Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Friday 4/2/2004

Welcome to My World, where I know I'm kind of alone amongst the media in my constant criticism of Syria, but almost daily pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place more and more painting Damascus as, at best, a two-faced government that by no means has America's best interest in mind. It's just the opposite. Recently arrived Iraqi's now in our country are all saying the same thing, telling tales of close ties between Syria and Saddam Hussein and even closer ties with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It would only stand to reason that Al Qaeda is involved somewhere in this shadowy system of Syrian intrigue. We know through the money trails that Syria was a conduit for U.N. banned war materials for Saddam Hussein and we know of the bootleg illegal oil pipeline that flowed from Iraq to Syria before Iraqi freedom. Many Iraqis now in the U.S. feel that it was fairly common knowledge that several secret convoys carried what they suspect to be weapons of mass destruction into Syria shortly before the U.S. attack on Iraq, a path taken by many Iraqi regime figures just before the war began. Also escaping the mainstream media somehow is the fact that there has been unreturned gunfire on U.S. helicopters patrolling the Iraq-Syrian border from border guards. The White House taking the soft road to Damascus during all of this election year garbage, will probably act, ordering tough economic sanctions against Syria because of the way they have aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups, many of them in Iraq, blowing up citizens, soldiers, and themselves. I think these economic sanctions will work about as well as they worked with pre-war Iraq. It's too bad the mandate all terrorists and those nations that harbor them has to be set aside just because it's an election year. Sooner or later we'll have to deal with the Syrians, as I see it ... I'm H.G. Listiak.