September 18, 2005
Zalmay Khalilzad, a Muslim neocon (no, this is not an oxymoron),
CFR and PNAC member, and currently Bush’s man on the ground
("ambassador") in Iraq, has floated a trial balloon, "off the record,"
of course: "the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have
been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in
Iraq," said Khalilzad, according to the Huffington Post.
Of course, this may simply be more propaganda designed to set the
Syrians on edge, or maybe Zalmay had one too many drinks at businessman
Teddy "junk bonds are wampum" Forstmann’s "annual off the record
gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend." On second thought, as a
Muslim, Zalmay’s not supposed to drink infidel firewater. Or maybe the
former backer of the Taliban and student of neocon guru Albert
Wohlstetter felt at home chewing the fat at Teddy’s digs (Frostmann
co-chaired Bush Senior’s failed 1992 reelection campaign and made millions
during the Clinton years for the likes of Henry Kissinger, George
Shultz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell through exclusive
"investments"). Khalilzad either felt at home and let fly in mixed
company or this is another Bushian trick designed to muddy the waters.
It’s
no secret the neocons and their fellow travelers have pasted a big
bull’s eye on Damascus. "The road to Damascus, which is at the center
of the Bush administration’s roadmap for restructuring the Middle East,
doesn’t run directly from Baghdad. Its starting points are in
Washington, Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, and Beirut—charted by the
neoconservative think-tanks, the Christian Right, and the right-wing
Zionists who move easily back and forth between Capitol Hill and the
Middle East," writes Tom Barry.
The
neoconservatives, strongly backed the right-wing Zionist lobby through
such groups as the Orthodox Union and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs, have followed a similar strategy to advance their
agenda for political transformation in Syria and Lebanon. In much the
same way that they moved forward their agenda for regime change in Iraq
step by step, the neocon advocates for a radical transformation in the
Middle East have in the case of Syria and Lebanon also formed a "front
group"—USCFL [the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon]—and supported
bipartisan legislation that establishes the political base for
sanctions against Iraq—and eventual U.S. military action. USCFL’s page
of "selected links" recommends just three lobbying organizations:
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Christian Coalition of
America.
"The US Committee for a Free Lebanon led the anti-Syria charge," explains Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen.
"Founded as an Israeli front in 1997, under Ziad K. Abdelnour, the Free
Lebanon Committee worked with AIPAC and the neo cons to push for
anti-Syria sanctions." Abdelnour is "a famous Christian Lebanese
investment banker who currently lives in New York City," according to Wikipedia.
"Born in Lebanon, Ziad always had a strong sense of nationalism for his
country, however he also had a desire to see and live in the United
States." In other words, he is waiting for the neocons to unleash
Armageddon-like violence against Syria and Lebanon, reducing both
countries to wastelands resembling the ravages of Hurricane Katrina,
minus a lot of water, and then Abdelnour will return to his homeland
where he will likely, with his experience as a Wall Street investment
banker, pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar.
Of
course, the neocon plan to destroy Syria is nothing new or especially
surprising and Zalmay Khalilzad’s comment is nothing more than a
reminder of what the neocons have had in mind for some time. In April,
2003, soon after Bush invaded Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld "ordered
contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall
of Baghdad," reports the Guardian.
"Meanwhile, his undersecretary for policy, Doug Feith, and William
Luti, the head of the Pentagon’s office of special plans [i.e., the lie
factory that cooked up the "evidence" against Saddam], were asked to
put together a briefing paper on the case for war against Syria,
outlining its role in supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, its links
with Middle East terrorist groups and its allegedly advanced chemical
weapons program," the vast majority of this the same sort of fallacious
nonsense the Bushites used as a pretext in the lead-up of the invasion
of Iraq. At the time, Bush shifted this plan to the back burner because
the election was coming up. Now that he was safely "re-elected"
(through hook, crook, and rigged Diebold voting machines), the attack
Syria (and Iran) plan, long ago cooked up by the neocons and their
Zionist allies (recall Feith and the neocons advised the Likudite
government in 1996 that it could "shape its strategic environment… by
weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria," a plan that has not
changed an iota over the last decade), may in fact be moved to the
front burner and brought up to a rolling boil, now that master
trickster Karl Rove need not worry about the Pentagon going overboard
and imparting the impression Bush is a warmongering criminal in the
lead-up to the election. In short, if the neocons have their way, it
will soon be business as usual.
It was just a couple days ago Adam Ereli,
spokesman for Condi Rice’s State Department, blamed Syria for all
manner of trouble not only in Iraq, but just about everywhere else in
the neighborhood. "Syria, more and more, is being recognized as a
destabilizing element in the region. It’s not just about Iraq—it’s
about Iraq, it’s about Lebanon, it’s about the Palestinian Authority.
Because there’s a connection between Syria and terrorism and murder and
mayhem in each of these three different areas…. Innocent people are
getting blown up in Iraq because Syria is allowing its territory to be
used by terrorists bent on sowing murder and mayhem in Iraq. And
they’re not going to succeed. The international community is not going
to let this continue to happen."
Of course, when Ereli
mentions the "international community," he really means neocon and
Zionist-worshipping sociopaths in the Bush administration, since most
of the rest of the real international community believe the Bushites
have gone stark raving bonkers.
Likely scared witless—having
witnessed Bush’s shock and awe chaos inflicted on Iraq—the Syrians
smell carnage blowing in the wind and are bending over backwards to
accommodate the Bushites. "Syria strongly condemned bomb attacks which
have killed scores of people in Baghdad this week and said it was ready
to do 'whatever it takes’ to cooperate with US and Iraqi authorities in
bringing security and stability to its neighbor," the AP
reported on September 15. Bush, of course, did not hear this and hates
the idea of cooperation. "The (Syrian) government is going to become
more and more isolated as a result of two things: one, not being
cooperative with the Iraqi government in terms of securing Iraq and,
two, not being fully transparent about what they did in Lebanon," said
Bush. In short, the Syrians have not groveled sufficiently and,
besides, nothing will stop the Zionist plan to "roll back" Syria (i.e.,
assassinate Bashar al-Assad and subject the Syrian people to the sort
of misery the Iraqis are suffering).
Bush has nothing to
lose by attacking Syria—regardless of his dismal approval ratings and
the public relations spin-out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—and
Zalmay Khalilzad’s trial balloon may signal the beginning of the long
sought after campaign to kill a whole lot of Syrians.
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