(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY CHRISTINA HARTMAN

The Arab League observer mission says it’s seen “nothing frightening” in Syria.

That despite numerous amateur videos posted to websites like YouTube purportedly showing Syrian government forces violently cracking down on protesters.

It was just last week that Syria agreed to let independent monitors from the Arab League into the embattled country to see for themselves whether activists’ reports of government-sanctioned violence are true.

PBS aired an ITN report which suggests the Arab League monitors have a tough, almost impossible job to do.

“Rebels saying the Syrian Army used live rounds on unarmed protesters at three other towns. Again, impossible to prove. So the Arab League must somehow now try and sort this out. So many images coming from Syria are naturally somewhat one-sided.”

So when the league initially said the situation seemed quote “reassuring so far,” anti-government activists set out to prove themselves.

This Telegraph video shows a crowd pleading with monitors as they walked through the flashpoint city of Homs.

And CNN reports -- video uploaded to YouTube purports to depict activists showing an Arab League observer the dead body of a 5-year-old boy. But the network notes restrictions on foreign journalists makes the video impossible to verify.

And now -- Democracy Now! suggests -- critics are calling into question the observer team’s credibility, and its lead in particular.

“The Arab League effort has alarmed many Syrian activists in part because the mission is headed by a Sudanese lieutenant general, named Mustafa al-Dabi, who was once based in Darfur where a prosecutor from the ICC says the Sudanese Army carried out war crimes.”

But Iran’s state-owned PressTV talked to Canadian economics professor Michel Chossudovsky -- who says -- don’t believe anything you hear from the Western media. He says -- he was in Syria earlier this year and saw for himself the Syrian government is the victim of a Western conspiracy.

“I can assure you that we are dealing with an armed insurrection, armed gunman supported by Turkey supported by NATO which have infiltrated the protest movement... all of which to justify a subsequent humanitarian intervention by NATO forces.”

A side note -- that professor once told Russia Today that it’s President Obama, NOT Osama bin Laden, that posed the biggest threat to global security.

Still - the LA Times reports - despite protesters’ enthusiasm ahead of the Arab League monitors’ arrival, they now say they don’t expect much to come of the international observers’ visit.

One told the Times, “They clearly have no idea what is happening on the ground... We thought it would provide us some form of protection. That's why we went out yesterday to demonstrate, and we were fired at. This alone shows that they did not play their role.”

In addition, Human Rights Watch says Syrian authorities have been moving detainees to areas where observers wouldn’t see them. The LA Times reports more than 750 detainees were released Wednesday, but that thousands more are said to remain in detention.