Syria: no road back

Were the schoolchildren in Deraa tortured for scrawling graffiti really agents of a foreign regime? The appalling scenes as the Syrian army on Friday"cleansed" Baba Amr, the suburb of Homs which has become the symbol of the year-old uprising, plays to what Bashar al-Assad regards as his strengths. By painting ordinary Syrians as saboteurs, Islamists and agents of a foreign conspiracy, Assad has