USA HOSTS FIRST CONFERENCE OF SYRIAN OPPOSITION

On January 12th, I recommended we have a conference of anti-Assad forces (modeled on the one we had in Berlin in 2002 for the Afghanis), and now we are:

The conference, to be held this Saturday and Sunday across the Potomac in Northern Virginia at the Crystal City Marriott, will gather about 100 activists against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, drawing opposition leaders from America, Canada, France, Germany, and inside Syria. According to organizers, the summit - sponsored by an umbrella organization, the Syrian National Council - is meant to address, among its principal topics: cooperating with the West in order to bring about a peaceful democratic transition; highlighting and ending the human rights abuses of the Assad regime, and prompting the various parties of opposition operating in exile to "get together and get to know each other."

This is a first step toward a Syrian government in exile, the self-imposed exile of Assad (I predict), and an orderly transition to an interim government (based on the "government in exile"), a constitutional convention, a referrendum on the constitution, and then elections.

If Assad is smart, then he and his murderous regime are booking their one-way tickets out of Damascus RIGHT NOW! (Maybe they'll move to Tehran!?)

[BTW: This conference is ONLY reported in the NY SUN. I googled it, and not a single other news outlet is covering the story. Weird.]