Former WBAI radio host, anthropologist and journalist, Barbara Nimri Aziz, expands on her article in CounterPunch 4/6/16), “Syria’s Impossible Victory” and asks why Syria’s victory over ISIS in Palmyra was downplayed and not celebrated by Western media. She deplores Americans’ lack of curiosity about Middle East countries and effects of US policies, particularly of the poat-1991 sanctions against Iraq which she witnessed and wrote about in “Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq”