Syrian President Bashar Assad is no doubt thanking his lucky stars for SEAL Team Six. Without their takedown of OBL last Sunday, it is likely Assad's continuing murder of protestors in the streets might make it to page 5 or even page 4 of western newspapers.

As it is, he's literally getting away with murder. The New York Times:

A military crackdown on Syria's seven-week uprising broadened Sunday, with reinforcements sent to two cities under siege and more forces deployed in a town in a restive region in the south of the country, activists and human rights groups said. Fourteen were killed in Homs, the groups said, and hundreds reported arrested.

The crackdown - from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria - seemed to mark a decisive turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Even though government officials have continued to hint at reforms, and even gingerly reached out to some dissidents last week, the crackdown seemed to signal the government's intent to end the uprising by force.

At least 30 tanks were said to be inside Baniyas, one of Syria's most restive locales, where the military entered Saturday. Activists and human rights groups said they had almost no information about the coastal town of 50,000, but one activist said at least six people were killed and 250 arrested since the operation began.

Fighting was also reported in Homs, Syria's third-largest city, where tanks entered Friday. Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that 14 people had been killed there, but he could not confirm the casualties in Baniyas. He said that the military had also entered Tafas, a town in southern Syria.

Still no R2P doctrine being pushed by the UN - unless you believe that Assad thinks he has a "Responsibility to Protect" - himself. That appears to be the case as his tanks and military continue to roll over protestors. He has already won since western nations refuse to sanction him or his regime to any degree that would hurt. The question is, how much longer he can continue to massacre his own people before the world bestirs itself and makes Syria the pariah state it deserves to be.