Bush Demands Syria Vacate Lebanon Mar 2, 1:46 PM (ET) By NEDRA PICKLER and ANNE GEARAN ARNOLD, Md. (AP) - President Bush on Wednesday demanded in blunt terms that Syria get out of Lebanon, saying the free world is in agreement that Damascus' authority over the political affairs of its neighbor must end now. ... The article goes on to not mention that the US is occupying Iraq. Damn, it would be nice to have a free press again.
it's a news report...not an editorial. there are plenty of editorials that echo your sentiments in american newspapers every day.
Not looking for an editorial. Just looking for both side of the issue, versus parroting the WH positions.
there are statements from Syrian officials...as well as statements from third parties that are dealing with the issue, like Turkey. what you're asking for is editorial commentary. this is merely a report of a story. Bush made a statement...here was the reaction from all sides. Any opinions or analysis on those issues can be found in the editorial section of any newspaper in the country.
Syrian officals did not remark on Bush's statements. They were statements made before Bush's statements. All I am looking for is a little balance. People in the Middle East obviously see the hypocrisy of Bush's remarks. This could easily be mentioned without going "editorial".
you'll get it in editorials. why should there be subjective comparisons to US policy? if someone made a statement like that...some high ranking official in Syria, for example...then sure that should be reported. maybe it will be when that happens. calling this evidence of the death of the free press is a bit of an over-statement.
MM, don't bother argueing. No Worries isn't looking for balance, he's looking for any opportunity to slam Bush. Not to mention that the two situations are quite different. Syria's policy is to occupy and control Lebannon for as long as it can get away with it whereas the US will get our of Iraq as soon as feasable. Even if the Bush wanted to occupy Iraq forever he can't be President forever...
Well it is good to have some background on Syria and how it came to be in Lebanon. My wife asked me how that happened and I certainly did not know the story. In 1920, French colonialists took the Mediterranean part of Syria and made it a French colony called "Lebanon". The French were careful to carve out a colony with a bare majority were Christians. The rest were Druse who are Shiite Muslims and the typical Sunni Muslims of the main part of Syria. The Lebanese eventualy expelled the French. In the 1960's there was a civil war between the Muslims, mainly the Shira, Druse and the Christians. THE Christians asked the Sunni Syrians to come in to help them in the civil war, which by this time also included a couple of hundred thousand Palestinians that had been driven out their homeland by the Israelis. The Syrians helped protect the Christians versus the Shiite Druse and the Palestinians. Israel of course occupied much of Lebanon for many years with US approval. They withdrew in bascially defeat after the Hezbollah, a new organization of the Shia made the price too high for them. Is this to say the Syrians shouldn't leave Lebanon now if the clear majority of the people want them, too? No, but it is more complicated than the nightly news makes it out to be. Of course, it is true the Syrians have much more right to be in Lebanon, than the US does in Iraq. The clear majority of Iraqis want the US to leave asap, but of course Bush doesn't intend to. The source. Juancole.com
The British and the French drew all of the borders in the Middle East and those borders didn't take the locals views into account.
Tony Blair reiterated, "That's right you nasty lil' buggers, shoo!" Shannon Elizabeth is half Syrian/Lebanese, that's all you really need to know.
The reason this is news is because we have a President that has the huevos to actually do something about this. Syrian leaders are probably pissing their pants right now. Contrast that to the Clinton Administration, who didn't even have the nuts to accept Sudan's offering of Bin Laden on a silver platter. When Bush speaks, you better listen up Syria, or we'll bomb you back to the stone age.
Will idiots ever stop believing this despite the fact that it did not happen? I mean, if you can't believe a paid pitchman of the genocidal sudanese government/freelance right wing consultant - who can you believe, a gay hooker operating under a fake name? A journalist taking taxpayer funds under the table to push policies? A fake news reporter making fake news reports ? Signs point to no, says magic 8 ball! Speaking of people offering things up to people on silver platter in a pertinent context (allegations not made by lobbyists for the Sudanese government), read here And of course, you can read about the Bush Administration's rendition of suspects to be proxy-tortured by its Syrian "enemies" here Does this recent tough talk mean we're not going to send people to Syria to be tortured anymore?!? Well that will show them! We've got plenty of places we can take people to be tortured.
Look Sam, it happened. Face facts. Clinton was a pacifist who was afraid of conflict. Heck, the only time he did something worth a dam* was when he bombed Iraq -- and we all know that was just to take the media heat off the Monica situation. Clinton's non-reponse to the USS Cole basically gave al Queda the green light for 9-11. Thankfully we now have a President that stands up for America's security. Had Clinton accepted Sudan's offer of bin Laden, we probably wouldn't even be talking about all this right now. But he didn't. Face facts.
For those of you interested in the TRUTH, please read: An ex-Clinton aide courageously came forward with this. Guess who's paws were also on all this -- Sandy Burglar, err I mean Berger. No wonder he's trying to stuff classified documents down his trousers. Read it and weep, Sam. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/5/153637.shtml Aide: Clinton Unleashed bin Laden Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001 Bill Clinton ignored repeated opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies and is responsible for the spread of terrorism, one of the ex-president’s own top aides charges. Mansoor Ijaz, who negotiated with Sudan on behalf of Clinton from 1996 to 1998, paints a portrait of a White House plagued by incompetence, focused on appearances rather than action, and heedless of profound threats to national security. Ijaz also claims Clinton passed on an opportunity to have Osama bin Laden arrested. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, hoping to have terrorism sanctions lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and "detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas,” Ijaz writes in today’s edition of the liberal Los Angeles Times. These networks included the two hijackers who piloted jetliners into the World Trade Center. But Clinton and National Security Adviser Samuel "Sandy” Berger failed to act. ”I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities,” Ijaz writes. ”The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening." Thank Clinton for 'Hydra-like Monster' ”As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster,” says Ijaz, chairman of a New York investment company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ijaz’s revelations are but the latest to implicate the Clinton administration in the spread of terrorism. Former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson today also noted the failure of Clinton to do more than talk. Among the many others who have pointed out Clinton’s negligence: former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, the late author Barbara Olson, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iraqi expert Laurie Mylroie, the CIA and some of the victims of Sept. 11. And the list grows: members of Congress, pundit Charles R. Smith, former Department of Energy official Notra Trulock, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, government counterterrorism experts, the law firm Judicial Watch, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, the liberal Boston Globe – and even Clinton himself. The Buck Stops Nowhere Ijaz's account in the Times reads like a spy novel. Sudan’s Bashir, fearing the rise of bin Laden, sent intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996. They offered to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or to keep close watch over him. The Saudis "didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.” ”In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.” That’s when bin Laden went to Afghanistan, along with "Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for al-Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.” If these names sound familiar, just check the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists. The Clinton administration repeatedly rejected crucial information that Sudan had gathered on these terrorists, Ijaz says. In July 2000, just three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, Ijaz "brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies - an ally whose name I am not free to divulge - approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.” This offer would have brought bin Laden to that Arab country and eventually to the U.S. All the proposal required of Clinton was that he make a state visit to request extradition. "But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family - Clintonian diplomacy at its best.” 'Purposeful Obfuscation' Appearing on Fox News Channel’s "The O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday night, Ijaz said, "Everything we needed to know about the terrorist networks” was in Sudan. Newsman Bill O’Reilly asked how Clinton and Berger reacted to the deals Ijaz brokered to bring bin Laden and company to justice. "Zero. They didn’t respond at all.” The Clintonoids won’t get away with denials, he said. "I’ve got the documentation,” including a memorandum to Berger. "This was purposeful obfuscation,” he asserted. O’Reilly wondered why the White House didn’t want information about the terrorists. Ijaz said that was for the American people to judge, but when pressed he suggested that Clinton might intentionally have allowed the apparently weak bin Laden to rise so he could later make a show of crushing him. Concludes Ijaz in the Times: "Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.”
LOL, for those of you who are interested in truth, you will note how fake right wing news source is lying to you here. Mansoor Ijaz did not "negotiate[] with Sudan on behalf of Clinton" In fact, it was the exact opposite. Mansoor Ijaz was lobbying Clinton to lift trade sanctions on Sudan on behalf of the Sudanese Government. It says so on his own FOX NEWS bio: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46241,00.html and here is him lobbying congress by testifying in support of the Sudanese goverment in 1997. http://judiciary.house.gov/legacy/354.htm This guy represented the Sudanese government, that same government that makes Hussein look like lightweight on the recent genocide scale - although in his defense, it appears that his motivation wasn't that he hated Sudanese Blacks, Christians or Animists or that he wanted them slaughtered, he just wanted to make a few more dollars. Jorge, you should have trusted the 8-ball before you ended up looking like a complete idiot by posting that. But thanks, I did somewhat enjoy it.
HO HO HO Nice try Sam, attempting to discredit the entire article based on one tiny technicality which you didn't even prove. You are getting pretty desperate at this stage... With the facts right in front of your face, you still deny. Notice how you've at least abandoned your attempts at discrediting the actual substance -- that Clinton didn't act on Sudan's offer of bin Laden. It's no wonder why you have fled that subject. CASE CLOSED
Jorge, the remaining substance of the article has been debunked as well, many times, on this very message board (FranchiseBlade, others I believe) I invite you to self-pwn yourself and relive the past, I think "Turabi" "Clinton", and "Sudan" should work: http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/search.php?s= ....should have listened to the 8-ball.
