Mehdi Hasan assisting the Assad regime. Useful egotist?

Interesting article back in 2012,  from the New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/2012/06/exploding-four-myths-about-intervention-syria in which Mehdi Hasan shows an amazing naivety about the Assad regime. He ends by quoting the well known Assad Apologist Patrick Searle

“As the veteran foreign correspondent and Syria expert Patrick Seale has written: ‘The only way to prevent a full-scale civil war in Syria . . . is to demilitarise the conflict and bring maximum pressure on both sides to negotiate.’ ”

Mehdi is now complaining about being called out as an Assad supporter, over the top, but definitely in the right direction.

(There is also this from 2012, which has not aged well, “Opponents of intervention in Syria won’t take lectures from the hawks, says Mehdi Hasan” http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2012/03/syria-assad-opposition ).