Syria Video Turns the Debate on U.S. Intervention
The tape made ‘New York Times’ editors sick. Lloyd Grove on the footage of a rebel slaughter that’s upended talk of an authorized U.S. intervention.
The raw video was so grisly, and so barbaric, that the New York Times staffers who watched and edited it for online publication were made “physically ill,” according to the newspaper’s spokeswoman.
Shortly after the Times posted it in the wee hours Thursday morning, the video went viral, leading the influential Drudge Report, proliferating on Twitter, Tumblr, and other social-media sites, and dominating cable news and broadcast outlets. It also became a tricky problem for the Obama White House.
The scene of Syrian rebels standing over seven soldiers of the Syrian regular army while the rebel commander recited a bloodthirsty poem—and pointing rifles and a pistol at the heads of their prostrate, shirtless, and badly beaten prisoners—was shocking enough. Times video editors tactfully blackened the screen as the rebels—who, just like the United States government, oppose the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad—began to execute the soldiers; the only indication of the slaughter taking place was a noisy fusillade of 10 seconds in length. Then an image flashed of the broken bodies in a mass grave.
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