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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....