This page is a narrow-focus warblog. In fact, it's a blog of a war that is only verbal, so far. The content consists primarily of pronouncements by various government officials in the US, Syria and around the world, as well as analysis and commentary from media outlets.

Archive

Sources (non-exhaustive)

AFP -- France
Al Bawaba -- Jordon, UK
Al Jazeera -- Qatar
Arab News -- Saudi Arabia
Arabic News
Asia Times -- Hong Kong
Associated Press (AP) -- USA
BBC -- UK
CNN -- USA
The Daily Star -- Lebanon
Financial Times -- UK
Forward -- USA
The Guardian -- UK
--- The Observer
Google News
Ha'aretz -- Israel
.......... Ha'aretz vs. haaretz.com
The Hindu -- India
IRNA -- Iran
IslamOnline -- Qatar
Maariv -- now in English -- Israel
Monday Morning -- Lebanon
New York Post -- USA
New York Times -- USA
Reuters -- UK
Scoop -- New Zealand
United Press International (UPI) -- USA
US DoD Defense Link
US Dept. of State Int'l Information Programs
US White House, Press Briefing Archive
Washington Post

Cast of Characters

Syria
.......... CIA Factbook
.......... Global Security, Syria Special Weapons News Archive
.......... BBC, profile
Bashar al-Assad, President
.......... BBC, profile
.......... Slate, profile
.......... Arabic News, biography
.......... Forward, profile
Farouk al-Shara, Foreign Minister
Imad Moustapha, Deputy Syrian Ambassador to the US
.......... Boston Globe, profile
.......... personal page?
.......... Greta's Fox News show, photo

USA
George W. Bush
.......... US White House, biography
.......... A&E, biography
.......... Iraqi News, biography
.......... Realchange.org, Skeletons
.......... awolbush.com
.......... bushwatch.com
.......... whitehouse.org, biography, may contain satire
.......... bartcop, profile of Bush's military career
Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
.......... A & E, biography
.......... The New Republic, profile
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
.......... US DoD, biography
.......... Wikipedia, biography
.......... ABC News, profile
Colin Powell, Secretary of State
.......... US White House, biography
.......... Behind Colin Powell's Legend
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
.......... US DoD, biography
.......... US DoD, transcripts
.......... American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, biography
.......... Slate, profile
.......... Foreign Policy in Focus, track record in Asia
.......... The Australian, profile
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor
.......... US White House, biography
.......... Hoover Institution, profile
.......... BBC, profile
John R. Bolton, Under Secretary of State, Arms Control and International Security
.......... US Dept. of State, biography
.......... Foreign Policy in Focus, profile
Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
.......... US DoD, biography
.......... Middle East Infromation Center, profile
.......... American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, biography
Richard Perle, Defense Advisory Board
.......... AEI, biography
.......... Center for Cooperative Research, biography -- scroll down
.......... Slate, profile
Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State

NGOs
AEI
AIPAC
PNAC
.......... PNAC's website
.......... pnac.info

UK
Tony Blair, Prime Minister
.......... 10 Downing St., biography
Jack Straw, Foreign Minister
.......... 10 Downing St., biography


Israel
Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister
.......... Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, biography
.......... Electronic Intifada, biography
Shaul Mofaz, Defense Minister
Silvan Shalom, Foreign Minister
Dov Weisglass, Sharon's chief of staff
Ephriam Halevy, National Security Adviser

Palestine
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)
.......... Middle East Information Center, profile
Hamas
.......... UPI, background on Hamas/Israel connection
.......... Terrorism Research Center, profile

Lebanon
.......... CIA, profile
.......... Dept. of State, profile
Emile Lahoud, President
.......... Lebanese Embassy to the US, biography
.......... American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, profile
Rafiq Hariri, Prime Minister
.......... Lebanese Embassy to the US, biography
.......... BBC, profile
.......... The Estimate profile
Nabih Berri, Speaker of the Parliament
.......... Lebanese Embassy to the US, biography
.......... Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, biography
.......... Encyclopedia of the Orient, biography
Jean Obeid, Foreign Minister
Hizbullah
.......... Hizbullah's website
.......... US Dept. of State, profile
.......... Momkey Media Report, Hezbollah links
.......... Yellow Times The History of Hizbullah

Multi-national Organizations
United Nations
European Union
Gulf Cooperation Council
Arab League

Reciprocity

::: wood s lot :::
Providence Journal
random walks
blogs against war
The Memory Hole


War (of Words) with Syria

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...more recent posts

Monday, Apr 14, 2003

Reuters -- April 14
Britain's Straw Says Syria Cooperated with Saddam
KUWAIT - British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said on Monday there was evidence that Syria cooperated with Saddam Hussein's toppled administration in recent months and urged Damascus to change its attitude now that he was gone.

Straw said on Monday Syria was not "next on the list" for military action, but said there was evidence that Syria cooperated with Saddam's toppled administration. He urged Damascus to change its attitude now Saddam was gone.
- mark 4-14-2003 9:26 pm [link]

[British recap of Ha'aretz interview, plus settler reaction.]
The Guardian via Dratfink -- April 14
Sharon softens stance on Palestine
by Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem and Nicholas Watt

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave his strongest indication yesterday that he expected to see a Palestinian state and was willing to evacuate controversial settlements to achieve peace.

But Mr Sharon was given a taste of the dangers of taking a moderate stance. Ezra Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, the settlers' pressure group, described his remarks as "pathetic".

"He has completely divorced himself from the history of the Jewish people. If you do not have the right to live in Shiloh and Beit El, you don't have the right to live in Tel Aviv. The UN declaration in 1948 is not the justification of the state of Israel, it is Jewish history."
- mark 4-14-2003 1:14 pm [link]

National Post (Canada) via AEI --- April 5
A Peaceful Approach to Regime Change
By David Frum
So--what's next? The question may seem premature: Allied troops have barely begun, let alone won, the battle for Baghdad. Yet already you hear anti-war critics demanding to know who will replace Iraq in the Bush administration's gunsights. These critics fear that the administration is determined to launch an endless sequence of wars to reshape the whole Middle East.

But while reshaping the region is very much on the administration's mind, more wars in the region are not. Instead, the administration's long-range thinkers are planning three different approaches borrowed from the recent past to the area's three most troublesome states--and all three approaches are non-military.

For Iran, the approach might be compared to the approach the United States and other democratic states took to Poland in the 1980s. ....

For Syria, think Libya in the 1980s ...

As for Saudi Arabia, it shares more than a set of initials with South Africa. ...
- mark 4-14-2003 12:34 pm [link]

Today's summary and conjecture. The war of words is heating up. After letting lower level officials till the ground, Bush is speaking up on Syria. Lists of current and past offenses by Syria are circulating in the US media. Increasing US pressure on Israel to make concessions to Palestine is likely to increase Israeli pressure on the US to do something about Syria. US is likely to continue to ratchet up pressure, but has little international backing for this rhetoric. Assad may be forced to allow US strikes against anti-Israeli organizations in Syria and Lebanon to prevent full-scale invasion.
- mark 4-14-2003 10:14 am [link]

[Report on Israeli-Syrian War of Words]
Ha'aretz -- April 14
Mofaz: Syria must lift Hezbollah threat to Israel
By Daniel Sobelman and Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondents and Agencies

Syria must lift the threat of Hezbollah attacks against Israel and expel the leaders of terrorist organizations from Damascus, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted as saying Monday, amid fast-rising tensions between Syria and the United States.

"We must monitor what it happening there. The Americans have taken out a 'yellow card' on them, and were right to do so," he said in remarks broadcast on Army Radio, referring to a soccer referee's warning card for players who have broken the rules of the game, and, if infractions continue, may be expelled.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk a-Shara said Sunday that if the United States decides to attack Syria, Israel will also be harmed as a result. Shara also rejected claims that Syria was providing shelter to senior Iraqi leaders, and said that the Americans "know well that these accusations have no basis."

Former prime minister and foreign minister Shimon Peres, currently in the United States, said Washington no longer tolerate "two faced policies" regarding terrorism. "A nation can either fight terror or aid terror. They will not allow a nation to pretend it is fighting terror, while it actually aids it."

Peres said that some 10 headquarters of terrorist organizations in Damascus. He added that Washington's approach to Syria was likely to be "uncompromising," but "I don't think that the next step will be use of military force. I think that what America will try to do is to truly forge a coalition to tell Syria to decide where it's really headed."
- mark 4-14-2003 10:02 am [link]

whitehouse.gov -- April 13
Remarks by Mr. Bush upon Arrival from Camp David
Q Could they face military action if they don't cooperate?
BUSH: They just need to cooperate.
- mark 4-14-2003 9:55 am [link]

[Analysis of Syria-US relations from Israel.]
Ha'aretz -- April 14
Bashar Assad's nightmare is coming true
By Daniel Sobelman

The editors of the official Syrian government newspapers have in recent days lowered the rank of U.S. administration officials to one reserved until now only for their Israeli counterparts: Nazi war criminals.

"The UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly must transfer the leaders of the American administration to the International Criminal Court, so they can be judged as war criminals, equal in rank to the Nazi war criminals," said one of the editorials of the newspaper Tishrin two days ago.
- mark 4-14-2003 9:49 am [link]

[Analysis of international reaction to US neocon policies.]
International Herald Tribune -- April 14
Call it imperialism or unilateralism, America worries the world
by Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

The speed of the Iraqi victory is being seen as likely to bolster the prestige and influence of those in Washington who, Europeans believe, would now like to embark on further military conquests, in Syria, Iran or possibly North Korea. "Traditionally the U.S. has emphasized its great convincing and coercive power on other states," Parmentier said. "Its foreign policy managed to convince other heads of state that what they were doing was in their national interest, and this was American's great strength.

"Today, the U.S. is affirming a much more blunt and brutal stance," Parmentier added. "Its vision for foreign affairs has somewhat retrograded to a more national or even nationalistic definition, in the most limited sense of the term, as it was understood in the 19th century." .
- mark 4-14-2003 9:37 am [link]

Zee News (India) -- April 14
New evidence extremist groups use Syria as base: Time
London: A key operative of an extremist group suspected of links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network operated out of Syria until last month, the European edition of the US news weekly time reports in its issue appearing today.

"Beginning last January and continuing through the first week of the war, mullah Abderrazzak -- a Tunisian member of the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group -- made satellite telephone calls from Syria to Milan-based Islamic terrorists, according to court papers filed in Milan," the weekly said in a statement.

Abderrazzak wanted the terrorists to leave Europe and join the fight against US and British troops in Iraq, an Italian anti-terror investigator told time.

His location does not prove the Syrian government knowingly harbored him, but the investigator told time "activity like this can't happen without (Syria's) security service knowing."
- mark 4-14-2003 8:56 am [link]

[Coverage of Bush's comments and Syrian response. With added depth on Syrian response. Mention of Time article about alleged al-Queda link with Syria.]
Al Jazeera -- April 14
Washington ups the ante against Syria
by Amal Hamdan
In an escalating confrontation of words, the United States accused Syria Sunday of possessing chemical weapons, charged its nationals had engaged US troops in combat in Baghdad, provided a safe haven for fleeing Iraqi officials.

In today's instalment, US President George W. Bush stopped short of threatening force against Damascus. Asked if Syria could face military action Bush replied, “They just need to cooperate.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke to his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad, hours after Bush reiterated US allegations. Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported the two leaders discussed “developments in the Iraqi question and the global situation in the Middle East,” without giving further details.

To add to the pressure, the latest European edition of Time magazine has reported that a key Al-Qaeda operative was allowed to operate out of Syria with the full knowledge of the country's security services.

"Beginning last January and continuing through the first week of the war, Mullah Abderrazzak -- a Tunisian member of the Ansar Al Islam terrorist group -- made satellite telephone calls from Syria to Milan-based Islamic terrorists, according to court papers filed in Milan", said the US news weekly.

Abderrazzak wanted the "terrorists" to leave Europe and join the fight against US and British troops in Iraq, an Italian anti-terrorist invesitgator told Time.
- mark 4-14-2003 8:52 am [link]