[There was a video here]

Meet Creeper and Wino, two "homies" learning to hold AK-47s like OGs and trying to take the piss out of Bashar Al-Assad's "enemigos" in the middle of Syria's civil war.

Via Liz Sly, a seasoned Washington Post war correspondent with an outstanding bullshit detector:

One of the men identifies himself as Creeper from the Sur-13 or Surenos, a loose affiliation of southern California gangs linked to the Mexican mafia. He rolls up his sleeves to show his gang tattoos and greets fellow gang members Capone-E and Crazy Loco.

The other says he is called Wino, and belongs to a gang called Westside Armenian Power. Members of the Armenian Christian minority in Syria are known to be staunch supporters of Assad.

The two men don't reveal much about what they are doing or why they are fighting for Assad.

"It's Syria, homie, we're in Syria, homie. ... Frontline, homie, frontline, homie," says Wino.

"In Middle East, homie, in Syria, still gangbanging," says Creeper, in comments typical of the 2 1/2-minute video.

The video is provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which has been criticized as essentially a front for neocons who hate Arabs and Muslims. On the eve of the Iraq War, the Guardian derided MEMRI as a "mysterious organization" who aims, according to one activist, "to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."

Being a neocon joint, MEMRI loves the Syrian rebels—who are certainly fighting a ruthless bloodthirsty chemical-weapons-havin' Russian-backed dictator in Assad, but have themselves been known to be not-pleasant sunshiney democracy-loving fellows.

In any case, MEMRI says it ID'd Wino "as Nerses Kilajyan, whose Facebook page features multiple photographs of the man who calls himself Wino, apparently in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo." He is not, repeat not, an elaborate joke constructed by Sacha Baron Cohen. But apparently, MEMRI thinks you need subtitles to understand him and Creeper.

Watch! And be awed by their ability to hold their rifles like idiots and fire indiscriminately into an empty field while spurning their cover and concealment. As they say in Aleppo: "Homie not giving a fuck."