Bashar Assad Will Not Give Up His Toys By Donnel Jones, January 6, 2004	Home   Search   Forum   Terms

President Bashar Assad told The Daily Telegraph that he refuses to give up Syria's weapons of mass destruction program.

Instead, President Assad, who is a dictator for life, mentions Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal. Doesn't everyone know Israel has nuclear weapons? Not everyone knows, or wants to believe, that Syria has WMDs. Uninspired by his fellow thug in arms, Gaddafi, Assad declared he would not abandoned his WMD program even as he did not directly admit he has one. Orwell anyone?

Isn't the Bekka Valley, in Syria occupied Lebanon, one big, huge WMD program? Assad is so smarmy and spoiled you want to slap him into complacency. His smug reassurance that nothing will happen to him and that he can get away with thumbing his nose at Bush and Blair is a sign that something has got to be done about Syria. But when?

Meanwhile Assad gets his plugs through the Western press:

It is natural for us to look to defend ourselves. It is not difficult to get most of these weapons anywhere in the world and they can be obtained at any time.

That is not reassuring at all but at least it's honest. Anyone who thinks that WMDs don't exist in the Middle East and anyone who thinks Saddam didn't have them or, even if he didn't at the time of his forced removal, that he could not have obtained them, had better listen to Mr. Assad's words. He knows what he's talking about. This guy is a first- rate thug.

He also coughs up:

We are a country which is (partly) occupied and from time to time we are exposed to Israeli aggression. . .

No mention whatsoever about Syria occupying Lebanon and persecuting Christians and ruining what was once a beautiful country. Lebanon is the world's only satellite state.

Fortunately, Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act. How long, then, will it be before Syria is accountable?