Syrian Charged With Masterminding Bombings

A Syrian was charged Friday with masterminding suicide bombings that killed 58 people in Istanbul, and prosecutors claimed that Osama bin Laden personally ordered him to carry out terror attacks in this pro-Western country.

Al-Saqa testified that he sent $50,000 to the bombers with a courier after discussing it with al-Zarqawi.

Al-Saqa has already been sentenced in absentia by Jordan, along with al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for a failed plot to attack Americans and Israelis in Jordan with poison gas during millennium celebrations.

He was captured in Turkey in August after an alleged failed plot to attack Israeli cruise ships in the Mediterranean.

Maybe the Turks should re-think their relations with Syria just a bit..... it may be past time to crush Baby Assad's regime in a vise-grip from north, east, and west with the USA stomping on the presidential and security sites from above in the opening minutes....

They are of the same kind, however if anyone totes the capability, albeit unconcerning political directive, to set Syria strait well, the Turk's do.

Oh, well, now that is the question, isn't it? What happened in Iraq was that the new Turkish government, faced with a wide disapproval of U.S. intervention in Iraq, chose that moment to prove itself independent. A fine calculation domestically, and it's the sort of choice that seems easy at the time and has consequences that reverberate for decades.

I think that unquestionably we have lost people as a consequence of this, and now the Turkish government has much less of a call on our goodwill with respect to Kurdistan than they might have had they allowed the 4th ID passage into Iraq. The Kurds, of course, stood by us when the Turks did not, but it was their country at stake after all. We're left with the interesting situation at hand.

The Turks cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran dictating regional policy and have said so. Inasmuch as they have no nuclear weapons of their own they are faced with either preventing Iran's programs or falling once again under the nuclear umbrella of the nation they just betrayed in Iraq. It isn't a happy choice and is one of those reverberations.

On our part we must decide whether regional stability forces us to forgive the Turkish betrayal - I think that it does, but I shan't forget it either - and to make such alliances as best befit a sane policy with respect to Iran. That will entail compromise with the current Turkish government, but not on a basis that they might have commanded had they proven tougher on the topic of Iraq. If we are now a bit more inclined to entertain the idea of a larger Kurdistan, that's one of the reverberations as well.

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