NYT: Dissent Grows Over Silent Treatment for ‘Axis of Evil’ Nations

[DeepModem Mom]

Dissent Grows Over Silent Treatment for ‘Axis of Evil’ Nations
By HELENE COOPER
Published: October 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — Ever since President Bush first proclaimed there to be an “axis of evil” in 2002, pundits, diplomats and politicians have urged him to talk to its members. But in the last few weeks, with Iraq experiencing a further surge in violence, North Korea testing a nuclear bomb and Iran continuing to defy a Security Council demand to stop enriching uranium, the cries for dialogue have grown louder.

James A. Baker III, the Republican former secretary of state, said this month that he believed “in talking to your enemies.” After North Korea tested its nuclear device earlier this month, former President Jimmy Carter said that “the stupidest thing that a government can do that has a real problem with someone is to refuse to talk to them.”...

***

Officially, the administration is sticking to form. President Bush said as much during a news conference on Wednesday, when he was asked, again, whether he would be willing to work with Iran and Syria if it was determined that they could help bring stability to Iraq, their neighbor.

His reply did not veer from the script, which basically withholds American dialogue with “axis of evil” members until they change their ways....He said that if the Iranians stopped enriching uranium, American diplomats would talk to them. He also had a to-do list for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to get into America’s good graces: “Do not undermine the Siniora government in Lebanon; help Israel get back the prisoner that was captured by Hamas; don’t allow Hamas and Hezbollah to plot attacks against democracies in the Middle East; help inside of Iraq.”

But within the administration, things are a little more nuanced, Bush officials said. One administration official distilled the internal deliberations this way, “On Syria, there’s a very healthy debate about whether we should talk to them; on Iran, there is no debate internally.”...As for North Korea, American officials continue to espouse the view that the United States, by insisting on talking to North Korea only within the confines of a regional group, can better share the burden of power....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/27diplo.html

[Kagemusha]

1. Since when was Syria part of the axis?

Just wondering.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Must be a new addition. nt

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. not!

Before the war in Iraq, Syria was largely abscent of Islamic extremists. It was one of the most stable and safest countries in the Middle East. But the war in Iraq and the opening of the Iraqi arena for extremist groups changed the security situation in Syria. Syria has become a gateway for volunteer Pan-Arabists and Mujahideen. As a result, the border regions of Syria (Abu Kamal, specifically) have witnessed gatherings of people bent on joining the Jihad in Iraq, especially during the opening day of the war when the republic’s Mufti, Ahmad Kaftaro, declared, “Jihad in Iraq is a duty for all Muslims.” However, after the first year of the Iraqi occupation, small terrorist incidents carried out by Salafists began to be recorded. On 6 May 2004, three Syrian youths with religious backgrounds attacked an uninhabited house previously owned by Rifa’at Al Asad (the president’s uncle). On 6 May 2005, Syrian security forces raided a house that was inhabited by a fundamentalist group and stumbled upon a “variety of weapons.” And in the beginning of 2006, violent clashes occurred in remote parts of the Damascene countryside between Salafis and Syrian security forces.

It is hard to deny the existence of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, however, one must ask why these groups are targeting Syria? Why do Syrian security forces always seem to find these groups in the countryside and behind closed doors? And why do these groups always seem to target insignificant targets? They have never targeted important political, military or tourist sites as is the case in other countries.

Security and intelligence sources in Syria have publicly announced that Syria has arrested between 1200 to 1800 Jihadi extremists of various sorts, some from the Jund Ash Sham (The Army of Sham). But one informant within Syrian Intelligence puts the number of arrests closer to 4000.

What is more, it was explained to me that Syrian Intelligence uses members of Jund Ash Sham from time to time for its own purposes. Syrian Intelligence deceives members of Jund Ash Sham into believing that Syrian Intelligence will assist them in carrying out terrorist acts in Iraq. Syrian Intelligence leads would be fighters into believing that the state authorities will help them to carry out martyrdom operations in Iraq. The authorities set up the unwitting Jihadists in houses far the city center in remote areas and supply them with weapons ostensibly for secret operations. Then the Syrian security forces surround the Jihadists swoop into the house and kill them. The security forces in triumph then trot journalists out to report on their success and the looming danger of terrorism in Syria.

I have been informed that the victims are indeed authentic Jihadists and Salafists, who hope to fight in Iraq. But the Syrian regime turns them to their own purposes to achieve two goals: first, they eliminate dangerous radical fundamentalists; second, they demonstrate to the world and especially to the United States that Syria is afflicted by terrorism just as America is. The implication is that Syria and the West must find common ground in the war on terrorism.

more >
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2006/06/truth-about-islamic-extremist-groups.htm

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. do you have links to any of this? nt

[Spinzonner]

3. I would think that a precondition for talking with your enemies

would be that you have to be able to talk in the first place.

[Dr Batsen D Belfry]

5. Aw c'mon. Give the Pres* a break. Give him some credit

He has spent the better part of 6 years trying to learn English as a first language between brush cutting sessions, bike riding, and PB&J sandwiches! I mean, really, that pretzel incident set him back. You expect him to learn Evilese in only four years? Besides, he can't talk to North Korea because he still thinks Kim Jong is out sick.

DBDB

[ima_sinnic]

6. dumb@$$ won't talk to them b/c he has no clue what to say

the man is devoid of even one molecule of foresight, imagination, wisdom, or even common sense. He can't get past the fact that these are "enemies"--he is in reality scared shitless about revealing that he is a clueless mofo who is INCAPABLE of doing the job he is supposed to be doing, a know-nothing, lazy, uninspired, insipid, clueless, weak, DUMB@$$ who would have trouble getting work with LaborReady. The frikkin idiot couldn't even testify to the 9/11 Commission without Big Dick's lap to sit on. He can't "participate" in a debate without an earwire. He can't even handle simple questions from reporters if they are unscripted without getting all petulant and repeating the same empty phrases over and over--how the #(*%& would he be able to have a real dialogue with the leader of a country?? Even in a symbolic sense, to "talk" through the equally unqualified, uncredible, clueless and incapable so-called Secretary of State would be too revealing of incompetence.

[Peace Patriot]

8. The Bush Junta has no other intention except to enrich war profiteers

everywhere. Their "policy" is to pit people against one another, create as much chaos and hatred as possible, and glut themselves on the ruins of other people's lives. There is no sense in even discussing what they do as "policy." Hugo Chavez had it right--there is an odor of sulfur wherever they go. The poor stranded on rooftops, unrescued, surrounded by flood waters; the bodies of the poor floating in the water as bloated corpses, or dying in their wheelchairs in the arena of death, while the Secretary of State buys expensive shoes in New York and the President of the United States eats cake with his good bud John McCain and the Vice President of the United States orders electrical workers to work through the night to divert power from hospitals to the Texas to Northeast oil pipeline. Piling naked helpless prisoners on top of one another, setting dogs on them, dunking their heads in water until they gasp with drowning, beating the helpless to death, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people without a thought, and strutting around the world uttering phrases like "mission accomplished," "stay the course," "wanted-dead or alive." Babies' bodies smashed to bits. Peoples' body parts flying all over. The beautiful human brain--font of creativity, creator of civilization--splattered all over the streets. To make him "the war president."

It is just obscene beyond belief--not that bad things happen to people, but that these evil and terrible things, deliberately perpetrated by our self-appointed, election stealing, so-called leaders could be called "policy": Bush's "policies" of ripping innocent peoples' bodies to shreds, by the hundreds of thousands, and profiting from this carnage, and using our soldiers as cannon fodder, and looting our treasury, and destroying every good purpose of government, from protecting the poor to national security. The bubble of illusion that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies create around these heinous crimes with the word "policy" is part of the obscenity. And when our Democratic leaders agree and talking about these things as "policy," they join the obscenity.

Why talk about decent policies in this sulfurous atmosphere of unconscionable greed and filthy powermongering? We should never forget what they've done. We should never go to sleep again, as a people, and wake up to find an out-of-control president rampaging through the world. And we should never, never allow the history books to call what they've done "policy."