A factor complicating the coalition mission of bringing stability to Iraq is the covert role played by Syria in financing and supporting the present insurgency, and the ineffectual attempts by the United States to counter it or even publicly acknowledge it. A number of current and former U.S. intelligence officers experienced in counter-terrorism who were interviewed by the authors believe that Syria should have been long ago included on Washington's "axis of evil" list - although it is still not. But the State Department, acknowledging recent publicly cooperative gestures from Syrian President Bashar Assad (a British-trained eye doctor who "inherited" the presidency and the leadership of the Ba'ath Party from his bloodthirsty deceased father, President Hafez Assad) considers Syria a "p...
To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: Sharon Manitta of Kucinich for President 2008, +1-202- 403-9163, sharon.manitta@kucinich.us
BEIRUT - A renowned political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians' frustrated hopes for change was grabbed after he left his studio early Thursday and beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus. One of Syria's most famous artists, Ali Ferzat, 60, earned the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated dictators including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria's Assad family.
BEIRUT - A renowned political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians' frustrated hopes for change was grabbed after he left his studio early Thursday and beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus. One of Syria's most famous artists, Ali Ferzat, 60, earned international recognition and the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated dictators including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria's autocratic Assad family.
In a lengthy meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, he explained how long the border with Iraq is and how hard it is to control such a border. He said that in the days of the Saddam regime the Iraqis sent booby-trapped cars to Damascus and the Syrian border control could not detect them. The border has always been hard to control, he said, and Syria had asked the U.S. to provide it with some modern technology which will make it easier to detect illegal movement from either side. The U.S. never made this suggestion public nor did it respond to the request. As for support for terrorism, the US government requested the Syrian government to shut down the offices of various Palestinian groups like Hamas. There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who live in Syria and a har...
RABIYAH, Iraq -- It's a sleepy Friday along the border of Iraq and Syria. A billboard of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and a colorful mosaic of his father, the late dictator Hafez, stare back from the other side. Army Sgt. Bradley Martin, 30, screens the faces and passports of border crossers. The New Kensington native is with the 307th Military Police Company, attached to the 88th Military Police.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's dialogue with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem on Friday was at least in part a response to the pounding that the administration has taken for its supposed refusal to talk to rogue states like Syria. After the meeting, Rep. Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Rice-Moallem discussion at a conference in Egypt shows how foolish the White House was to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for going to Damascus last month to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad. Mr. Lantos, who accompanied Mrs. Pelosi to Damascus, said Miss Rice should know "the great value of face-to- face discussion, even [with] those with whom we strongly disagree. But the implicit premise of Mr. Lantos's comments - that the backward-thinking B...
... States if it helps create "stability" in Iraq in the future. While she was meeting with Mr. Moal...
BAGHDAD - Weeks before the U.S. pullout, Iraq's prime minister confidently predicted Saturday that his country will achieve stability and remain independent of its giant neighbor Iran even without an American troop presence. Nouri al-Maliki also warned of civil war in Iran's ally Syria if Bashar Assad falls - a view that puts him closer to Tehran's position and at odds with Washington. The foreign policy pronouncement indicates that Iraq is emerging from the shadows of U.S. influence in a way unforeseen when U.S.-led forces invaded eight years ago to topple Saddam Hussein.
DAMASCUS, Syria -- A defiant President Bashar Assad said Thursday he wouldn't bow to U.S. demands to expel Palestinian militant groups and criticized new U.S. sanctions against Syria, disputing charges that his country has weapons of mass destruction and is allowing foreign fighters into Iraq. In a meeting of about 90 minutes with American editors, Assad offered no fresh proposals to spur talks on the stalled Middle East peace process -- including Syrian attempts to regain the Golan Heights -- saying the United States has made it clear that its No. 1 priority is Iraq and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe hes a reformer. Hillary Clinton on Bashar al-Assad, March 27 WASHINGTON Few things said by this administration in its two years can match this one for moral bankruptcy and strategic incomprehensibility. First, its demonstrably false. It was hoped that President Assad would be a reformer when he inherited his fathers dictatorship a decade ago. Being a London-educated eye doctor, he received the full Yuri Andropov treatment the assumption that having been exposed to Western ways, hed been Westernized. Wrong. Assad has run the same iron-fisted Alawite police state as did his father. Bashar made promises of reform during the short- lived Arab Spring of 2005. The promises were br...
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