Word: bashar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With Syria keenly aware of the 250,000 U.S. troops next door, Bush's advisers decided "to rattle the cage" of Syrian President Bashar Assad, says a White House aide. Overnight the Administration swung its big guns from Baghdad toward Damascus and read Syria the riot act. President Bush charged Damascus with possessing illicit chemical weapons. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said there was "absolutely no question" that Syria was harboring Iraqi leaders who had fled their defeated country; he added that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction might have been spirited to Syria as well. The Pentagon accused Damascus...
...Bashar Assad, Syria's baby-faced, blunt-spoken President, probably never imagined he would be going head to head with the U.S. over the future of the Middle East. That was more the kind of mission relished by his late father Hafez Assad, the stern military commander who ruled Syria for 30 years until his death in 2000. Bashar's humble ambition was to leave politics to others in the clan and become a doctor. In the early '90s he went to London to study ophthalmology. There he courted his wife Asma, a young banker of Syrian origin...
Such an assault on Syria's client state Lebanon would enrage Damascus. To which the view in the Administration seems to be, Too bad. Even some officials who are privately dismissive of the neoconservative agenda seem prepared to yank the chain of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom they consider a disappointing, feeble reformer who has failed to rein in his own security forces. U.S. intelligence believes Syria allowed men and materiel--including night-vision goggles--to cross its border and join Saddam's forces during the war. When asked last week what he would do if Saddam's weapons...
...After all the protest against the bullying of young President Bashar al-Assad, the joint declaration contained only a muted reference to the controversy. It expressed "disagreement with allegations directed toward Syria, and welcomed the news regarding the intention of the American Secretary of State to visit Damascus to discuss Syrian-American relations...
...While authorities put the heat on Hizballah here, the U.S. has also moved to try to rein in the terror group abroad. In a private meeting in Damascus last April, Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Syrian President Bashar Assad to restrain Hizballah forces that had been firing rockets at Israel from the north. A diplomatic source critical of Iran's role in arming Hizballah tells TIME that the U.S. has at least twice asked Saudi Arabia to stop giving Iranian military supply planes overflight permission for loads of weaponry earmarked for Hizballah. "We continually raise this issue with diplomatic...