Bashar Assad said that if Saudi Arabia and Turkey send their troops to Syria, the Damascus authorities will treat them as terrorists, Syrian President Bashar Assad said. "If this happens, we shall treat them as terrorists. We defend our country. Nobody has the right to interfere in Syria - neither from a political, nor from a military point of view. This would be a violation of international law, and for us, as well as for citizens of Syria, the only possibility is to defend our motherland," Assad told El Pais newspaper.

Assad stressed that Turkey had been involved in events of Syria from the very beginning and sent terrorists to the country.

Last week, media reported that Saudi Arabia could send thousands of ground forces to Syria, most likely in coordination with Turkey, to take part in the fight against the Daesh jihadist group. Shortly after that, Turkey reportedly sent troops to its border, and also intensified the shelling of Kurdish-held areas in northern border regions of Syria.

On Monday, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Omer Celik, said Turkey had no plans to conduct a ground operation in Syria.

As I have found out myself, there is nothing media outlets like less than criticising other media publications or the "profession" of journalism. It's not really surprising. The credibility of a corporate media depends precisely on their not breaking ranks and not highlighting the structural constraints a "free press" operates under.

So one has to commend the Boston Globe for publishing this piece by Stephen Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent, warning that the media is not telling us the truth about what is going on in Syria.

But those constraints are also why Kinzer glosses over deeper problems with the coverage of Syria.

The Syrian Army and the country's National Defense Force have destroyed militant groups' positions in a spate of provinces across Syria in the past 24 hours.

Backed by the Syrian Air Force, the country's army and National Defense Forces (NDF) have clamped down on the terrorists' positions throughout Syria over the past 24 hours, according to the Iranian news agency FARS.

While Russia has presented a draft resolution to the United Nations asking all parties to respect Syria's right to sovereignty, the United States and France have criticized the move as a mere distraction. This is unsurprising given that the US and France are both currently violating Syria's sovereignty.

The West has been backing Syrian opposition factions since the 2011 beginning of the civil war. By first supplying arms to rebel groups, and then by launching a bombing campaign, the United States and its allies have acted militarily in Syria without permission from the legitimate government of President Bashar al-Assad.

It should come as no surprise, then, that both the US and France would roundly dismiss a recent UN resolution drafted by Russia to respect Syria's sovereignty.

Presented to the UN Security Council on Friday, the draft calls on all nations to avoid "provocative rhetoric and inflammatory statements" that could escalate foreign intervention in Syrian affairs. Russia also stressed that it was open to revising the draft to better accommodate all involved.

Russian airstrikes have forced al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization al-Nusra to appeal for help in the United Nations, Germany's Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports.

The Syria-based terror group, DWN says, citing a Reuters report, has asked for a "two-three week truce," and demanded that all attacks on the terrorist group be stopped.

The group has tabled the measure in the hopes that the break in hostilities will give them time to regroup, preventing their complete destruction, the paper says.

The US media is skillfully lying about world affairs, delivering contrived narratives that are generated by the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House and misinforming the public; the ignorance this process generates is very dangerous because Americans "act on it", according to foreign policy expert Stephen Kinzer.

The American public is being constantly misinformed regarding global affairs, Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, writes in his article for The Boston Globe.

News on developments around the world are generated by the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House and by think tank "experts", who deliver the official point of view.

This week on Behind the Headlines, Joe and Niall were joined by Truth Perspective host Harrison Koehli to discuss the extremely tense situation in Syria, where Turkey and Russia are waging a barely veiled 'proxy' war over Syria's future. What are we looking at here: a cold war turned hot? Is a world war on the cards?

Seasoned geopolitical analyst William Engdahl, in his recent article for New Eastern Outlook, 'Washington's Machiavellian Game in Syria', reckons the 'reality-creators across the pond' have manipulated both Russia and the main players in the Middle East into a fatal trap: regional conflagration in order to 're-shape the Middle East'.

But with contradictory statements being made by US leaders, and apparently contradictory actions being taken by the different players on the 'grand chessboard', couldn't it be said that it's all coming apart at the seams for the Western imperialists? Or is the chaos in the Middle East, and elsewhere, all unfolding according to 'the grand plan'?

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Damascus is ready for a ceasefire but will not tolerate terrorists exploiting it to restore their positions or receive support from abroad, Syrian president Bashar Assad said as the top Russian and US diplomats discussed "practical cooperation" in implementing the truce. "We have said that we are ready to stop military operations," Syrian president Bashar Assad stated, while noting that the nationwide cessation of hostilities "relates to more important factors."

First of all, for the truce to hold, terror groups must be prevented from "using it to improve their positions," Assad said in an interview with the Spanish EL PAIS Newspaper. Secondly, any ceasefire deal must ensure that "other countries, especially Turkey, are prevented from sending more terrorists and weapons, or any kind of logistical support. More than 80 countries supported those terrorists in different ways, some of them directly with money, with logistical support, with armaments, with recruitments," Assad said. "Some other countries supported them politically, in different international forums."

When the ceasefire takes place, the fight will still continue against Al-Nusra and ISIS, as well as radical Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, the Syrian president said, once again stressing that in order for the truce to work the borders must be sealed. That is what the Syrian army and the Kurdish forces have been doing around Aleppo lately, Assad said: "closing the roads between Turkey and between the terrorist groups. That's why Turkey has been shelling the Kurds recently."

Meanwhile the Russian FM, Sergey Lavrov, and his US counterpart, John Kerry, discussed "practical cooperation" on Syria between the US and Russia during a telephone call on Saturday.

Turkey's been blasting away all month long shelling heavy artillery mortars from its side along the Turkish border killing Syrian National Army soldiers, Syrian Kurd forces (YPG), at least one Russian advisor and defenseless civilians in border villages inside Syria. Widespread reportage of the ongoing daily Turkish artillery barrage into Syria was publicly confirmed by the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu since February 13th. Though a NATO member, longtime close US ally and next to Empire and Israel among the world's leading partners-in-crime for state sponsored terrorism, earlier this week Turkey was asked by Washington to cease its border aggression. Yet Turkish President Recep Erdogan has elected to defy his US master and continues his daily bombardment of northern Syrian villages and Syrian militarily controlled outposts abandoned recently by decimated escaping Islamic State terrorists.

Because the US has consistently backed Turkey's provocative acts of war in the past, including Turkey's premeditated shoot down last November 24th of the Russian Su-24 jet killing its pilot immediately defended by Obama's bogus contention that Turkey has every right to protect its own airspace despite no evidence the ill-fated warplane had ever entered Turkish airspace, Erdogan miscalculated counting on America's ongoing unconditional support and felt betrayed when the US began backing the Syrian Kurds. The Turkish president assumed that regardless of how severe his violation of international laws or magnitude of violent transgressions become, the US and NATO will always have his back. But if Erdogan was paying attention to history, he would realize the US Empire has a long track record of turning against its onetime allies after using them up for their own self-serving gains (vis-à-vis Saddam, Muamar, Mubarak, Osama and even Putin).

It seems that Erdogan may be a bit over-confident after Obama and his neocons minimally gave the tacit go-ahead recently for an upcoming joint Saudi-Turkish invasion of Syria where US uses its proxy allies to fight the Russian coalition that in recent weeks has been making mincemeat out of their darling terrorists. As of late the Turkish leader's vital supply line to his terrorists has been significantly severed. He and the Saudi monarchy are seething over America-NATO's reluctance to directly commit its ground forces in Syria. This has the arrogant dictator chomping at the bit to save his vested lost ISIS holdings behaving with unpredictable brashness and recklessness reaching unprecedented megalomaniacal heights.

After saying US cooperation with Russia in the Syrian conflict doesn't extend beyond basic flight safety rules, the Pentagon has revealed it gave the Russian military the locations of US special forces in Syria, in the hope Russian aircraft would avoid the area.

The disclosure reveals a modest breakthrough in military - to-military communication and cooperation between the US and Russia beyond the very basic "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) signed in October last year which focused on safety protocols for both Russian and American air crews operating in Syrian airspace.

"We provided a geographical area that we asked them to stay out of because of the risk to US forces," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The request was an attempt to maintain special forces' safety "in a dangerous situation." It was made outside the scope of the flight safety memorandum, Cook said.

Up to this point, the Russian military "has honored this request," he added.