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It’s a shame that a 90-minute debate about foreign policy didn’t mention the situation in Syria, but then that’s a very touchy situation. According to Seymour Hersh, Bush has really hurt the war on terror with his antagonistic tone to people who could be made into invaluable allies.
Immediately after September 11, Bashar Assad of Syria instructed Syrian intelligence to turn over extensive information about Al Qaeda’s European cells, through which Mohammed Atta had passed. The Syrians are experts on Al Qaeda: for decades they’ve been at war with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic terrorists who oppose the Syrian secular state. The Brotherhood has close operational ties to Al Qaeda.
Syria is one of seven nations designated by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism, and Syria’s public support of Hezbollah and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is notorious. But Assad is in a tight spot, not exactly in control of his own government, and weighed down with a moribund economy that the U.S. has a trade embargo with. He is desperate to normalize relations with the U.S. Even as his intelligence officers were giving us invaluable intel on Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood, he was speaking of cracking down on Hezbollah and Hamas in return for a back-channel to the White House.
Obviously such a clumsy courtship was bound to offend the Bushies, who are not at all keen to take Syria off of their “To Be Invaded” list. In fact, every major department in the administration - State, Pentagon, Vice President – chimed in with their own particular version of “fuck you.” The CIA, while also opposed to the back-channel, was extremely keen to continue the information-sharing with Syrian intelligence. Here was Bashar Assad, banging on the door, begging to be made into a tool, and the Bushies gave him the finger. Assad was rebuffed. Opposed to the invasion of Iraq, he quietly let the intelligence-sharing program die. He gave a lot and got nothing in return.
Intelligence officers are seething about the screw-up with Syria. Many of them simply cannot comprehend how inept the Bushies are. They see it slipping away, just like the nuclear situation with North Korea and Iran. (Iran is considered by some to be nuclear-capable sometime this year, thanks to A.Q. Khan and Dubya’s intransigent refusal to exercise even the most elementary diplomacy.)
It’s in our interest to investigate how far Syria will go to live up to Assad’s offers, assuming we can kick-start the process again. Control of Hamas & Hezbollah in addition to reams of top-notch Middle-Eastern terror intelligence from a country much-better positioned to obtain it than us. (Of course, Israel is opposed to any such cooperation.)
I don’t know much about Kerry’s foreign policy advisors, and they’re being deliberately mum, but their collective past experience in different campaigns and administrations gives some hope that they will have the ability to distinguish between shit and shinola. Assad is a jilted lover whom we must now woo back into the fold.
All of this is covered in much more detail in Seymour Hersh’s ‘Chain of Command’ I’d post about three pages from it if it wasn’t for the copyright rules. A must-read book, especially his epilogue.
Weigh in with any thoughts.
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