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WASHINGTON — Nine years ago this week, our Fox News team accompanied U.S. Marines as they swept into Baghdad and then north up the Tigris River to seize Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. It took less than three weeks to drive the tyrant from power in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it appeared then that the force of American arms could ensure a new era of tranquility in a part of the world where brutality and anti-American despots had ruled for too long. But it was not so. The Dec. 13, 2003, capture of the deposed dictator, dragged filthy and...

Will Tehran Throw Assad to the Wolves? For Assad’s Removal, Iran May Hook up with Saudi Arabia and Turkey Iran is finally ready to dump its leading ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. This falling-out eluded every effort of US diplomacy for decades. The rift burst out into the open when Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi‘s scheduled visits to Syria and Lebanon were abruptly cancelled without explanation. The events leading up to the rupture are outlined by Iranian sources: Intensive deliberations at Iran’s National Security Council and private consultations between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the council chairman Ali...

-Excerpt- The activists said the attack on Rastan and Talbiseh, in the central province of Homs, occurred after authorities cut all telecommunications with the area. They added that all roads leading to the two towns have been closed off by security forces and soldiers. "The towns are under siege," one of the activists said.

WADI KHALED, Lebanon – Using horses and mules to carry their possessions, Syrians crossed a shallow river Monday to reach safety in Lebanon with tales of a "catastrophic" scene back home: sectarian killings, gunmen carrying out execution-style slayings and the stench of decomposing bodies in the streets.

Bashar Assad has launched all-out war on his people. Tanks firing artillery, APCs, infantry units, commandoes and snipers were deployed for the first time at daybreak Monday, April 25 in cities across Syria for the most brutal assault on any Arab anti-government protest in the four-month uprising. In the first few hours, hundreds are estimated to have been massacred (over and above the 350 shot dead in the last three days) and thousands injured. Denied medical attention, they are left in the streets to die. The military offensive to break the back of the uprising is led by his younger...

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

Mideast: Israeli officials charge Syria with transferring ballistic missiles to the control of Iran's puppet militia, Hezbollah. It seems that another attempt to woo and appease a hostile power is not working. Last November we commented on reports in the Arab media in the Persian Gulf that Syria, apparently at the request of Iran, had turned about 300 long-range ballistic missiles over to Hezbollah control in Syrian territory. Hezbollah personnel were being trained to operate the Scuds. On Tuesday, Israeli President Shimon Peres confirmed these reports, publicly charging Syrian President Bashar Assad's government with transferring Scud missiles to the control...

Syrian President Bashar Assad's..visit was officially described as a goodwill trip to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his re-election as Iran's president. But what came out following Assad's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was an idea for an unofficial quadripartite alliance between Syria and Iran, with Turkey and Iraq....Turkey has begun to accept the possibility that its European dreams are unlikely to materialize... Obama...appears determined to announce his Middle East peace plan next month in New York in the presence of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas

'Come to Jerusalem to talk' was the message of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an historic interview to Saudi satellite station Al Arabiya, aired by Channel 10 Monday evening. In his first appearance on a major Arabic news station in over six years, Olmert, speaking in an office adorned with the blue and white Israeli flag, told his Hebrew-speaking interviewer: "Bashar Assad, you know … You know I am ready to hold direct negotiations with you and you also know that it's you who insists on speaking to the Americans. The American president says: 'I...

Support for the actions of the Dem leadership continues to flow in from America's enemies around the world.Last week, Al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahri, said a Dem-sponsored bill calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq was proof of America's defeat.Now, the leader of Syria's thugocracy has weighed in, defending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-Ca.] against criticism of her recent tête-à-tête with him. NBC's Ann Curry has followed ABC's Diane Sawyer's footsteps to Damascus, interviewing Bashar Assad. An excerpt of the interview aired during the first half-hour of this morning's "Today." It included this exchange. NBC CORRESPONDENT ANN CURRY: The Bush...

Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it, since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, "a threatening system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a strike eventually caused the war." Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink of...

I suppose certain puffed-up congressmen are feeling their oats since the election, but that's no excuse for their unauthorized trips overseas to meet with leaders of foreign nations. This destructive practice must be stopped. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson traveled to Syria and met with its president, Bashar Assad, without the authority and contrary to the wishes of the Bush administration, including the State Department. The well-known policy of the Bush administration is that the United States has limited diplomatic ties with the Syrian government because of its support for terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas, its support of terrorism and ethnic...

. Syrian President Bashar Assad, left, meets U.S. Senators John Kerry, right, and Christopher Dodd, second left, in Damascus, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006

If Canadians require further evidence why our allies in the war against terrorism no longer trust us, they need look no further than the Maher Arar case. This is the man U.S. authorities apprehended at Kennedy airport in New York last September, alleging he was an al-Qaeda operative. Mr. Arar is a Canadian citizen, but he also is a citizen of Syria and as such under U.S. immigration law -- Canadian law has a similar provision -- was subject to deportation to either Canada or Syria. U.S. authorities chose to send him to Syria. We can only guess why. At...

The Middle East, says Syrian President Bashar Assad, 40, seems to be teetering on the brink of chaos. He spoke with SPIEGEL about his country's difficult relationship with the United States, the pressure to go to war, and the consequences of the wars in Lebanon and Iraq.

The interview with Syrian president Bashar al Assad on Dubai TV on Wednesday confirmed his regime’s isolation on the international, regional and Arab levels. It also revealed the outlines of confusion inside the country. The Syrian president is well aware that what took place in Lebanon was a catastrophe, irrespective of how often he speaks of a “strategic victory”. As such, Syria does not have the right to expect peace negotiations. The latest confrontation with Hezbollah will prompt Israel to re-examine how to heap more destruction for the least amount of losses, not to re-examine whether to fight Lebanon or...

My article on the meaning of the Middle East ceasefire and the failure of the Israelis to complete their mission speculated that it could lead eventually to a nuclear weapon being used by the Israelis on Iran. It seems to me that one might conclude from the following opposing article (its author says that the real losers were Syria and Iran (not Israel) that the events of this summer have actually laid the groundwork for the USA to bomb Iran with nuclear weapons.

DEBKAfile reports a war council in Damascus chaired by Syrian president Bashar Assad, attended by Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah and senior Iranian official Ali Larijani July 28, 2006, 4:42 PM (GMT+02:00) Iran‘s state news agency confirmed Nasrallah’s presence in the Syrian capital “for consultations.” DEBKAfile’s military sources note that Nasrallah crossed over despite the heavy Israeli air bombardment of Lebanese-Syrian border regions. The war conference is attended also by Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Mussa Abu Marzouk as well as the Palestinian Jihad Islami chief Abdallah Ramadan Shelah. The Palestinian terrorist leaders were invited in their capacity as commanders of the...

<p>The former number two official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.</p>

[Paul Bremer] writes that in the fall of 2003 he was told about a secret attempt by Syrian President Bashar Assad to incite the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite cleric in Iraq, against Americans. Mr. Bremer was told by a messenger that the Ayatollah had received a secret communique from Mr. Assad urging him to "issue a fatwa calling for a jihad against the Coalition," similar to the one the Shia had called against British occupying forces in 1920. "This was an act of extraordinary irresponsibility from Syria's president," Mr. Bremer writes. "We had good intelligence showing that...

In the gangster movies, you know all hell is about to break loose when one of the disgruntled old dons decides to switch sides and rat out the young Godfather. Something like that is now happening with Syria -- and it provides a new year's bombshell for an already turbulent Middle East. The turncoat don in this case is Syria's former vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam. From exile in France, he gave an astonishing interview Friday that linked the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad to the murder last year of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. He told al-Arabiya television...

DAMASCUS - Syria’s ruling Baath Party has dismissed former Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam and demanded that he be tried for high treason, the official news agency SANA reported on Sunday. The decision was announced in a statement issued by the Baath Party’s national leadership, the country’s highest decision-making authority headed by President Bashar Assad. It came a day after parliament recommended that Khaddam be tried for high treason after he claimed Assad had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri months before his Feb. 14, 2005, assassination.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, AP -The chief U.N. investigator into the assassination of a former Lebanese premier, armed with new powers from the Security Council, has summoned six senior Syrian intelligence officers for questioning, a Lebanese official said Saturday. The officers include Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law. The official, close to the U.N. team investigating former Premier Rafik Hariri's killing, said chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis sent the summons to the Syrian government via the United Nations on Wednesday. Mehlis has sent a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding to question at least six Syrian officials, the official told The Associated Press....

BEIRUT -- The Lebanese army fully deployed into the streets of Beirut while awaiting the release of U.N. special prosecutor Detlev Mehlis's report on his investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Armored vehicles and heavy artillery were placed in front of possible targets. Neighborhoods formed watch groups. The government suspended gun licenses. The streets were eerily quiet. Many stayed home in case Syrian terrorists lashed out in anger at their former subjects. And now, 250 days after Hariri was killed, the truth -- or at least something that looks like the shape of the truth --...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The lead investigator in the assassination of a top Lebanese politician acknowledged that he deleted references from his report implicating two relatives of Syria's president, raising questions about whether the U.N. tried to soften the inquiry's findings. The report, which accused key Syrian and Lebanese security officials of orchestrating the Feb. 14 bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others, was nonetheless a stinging rebuke of Damascus' regime. The findings caused an uproar in the region and brought swift denials of involvement from the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In an...

Via GOPINION. One week after Hizbollah’s leadership visit to Tehran and his meeting with the new President of Iran, the Syrian regime’s leader paid the same visit to the regional power seeking nuclear weapons, and reaffirmed the strategic alliance in the region.

DAMASCUS, Syria - President Bashar Assad met with a top U.N. envoy Sunday amid accusations that Syria has not fully withdrawn its intelligence operatives from Lebanon and was perhaps even organizing political assassinations. U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, who met with Assad for two hours, left the country without commenting on the outcome of the talks. The government also had no comment. In a statement issued in Beirut, Lebanon, U.N. spokesman Nejib Friji said Roed-Larsen discussed with Assad "all relevant issues and they will continue their dialogue." Roed-Larsen planned to brief U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the talks when they meet...

WASHINGTON — His father ran a brutal regime but earned grudging respect for knowing when and how to make deals, as in 1991 when he joined the U.S.-led coalition that expelled Iraq from Kuwait. * * * Martin Indyk, a former assistant secretary of State who met many times with Hafez Assad and spent three hours with Bashar Assad a year ago, calls him an "enigma" and an "ingénue" who appears to be not entirely in control of his own government. Surrounded by holdovers from his father's 30-year rule and Alawites from Syria's ruling religious sect, Assad is "an empty...

Last Saturday, Syria's president, Bashar Assad, spent an hour in front of his country's parliament discussing Syrian foreign policy. Some commentators focused on Assad's comments on Israel and Iraq, but they were just filler for what he was leading up to: an announcement of his intention to withdraw Syrian troops from Lebanon, where they have been stationed since 1976. Several Lebanese opposition figures welcomed that announcement, but kept mum about a more disturbing aspect of Assad's speech: his barely-concealed contempt for Lebanon. Syria's disastrous Lebanese policy is, in many ways, the sour fruit of that contempt. One cannot properly rule...

The events of the past few weeks suggest that Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad and Howard Dean may be good candidates for forced retirement. Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later, but let me explain why I decided to put these 3 together on my retirement wish-list.

The events of the past few weeks suggest that Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad and Howard Dean may be good candidates for forced retirement. Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later, but let me explain why I decided to put these 3 together on my retirement wish-list.

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: Earlier today, President Bush telephoned Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to express deep sorrow after the wounding by U.S. forces of freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena and the killing of a member of her Italian escort in Iraq. Also today, Syrian President Bashar Assad announced a two-stage pullback of his forces to the Lebanese border, but failed to address broad international demands that he completely withdraw Syria's 15,000 troops after nearly 30 years in the country. Assad also did not respond to President Bush's demand just a day earlier that Syria withdraw all its troops and...

Sep. 26, 2004 21:39 Syria seeking to oust Iraqi nuclear scientists By DOUGLAS DAVIS Syria is making desperate efforts to persuade Iran to accept a group of 12 Iraqi nuclear scientists and their families who had sought refuge in Damascus before the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. Quoting Western intelligence officials, the London-based Sunday Telegraph reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad fears that the US will use the presence of the Iraqi scientists as a pretext to target Syria and he is desperate to find a new home for them. The possibility of moving the Iraqi scientists to Iran, a...

Political bickering, poor governance and economic woes - with foreign debt of $53.7b - weigh down the country THERE'S much about Beirut that recalls Singapore: the greenery, the lively, urban lifestyle, good schools and eating places, a colourful port, low crime. But look again. One in four passers-by is not Lebanese, but Syrian - about a million of them in a nation of barely four million native Lebanese. Some 30,000 Syrian troops man roadblocks. Other Syrians work as labourers in the booming construction business. Some beg. And some - installed in Lebanon's intelligence service - help monitor the movements of...

Syrian Accountability Act to Combat Terrorism By Jim Hauser Talon News December 18, 2003WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week, President Bush signed into law H.R. 1828, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The legislation calls on the president to impose sanctions on Syria to discourage support for international terrorist groups and the occupation of Lebanon.The bill demands that Syria end support for terrorism; halt the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) along with medium- and long-range missiles; and withdraw the roughly 20,000 troops it has deployed in Lebanon.It also calls on Syria to "enter into...

Says she's ready for headline: 'Congresswoman invites a terrorist' Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, says she has invited Syrian leader Bashar Assad to come to the United States to speak even though his country is designated by the U.S. as a rogue nation and sponsor of terrorism. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas Jackson Lee said Assad so impressed her during her recent terrorism fact-finding mission to Europe and the Middle East she thought he should come to the U.S., the Houston Chronicle reported. "I'm sure someone will write a headline, 'Congresswoman invites a terrorist,'" Jackson Lee said. "But that's not...

Movies and comic books condition Americans to think in terms of the "evil genius," a dangerously insane but diabolically brilliant adversary who carefully and calculatingly plots to destroy the world. Think Lex Luthor attempting to obliterate the California coast, or the Joker scheming to poison Gotham, or the countless forgettable villains who have conspired to change the orbit of the moon in an effort to unleash destructive tidal waves that will destroy the Earth's major cities. For better or worse, this archetype has spilled out of the realm of fantasy and into the real world, coloring how Americans view nonfiction...

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - It is questionable whether Syria will get Israel's message to stop supporting terrorism - a message that Israel sent this weekend when it bombed a terrorist training camp outside of Damascus, experts here are saying. Israeli fighter planes struck the Ayn Tzahab camp some 12 miles outside the Syrian capital early Sunday, less than a day after Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a restaurant in the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa, killing 19 people. Israeli officials said the strike -- the deepest inside Syrian territory since the 1973 Yom Kippur War --...

<p>Syrian leader Bashar Assad has been handed an opportunity by the United States' victory in Iraq that will decide his place in history. Bashar can follow his father, Hafez Assad, into the pantheon of ruthless tyrants who have killed thousands of their own people and threatened the peace and stability of the Arab world. Or he can decide to cooperate with the United States, turning over fleeing Iraqi officials, eliminating Syria's chemical weapons, and closing down terrorist training camps in Syria and Syrian-controlled Lebanon. If Mr. Assad is smart, he'll learn from Saddam Hussein's mistakes and avoid the wrath of the United States military.</p>

In 1982, the Syrian military repressed an Islamic uprising in the city of Hamat, killing tens of thousands of residents. Last week, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told a visiting delegation of U.S. legislators that the U.S. could benefit from Syria's experience in fighting terrorism. Among the members of the American delegation were Senator Richard Durbin (IL), House members David Price (NC), Jim Davis (FL), Adam Schiff (CA), and former representative Wayne Owens (UT). Also present at the meeting were Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al-Shar' and U.S. Ambassador to Damascus Theodore Kattouf. Following are excerpts from a response to Assad's statements...

An American war on Iraq looks a good way off. But the shadow-boxing has begunGet article background THE sword suspended over the head of Damocles hung, legend says, by a single horsehair. That hanging over the head of Saddam Hussein is only a little more secure. This is a man on whom the world's pre-eminent power has, in effect, declared war. Indeed, unlike most war declarations, George Bush's fatwa against him is personal. America's stated aim is not only to divest Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but also to change the regime in Baghdad. If he were...

Saudi pressure on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, including a personal message from Crown Prince Abdullah, to end the terror strikes of Palestinian suicide bombers in order to bring about a cease-fire, which will then lead to an international conference on the Saudi-Arab peace proposal, has failed. The outcome is that the Saudis cannot uphold their part of the agreement reached by Abdullah and U.S. President George W. Bush. It is also clear to the Saudis that the movement that Arafat heads, Fatah, and its military wing, are directly linked to the terrorism. In other words, Arafat is involved. Moreover,...