Word: syrian
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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...
...detaining and interrogating members of al-Qaeda. But Bush & Co. were ticked off by Syria's meddling in the Iraq war. The Pentagon particularly resented Syria's shipments of night-vision goggles, which could have vitiated one of its key technological advantages. U.S. officials were also outraged that the Syrian government allowed volunteers to sign up to join Iraq's resistance at the Iraqi Interest Section in Damascus, which sits directly opposite the U.S. embassy...
...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 who is fluent in four languages. When the gangly young man, now 37, rose to power three years ago, many hoped that an era of modernization, freedom, perhaps even peace was at hand...
...Near Eastern Affairs. They were promoted in a culture of propping up dictators, coddling the corrupt and ignoring the secret police. They have a constituency of Middle East governments deeply opposed to democracy in Iraq. Their instinct is to create a weak Iraqi government that will not threaten its Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and other dictatorial neighbors...
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...