“Hardly a day goes by when our senses are not bludgeoned by some new outbreak of terrorism in the Middle East.  Despite our best efforts at making and keeping the peace, political, economic, and religious tensions often lead to unrest, violence, and riots.”

-Jim Bakker in “Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse”

Russia responded brashly to Hillary Clinton’s accusations about Moscow selling helicopter gunships to Syria that could be used to kill civilians.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was “completing contracts that were signed and paid for a long time ago. All of them are contracts for what are solely air defense systems.” Lavrov further stated, “We do not supply Syria or anyone else with resources that are used in fighting peaceful demonstrators,” and then he added, “unlike the United States, which regularly supplies that region with such special equipment, including one such shipment (that) went to one of the Gulf countries recently, but for some reason the Americans consider this to be in order.”

Mrs. Clinton retorted, the US had “repeatedly urged the Russian government to cut these ties immediately” and suspend further deliveries of weapons and other military hardware and accused Russia of putting its “vital interests in the region and relationships” at risk by blocking international action on a transition plan.

This discourse took place at the same time Syria was releasing news that government security forces had just “cleansed” the rebel armed fighters out of Haffa, Syria. A U.K. based monitoring group reported that rebels had retreated from Haffa after more than a week of clashes that killed 68 government soldiers. Other reported deaths included 56 civilians and rebels.

Haffa is one of several towns where the Assad regime has carried out intensive assaults.  The rebels are becoming better organized and better equipped. The freedom fighters have reported other government bombardments in the central provinces of Homs and Hama. More attacks have also been reported in the province of Aleppoto to the north and the eastern province of Deir Ezzour.

The Turkish foreign ministry announced that over 2,000 refugees have fled across the border in the last 48 hours to get away from the violence.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime claims that their conflict is not consistent with reality to call it a civil war; what they are fighting is armed terrorists.