William Blum (author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2”, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower”, “West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir”, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire”) on “Israel's genocide against the Palestinians” (2012): “And once again, the United States is participating in the overthrow of a secular Mideast government. At the same time, the Muslim fundamentalists in Syria, as in Libya, can have no illusions that America loves them. A half century of US assaults on Mideast countries, the establishment of American military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and US support for dictatorships and for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians have relieved them of such fanciful thoughts. So why is the United States looking to forcefully intervene once again? A tale told many times — world domination, oil, Israel, ideology, etc. Assad of Syria, like Gaddafi of Libya, has shown little promise as a reliable client state so vital to the American Empire. It's only the barrier set up by Russia and China on the UN Security Council that keeps NATO (aka the United States) from unleashing thousands of airborne missiles to "liberate" Syria as they did Libya” (William Blum, “Syria, The Story Thus Far”, Countercurrents, 3 October, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/blum031012.htm ).