[spence]

Will all the horrible violence ripping Syria apart, I'm having trouble reconciling this...

Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of Syria’s president, told a friend that she was the “real dictator” in the family, according to leaked emails that suggest she holds a cherished place in the leader’s inner circle.

Despite the ambitions she expressed for liberalising Syria before the uprising, Mrs Assad, 36, displays no misgivings about the regime’s bloody crackdown, which has accounted for most of the estimated 8,000 lives lost.

Her correspondence with Bashar al-Assad, his aides, friends and family portray her as highly supportive of her husband.

In an email to a family friend on Jan 10, she praised a speech the president gave for conveying a sense of being “very strong, no more messing around”.

In another, she complains that ABC News unfavourably edited an interview with him.

On Jan 17, she circulated an email cracking a joke at the expense of the people of Homs, shortly before a regime onslaught that would claim hundreds of lives.

With this...