Scary moments in Syria

Nada Bakri has an article in The New York Times about Syria:

Dozens of pro-government Syrians attempted to assault an American diplomatic delegation that included the ambassador, striking its motorcade as it traveled to a meeting with an opposition figure in Damascus, and then trying to break into an office where the meeting was held, essentially trapping the participants inside for ninety minutes.
The United States protested the episode and suggested that the attackers had been deliberately allowed to harass the diplomatic delegation by Syrian security forces, who arrived belatedly to provide safe passage for the Americans to leave. The ambassador, Robert S. Ford, an outspoken critic of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, was reported safe, but some vehicles in his motorcade were damaged.
“We condemn this unwarranted attack in the strongest possible terms,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. “Ambassador Ford and his aides were conducting normal embassy business, and this attempt to intimidate our diplomats through violence is wholly unjustified.”
It was the second attack on American diplomats in Syria since the antigovernment uprising started in mid-March. In July, after Ford’s visit to Hama, a restive city in central Syria, supporters of the government attacked the embassy’s compound.
Hassan Abdel-Azim, who leads the National Democratic Gathering, was the host for the meeting with Ford’s delegation at Abdel-Azim’s office building. He said that about one hundred protesters were shouting outside the building “from the moment he arrived”. He said the protesters tried to break into the office, but he and others were able to stop them by locking all the gates.
Abdel-Azim is a moderate politician who has called for an end to the six-month crackdown on pro-democracy protesters as a prerequisite for a dialogue with Assad and his government.
Ford and his staff returned safely to the embassy.
In Washington, the State Department deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, said the harassment began as Ford’s group traveled to Abdel-Azim’s office building. He said “a crowd of demonstrators tried to assault Ambassador Ford and embassy colleagues” as they were preparing to meet Abdel-Azim. “The mob was violent,” Toner said in a statement. “It tried, unsuccessfully, to attack embassy personnel while they were inside several embassy vehicles, seriously damaging the vehicles in the process.” He suggested that Syrian security forces had been tardy in assisting Ford.
At least 2,700 people have been killed since the uprising started, according to the United Nations, and thousands have been arrested. The government disputes those numbers and says it is facing armed groups who have killed at least seven hundred police officers and soldiers.
The state news agency reported that seven soldiers and police officers had been killed in a military operation in Rastan, according to Reuters. The statement also said the military had “inflicted big losses on the armed terrorist groups” the government says it has been fighting there since earlier in the week.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry accused Washington of providing verbal support to those who attack Syria’s military.

Rico says we ought to be providing more than verbal support; Assad's another one of those asshole rulers who'd gotta go...