Assad Detachment From Syria Killings Reveals Life in Cocoon
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Ten months into Syria’s unrest, those who know President Bashar al-Assad say there’s good reason he has outlasted other leaders threatened by the Arab Spring uprisings: stone-hearted detachment.
This trait was evident when the Syrian president broke his silence and gave an interview to ABC News, broadcast Dec. 7, in which he refused to accept responsibility for the violence, according to a former friend, Ayman Abdel Nour, a media and public policy consultant who first met Assad as a college student in 1984.