Turning The Ballot Box Against Republicans

Conservative Group Files Lawsuit To Remove Special Counsel Mueller From Investigation
http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/11/27/conservative-group-files-lawsuit-to-remove-special-counsel-mueller-from-investigation/

Aleppo is my home. I was forced to leave there in 2013 to try to escape the barrel bombs and besiegement of the city by Assad and his allies. My mother, siblings and I fled to Lebanon. At the age of 14, I had to leave school and begin working to try to sustain our family. At the end of 2014, we were forced to return to Syria because we could not afford Lebanese residence and working permits.

On the way home, I was arrested by members of a political security branch in Damascus. They accused me of taking part in the peaceful demonstrations at the beginning of the popular Syrian revolution against Assad.

This is a regime known for its oppression, its tyranny, and its corruption. But it is also a regime that stands against humanity. It is a regime that could arrest a 15-year-old, a kid, and subject him to months of torture and starvation and psychological trauma. And I am not by any means a unique story in Syria.

When I was first arrested, I was taken to security branch headquarters near Damascus, where I was tortured during sessions of interrogation for 58 days straight. After 58 days of this treatment, I had no choice but to sign false confessions that the interrogator himself wrote. I put my name to offences I had never committed, and confessions about people I had never met. I was even forced to sign a document that accused my brother of being an armed rebel.

We became so starved that our bodies stopped looking human. We were whipped, beaten, starved, given electric shocks



I was held in that branch for four-and-a-half months, then moved to the political security administration at Fayha’ in Damascus. Here I was tortured in even more ways. I was given electric shocks on sensitive parts of my body; suspended from the ceiling; tortured using brutal methods known as “wind carpet”, “the wheel”, and “the bed”. This went on for another three months.

This is when I was transferred to Saydnaya military prison. The Living Persons’ Graveyard. The Human Slaughterhouse. These are names that describe Saydnaya.

I spent a month there. The mornings for detainees in this place starts with death. Before sunrise, the guards would yell with hate and scorn to wake us up, and we were ripped out of the dreams where we sought sweet refuge. “You, bastards of the cell, who has a corpse?” they would yell. And we would fetch the corpses of our brothers who had left our living hell.

We survived on scraps of rubbish for food. We became so starved that our bodies stopped looking human. We were whipped, beaten, starved, given electric shocks. We saw people taken to be hanged en masse. There are stories of prisoners being forced to rape each other, or of guards raping prisoners. There are stories of guards forcing prisoners to kill their own friends and family, or be tortured and executed. Saydnaya is hell on Earth.

Every day, we waited for punishment. You don’t know anything, and you don’t know when you’re going to be tortured or killed. Saydnaya is not where you go to be tortured for information. Saydnaya is where you go to die.

After a month of that living hell, I was transferred to Tishreen military hospital. Don’t be fooled by the word “hospital”. It was not a place of healing and care. There is a reason detainees in Saydnaya do not ask to see the doctor, and refuse to answer when nurses ask who has injuries.

While in my months as a detainee I was tortured physically, the psychological torture at the military hospital was unparalleled. I was only there for two days, but that was long enough to witness the worst of humanity. I wasn’t fed for two days. I was put in a tiny room just 3 metres by 3 metres, where dead bodies were piled over one another; one was rotting. My room had three tuberculosis patients. We had to carry corpses around.

I saw many executions. A guard held his foot on the neck of a detainee to suffocate him to death. Another was given an “air injection” of poison. The smell of death surrounds you.

I then returned to Saydnaya, where I stayed for one final, brutal month. One day I was beaten so harshly I passed out – simply because I happened to be born on a street under opposition control.

In October 2015, after 10 months of detention, I won my freedom. But my mind will never be free. I am free, but I’ve been taken hostage by the cries of my fellow prisoners, the groans of their wounds, the screams of their torture, their secret prayers, their emaciated bodies and their deaths once they could bear life no more.

My story is like hundreds of thousands of other stories, but I ask you to look past the numbers and think: what if this happened to you? Or to your brother, or sister, or father, or mother, or child, or friend? Would you support the continued leadership in Syria of the man responsible?

The AR-15 is not a weapon war.

You can't get an Ar-15 in any such configuration.

1 guy has used a bump stock, does that justify banning them? I could careless if they are banned, I wouldn't own one and wouldn't recommend one to any one. It's stupid the ban the AR-15 based on their illegal use by a few people.

What did you do with this supposed AR-15 you owned?

You people who know the least about guns always want to speak with the loudest voice and push your inaccurate understanding of guns on to the public.

An adaption? The M-16 used to be a full auto weapon but that was removed for a burst fire of 3 rounds. You can't get an Ar-15 in any such configuration. It looks like a M-16 so that means it's a weapon of war?

The M16 rifle, officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16, is a United States military adaptation of the Armalite AR-15 rifle.[12][13][14][n 1] The original M16 was a select-fire, 5.56×45mm rifle with a 20-round magazine.

In 1964, the M16 entered U.S. military service and the following year was deployed for jungle warfare operations during the Vietnam War.[1] In 1969, the M16A1 replaced the M14 rifle to become the U.S. military's standard service rifle.[17][18] The M16A1 improvements include a bolt-assist, chrome plated bore and a new 30-round magazine.[1]

In 1983, the U.S. Marine Corps adopted the M16A2 rifle and the U.S. Army adopted it in 1986. The M16A2 fires the improved 5.56×45mm NATO (M855/SS109) cartridge and has a new adjustable rear sight, case deflector, heavy barrel, improved handguard, pistol grip and buttstock, as well as a semi-auto and three-round burst only fire selector.[19][20] Adopted in 1998, the M16A4 is the fourth generation of the M16 series.[21] It is equipped with a removable carrying handle and Picatinny rail for mounting optics and other ancillary devices.[21]

You people who know the least about guns