Syria: The young and the hopeless

There may be a full blown civil war going on in Syria but you wouldn't know it if you were following the Assads. Bashar even organized a "national" election in the middle of it all and (unsurprisingly) got himself re-elected. Recently his wife, Asmaa al-Assad, presided over an honoring ceremony for the Syrian Science Olympiad stressing that "it was a challenge to prove to the world that Syria’s youth has the will, the knowledge" and all of their limbs intact "to be able to defend their homeland" which they will also be able to do, literally, when they are conscripted and send into combat once they turn 18.