“Steroid-mad”, tattoo-covered & wielding ....toy guns?

"... This week The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published photographs of a so-called ghost unit, loyal to Mr. Assad and accused of systematically killing Syrian civilians. The tabloid described them as “steroid-mad” and tattoo-covered, and wielding “AK-47s and machetes.”Two images showed a purported member with a large semiautomatic pistol. The weapon was later determined, by the newspaper Al Bawaba in Jordan, to be a blank-firing replica of an Israeli-made Desert Eagle pistol.
Al Bawaba chided the opposition for circulating such images, suggesting that overreaching risked eroding the anti-Assad fighters’ public standing.
As the opposition has become “increasingly desperate for the outside world to take notice .... , it becomes more and more difficult for the international community to put words into action ..."