Syria's Assad re-elected with 88.7% of vote

Hope western powers will accept defeat gracefully and help restore peace in Syria !

Lincoln was re-elected during the American civil war, no voting in the rebel areas then either. And the European powers were mostly on the side of the rebels then too, but not so effectively. Assad is not Lincoln, but the rebels are not much to admire either.

"Roughly 40% of Syria that the government controlled" sounds bad, as it is intended to. That so many Syrians have voted against the pro-Saudi 'rebels' that about 80% of the population is in that area just doesn't seem to be important to the backers of the effort to break Syrians of their independence from the Washington Lobbies. They also don't care that the massive turnout, and great lengths some voters had to go through thanks to the enemies of Syrian self determination, gives the lie to their claims that Assad is an unpopular dictator rather than a popular elected leader (they simply claim that the turnout was due to fear of government retaliation, despite the world seeing, just a week ago, that such a fear, rooted firmly in decades of examples of such retaliation, leaves a dictator scrambling to get enough of the population to go to a polling station to make the stuffing of the ballot boxes something other than a farce even to the willfully blind. Or they proclaim that the very popular win was due to fear of the very extremists they are arming, funding, and manning either directly or through a subordinate, ignoring that other candidates on the ballot promised to be at least as committed to protecting the population from those extremists)

Syria's Assad re-elected with 88.7% of vote

The other 11.3% were gassed to death.

Wolfpack

" The other 11.3% were gassed to death. "

Ridiculous comment. Of course, it is a rigged election, but so is every election in the Arab Middle East. The fact is that the Assad regime is secular, has a record of protecting its minorities, and is vastly preferable to the radical Sunni islamists that Obama is supporting (many of them even flying Al Quaeda flags, unsurprisingly).

Western politicians are truly acting mad in supporting the Jihadis over secular regimes in the region. Do they have a suicide wish? Or is Saudi Arabian Wahabi oil money really that important?

WilliB, do you feel Assad is a good choice to protect us from the Muslim menace?

SuperLib:

" WilliB, do you feel Assad is a good choice to protect us from the Muslim menace? "

The Assad regime is secular and therefore vastly preferrable to the islamist dictatorship that the Muslim Brotherhood "opposition" would impose. That is as far as it goes. "We" don´t have much choice is the situation.

But to support the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Quaeda thugs in Syria is simply insane.

Like Saddam, Assad is better than the alternatives on offer. Same might (at a stretch) even be said of Gaddafi and the old Egyptian regime. Certainly looks like life was happier for the majority under the old dictators. democracy and "freedom" look pretty rubbish on my TV.

@WilliB

The Assad regime is secular and therefore vastly preferrable to the islamist dictatorship that the Muslim Brotherhood "opposition" would impose.

So are you stating your preference for Assad - the guy that has been gassing his people and killed upwards of 200,000 of his own people over the last several years?

If it were possible it would be my preference that they destroy each other. However, if you like Assad that's your choice...