The Lede: Syrians to March for Young Martyrs

A video report from Britain’s Channel 4 News on the death of a 13-year-old boy in Syria who has become an icon of the protest movement.

Syrians calling for President Bashar al-Assad to step down plan to march on Friday in memory of children who have been killed during the uprising, The Associated Press reports.

As my colleague Liam Stack explained earlier this week, images of the battered body of one young protester — a 13-year-old boy named Hamza Ali al-Khateeb whose remains were returned to his family last week — have sparked particular outrage since they began to circulate online.

The images come from a very graphic postmortem video, apparently filmed by the boy’s family before his funeral, which appeared to show that he was tortured and mutilated as well as shot and killed. (The video is so disturbing that it was briefly removed from YouTube last weekend, but it has now been reinstated.)

Video posted online by Syrian activists, said to to show last week’s funeral for a 13-year-old protester in Jiza, a southern Syrian village.

A commemorative Facebook page, called “We Are All the Child Martyr Hamza Ali al-Khateeb” — which echoes the “We Are All Khaled Said” page set up in honor of an Egyptian whose death at the hands of the police helped spark the revolution there — urged protesters to take to the streets on Friday for “The Day of Hamza.”

In an apparent attempt to tamp down the anger raised by the video of the young boy, whose death has been compared to that of the Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan, Syrian state television produced a report this week which, it said, “unveiled the truth about the story of martyr Hamza al-Khateeb.”

According to a young man featured in the television report, who claimed to have witnessed the boy’s shooting, he was not killed during a peaceful protest by the security forces but during a gun battle initiated by armed demonstrators who opened fire on Syrian soldiers.

Syria’s official news agency, SANA, added that a “professor of media psychology at Damascus University, Majdi Fares, said the incident of al-Khateeb’s death was used by some satellite channels and media in a biased way for misleading purposes through lies and fabrications.”

After Syrian activists reported that the boy’s father had been detained by the authorities following the release of the video of his son’s body, Syrian television broadcast a prerecorded interview with him on Tuesday, in which he praised Syria’s president.

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The Caucus: Declaring Run, Romney Says Obama Failed

Brian Snyder/ReutersMitt Romney announced that he is formally entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday.

2:17 p.m. | Updated STRATHAM, N.H. — Declaring America to be broken, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, on Thursday harshly criticized President Obama and pitched himself as the turnaround specialist the country needs as he formally began his second run for president.

Mr. Romney accused Mr. Obama of failing to live up to the promise of economic recovery he made in his 2008 campaign. And he blamed the president for high unemployment, rising gasoline prices, falling home values and a soaring national debt.

“At the time, we didn’t know what sort of a president he would make,” Mr. Romney said as he made his announcement from a family farm in New Hampshire. “Now, in the third year of his four-year term, we have more than promises and slogans to go by. Barack Obama has failed America.”

The attacks on Mr. Obama promise to be a centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s campaign as he seeks to present himself as the inevitable choice for Republicans eager to reclaim the White House. In his speech on Thursday, he pledged, without hesitance, to repeal the president’s health care reforms.

“We will return responsibility and authority to the states for dozens of government programs – and that begins with a complete repeal of Obamacare,” he said in his speech. “From my first day in office my No. 1 job will be to see that America once again is No. 1 in job creation.”

At the farm, Mr. Romney invited supporters and members of the news media to a cookout with him and his wife, Ann. Under clear but windy skies and with tractors and hay bales as a backdrop, Mr. Romney hoped to send the message that he intended to win New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

The choice of the Bittersweet Farm for his announcement is an interesting one for Mr. Romney, who regularly argues for a smaller federal government that spends less. The rolling green hills of the farm were preserved in recent years in part with $1 million in federal money, according to a recent report in Seacoast Online.

A spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign told John Harwood of The New York Times: “I don’t think it’s fair to call it a federally subsidized backdrop. It’s a nice farm in New Hampshire, a landmark.”

Mr. Romney has emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination after reassembling a powerful fund-raising apparatus and an extensive campaign operation from his 2008 run. But he faces tough questions from conservatives about the health care plan he pushed through as governor.

Democrats are already firing back at his economic argument. An Internet video released Thursday morning by the Democratic National Committee cast Mr. Romney as someone who takes  positions out of convenience, not principle.

Mr. Romney is “going into this campaign with the same fatal flaws that doomed him the first time around,” said Brad Woodhouse, a Democratic National Committee spokesman. “That he’s seen as a wishy-washy, flip-flopping politician who lacks any core convictions or principles and who you simply can’t trust to shoot straight with you.”

Mr. Romney’s path to the presidency must first go through his potential Republican rivals, who are eager to steal the spotlight. Even as he spoke, they were on the move. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, criticized Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan even as her “One Nation” bus tour headed toward the coastal town of Portsmouth, N.H., for a clambake Thursday evening.

“In my opinion, any mandate coming from government is not a good thing, so obviously … there will be more the explanation coming from former Governor Romney on his support for government mandates,” Ms. Palin told reporters in Boston, taking aim at Mr. Romney’s past support for a requirement that individuals in Massachusetts buy health insurance.

“It’s tough for a lot of us independent Americans to accept, because we have great faith in the private sectors and our own families,” Ms. Palin said. “And our own businessmen and women making decisions for ourselves. Not any level of government telling us what to do.”

Asked on Thursday what he thought about Ms. Palin’s arrival in New Hampshire, Mr. Romney said: “I think it’s great. New Hampshire is action central today.” In addition to Ms. Palin, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, was also in New Hampshire on Thursday, speaking to a local Republican committee.

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, arrives this weekend for several days in the Granite State. And Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, has said he will compete aggressively in New Hampshire.

Mr. Romney made no mention of his potential rivals. Instead, he painted a picture of a country in crisis. He said that he “believes in America,” but said it is suffering under the current administration.

“We look at our country and we know in our hearts that things aren’t right, and they’re not getting better,” he said.

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