Official: Syrian troops captured in central town

[Bosonic]

Source: AP

BEIRUT (AP) -- A Syrian official says gunmen have kidnapped 14 army officers in an ambush that killed six soldiers and a security agent.

The official says the incident occurred Sunday outside the town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon. The official spoke Monday on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Qusair is in the central province of Homs, which has been witnessing intense violence since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began in mid-March. Activists in Homs have said most clashes of the clashes pitted troops against army defectors.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[tcaudilllg]

1. Hail the revolution!

This protest crap is not working out.

[Selatius]

2. Hopefully, more military personnel defect to the protesters.

If enough soldiers defect, then maybe a real underground resistance can begin, and Assad will find it won't be so easy to crush protesters with glee anymore.

[bemildred]

3. Yep.

I believe getting the right troops to the right place so they can "quell" demonstrators who they are not related to has been a problem all along.

[Selatius]

5. That's exactly how China crushed its protesters in 1989.

They basically brought in soldiers from other regions to crush local protesters because they were seeing that many local units were disobeying orders to shoot for fear of killing their own friends and family members who may be among the protesters.

Gaddafi watched many local units defect when he relied on them to crush local protesters. If he had waited like China for the time it takes to move in distant soldiers to crush local protesters, the situation in Libya could be different. At the very least, he would've pushed back the date of the fall of Tripoli by a while. At the most, he would've won like the Chinese dictatorship or the Iranian regime when they finally crushed their protesters after they blatantly rigged their 2009 elections against reformer candidates.

[No Elephants]

4. As with all these situations, I hope it turns out well--not replacing one

bad lot with another.