entirety of his four-year term. He was handed dozens of executive orders to sign his first few weeks in office, commenting at one point that he didn't even know what they were. Biden's senility was evident before the 2020 election, and it has only gotten worse in the years since. National Security Council adviser Henry Appel recently admitted to an O'Keefe Media Group undercover reporter that "Biden is, like, dead. Not literally. Like, he, like, can't say a sentence."
This only confirmed what anyone with a double-digit IQ already knew.
Trump, not Biden, attended the momentous reopening of the iconic cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris recently and schmoozed with world leaders while in Europe. Foreign dignitaries and powerful CEOs have been jetting into the "Florida White House" -- Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private estate in Palm Beach --- for the past month. When Trump appeared at the Army-Navy game last week with what was described as his "powerhouse posse," he was met with cheers and chants of "USA! USA!" The specious criminal and civil cases against Trump are being dismissed, ABC is settling with him for millions of dollars in his defamation suit against them, and anchor George Stephanopoulos will be forced to apologize.
Oh, yes, things are changing.
Trump's reelection feels like liberation for tens of millions of Americans who have been living in a dungeon of runaway inflation, rising crime, illegal immigration, DEI racism, antisemitism and Marxist indoctrination. Without realizing it, we had let anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-liberty movements take over our educational institutions, our media and our entertainment industry. We trusted them, while they undermined us.
As bad as that is, what has happened within our own government is worse.
We have been betrayed by a "deep state" in thrall to globalist envirofascism, handsomely paid by lobbyists for the military-industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower warned us about 64 years ago, populated by snot-nosed Ivy League grads convinced of the moral supremacy of their secularist worldview, and driven by a cadre of neocon warmongers determined to make the world over in their own image, come hell or high water. (They provide the hell; Mother Nature provides the high water.)
A terrible cost has been paid for all of this, and not only by Americans.
David Brockman wrote an excellent article posted at LewRockwell.com in which he describes the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria as the latest example of American meddling in global affairs for reasons that have nothing to do with the interests of the American people but which will produce yet another failed state. Brockman predicts that -- like Iraq, Libya, Iran and Afghanistan before it -- Syria will splinter into wars between competing factions of Islamic extremists, and the same brainiacs who wanted al-Assad driven from office will then claim that the ensuing conflict requires American blood and treasure to resolve.
Our blood. Our treasure.
The United States government -- empowered by both major political parties -- has for decades been arguing for and helping cause "regime change" in nations led by "strongmen" we were told were enslaving and murdering their own people.
Maybe they were and maybe they weren't. Either way, those battles haven't been our battles, and what has followed the removal of those "strongmen" has been worse. War after war has been launched with those ginned-up excuses. Countless millions have died by American-supplied munitions.
Then came Trump.
During his first term, America entered no new wars. Negotiation and trade, rather than fighter jets, tanks and missiles, were used as leverage. But those who make their money from destruction and death couldn't have that. So they lied about him, impeached him (twice), manipulated the 2020 election and installed a senile puppet who would do their bidding. When Biden's senility became too obvious during the 2024 presidential campaign, they selected an equally manipulable candidate to replace him.
And she lost.
Across the country and throughout the world, people can feel it: Things are different. Americans want out of these conflicts. We are tired of being lied to and stolen from. We are tired of watching our tax dollars used to kill and maim innocent civilians in countries around the world.
Back home, Americans are battling the antisemitism and collectivist indoctrination pumped out like sewage at our most prestigious universities. We are pushing back against self-proclaimed "experts" who demand that we believe absurdities like cow farts changing the climate. We are defending the integrity of women's sports and spaces. We are boycotting companies that promote "woke" policies and DEI discrimination. We are demanding energy independence and rejecting globalism.
We have a long way to go. But my God, there is light.