In the news

"The trouble is that the West has been so deluged with stories and lectures and think-tank nonsense about the ghastly Iran and the unfaithful Iraq and the vicious Syria and the frightened Lebanon that it is almost impossible to snap off these delusional pictures and realise that Assad is not alone. That is not to praise Assad or to support his continuation. But it's real."
The trouble is that FIsk doesn't see the "think tank nonsense" as a deliberate Western ploy to destabilise Arab regimes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html

I don't know about Fisk, but if the point is that there is duplicity in the Middle East, then I agree. The West, China & Russia are all engaged in nefarious activities to either destabilise other people's dictators, or prop up their own.