Posted on 04/12/2003 9:28:38 AM PDT by struwwelpeter
Who's next? This question is being asked throughout the entire Mideast. Locals hotly discuss this with their coffee and domino games: which Arab regime will be the next objective of the US and their allies when the Iraq problem is finished? This question, in the opinion of the reviewers, has several answers.
The British newspaper "Times" figures that after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime Washington will turn its attention on Iraq's neighbors. In the opinion of the publication, all states in the region in one way or another will feel the consequences of the military conflict. And what of Washington's allies? They will all reap material rewards and strengthen their foreign policy positions, while the enemies of the war will risk the accumulated wrath of the conquerors themselves.
In the newspaper's opinion, Washington gradually moves its sights from the original "axis of evil" Iran, on to Syria. Washington considers that Damascus must "learn its lesson" that the development of chemical and biological weapons programs can "end badly."
In this very same opera are recent charges by Washington that Damascus is concealing Iraqi leaders and even rendering of military aid to Iraq, the newspaper asserts. Such charges, if they are proven - in contrast with the ephemeral claims that Iran supports international terrorism - can become a leading argument for armed action against Syria.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (one of the Washington "Hawks") has already accused the Syrian leadership of concealing Iraqi military chiefs and rendering military aid to Saddam Hussein's regime. According to Rumsfeld, intelligence data makes it possible for the Pentagon to assert that some Iraqi leaders, who are charged with the war crimes, are hiding out in Syria. He would not, however, define exactly arout whom the discussion deals.
As the "Dove" Secretary of State Colin Powell stated, however, there is no list of countries which the US plans to attack, and Iraq's example should be sufficient to convince Iran or Syria to stop development of WMDs and end their support of terrorist organizations.
In Damascus, an official representative of President Bashar Assad categorically denied all the charges.
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Donald Ramsfel'd:
He tried everything
Donald Rumsfeld was born in Chicago in 1932. In 1954 he finished Princeton, one of the most prestigious universities in America, then served as a not-less- prestigious aviator in the US Navy.
During the 1960s he was a member of the House of Representatives from the state of Illinois. In 1969 he began to work in the Nixon administration, heading one of the economic administrations.
Not long before Watergate Rumsfeld became the US representative to NATO, and in 1974 became chief of staff of Ford's presidential administration.
From 1975-1977 he was the Secretary of Defense. After Republicans lost the presidential election of 1976, Rumsfeld moved on to business. Up to 1985 he was one of the chiefs of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co. However, from November 1983 through May 1984, he was Ronald Reagan's special Mideast envoy.
He wrote a large quantity of articles on questions of US national security. In the 1990s he was one of the main Republican experts on national security and he led a commission on evaluating the rocket threat (to the US).
Specifically, this commission arrived at the conclusion that Iran and North Korea threaten America with rockets. The results of the commission's work in 1998 led to the renewal of the discussion about creating a national antimissile system. Practically all discussings of missile defense refer to the conclusions of this commission.
Rumsfeld is the author of the national security doctrine with which Bush's team arrived at the White House. Donald Rumsfeld is married and has three children.
'Ephemeral claims'? Hahahahaha...
NEXT!
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