Smell of Death Lingers After Syrian Massacre

Here's the horrible headline at Syria's Day Press News: "UN Observers: Smell of Death Lingers & Grisly Sight at Syrian Village."

And see Telegraph UK, "Video purports to show Syria massacre aftermath":

UN and amateur footage shows bloody sheets, human and animal remains, and a distraught woman in the deserted village of Mazraat al-Qubeir where 78 people were reportedly massacred.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Syria conflict spirals closer to all-out war":

BEIRUT — Bullet-pocked homes and bloodstained walls. Shell casings littering the ground in a ghost town still smoldering from the onslaught.

A United Nations observer team on Friday finally reached the site of Syria's latest apparent massacre, a now-abandoned farming village where opposition activists accuse pro-government forces of killing dozens of civilians this week in an artillery bombardment and grisly door-to-door executions.

"Young children, infants, my brother, his wife and seven children … all dead," said a grieving man in a video distributed by the U.N. "I will show you the blood. They burned his house."

The U.N.-led effort to negotiate an end to the fighting in Syria is a shambles, leaving a seemingly irreconcilable stalemate. In the absence of any meaningful moves toward peace, the conflict is evolving into the gruesome sectarian conflict that many have long feared.

President Bashar Assad cannot agree to the plan's core requirements — that he withdraw forces from populated areas and allow people to protest freely — without almost certainly losing his grip on power. He has made some concessions to the international community while trying to impose order by force of arms, with increasingly bloody results.

The emboldened opposition, backed by Washington and many Arab nations, has no intention of entering into a dialogue with Assad. Some elements of the fractured rebel militia movement have already declared that the peace plan, being pressed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is dead.

"Where is Annan?" has become a familiar refrain on opposition videos of government assaults on rebel-held towns and villages.

Each side in the conflict is bolstered by its international backers. The United States and its allies insist Assad must go. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Stockholm this week that Assad's departure was not a precondition for talks, "but it should be an outcome."

But Russia, feeling burned by the Western-led bombing campaign last year that helped rebels oust longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, refuses to accept what it sees as an effort to force "regime change" on Syria, its longtime ally and key trading partner.

Efforts to alter Russia's stance have proved futile. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and its allies show little appetite for military intervention in Syria...

Naturally.

It's just a reminder of how politically expedient was U.S. intervention in Libya.

PREVIOUSLY: "Time for U.S. Military Action in Syria."