No More Mister Nice Blog

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Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog is backing away from the keyboard.

He has been one of my morning reads since I entered blogtopia [yes, skippy, etc.]. Hopefully, after a break he will re-emerge, possibly as part of a group to reduce the pressure.

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Let’s start with a few facts. I realize that facts aren’t as popular as they once were, but humor me.

Syria was asked by the government of Lebanon to provide peacekeeping troops during the civil war, and Syria agreed.

The 1967 Six Day War was a pre-emptive strike by Israel [the Israelis have admitted it, so don’t argue with me], which resulted in Israel occupying Syrian territory, the Golan Heights.

While Iraq and Syria were both controlled by Ba’athist parties for an extended period, the leaders in the two countries, Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad definitely did not like or trust each other. When Assad died and his son Bashar al-Assad took power, there was no warming of relations.

In the 1991 Gulf War Syria sided with the coalition that pushed Iraq out of Kuwait.

Since September 11, 2001 Syria has provided the US with information and assistance on al-Qaeda, and cooperated with the US request to accept and hold the naturalized Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, since returned to Canada.

Syria has not totally closed its border with Iraq, but that might be due to the cross-border raids by American forces which have resulted in Syrian border guards being killed inside Syria, by US forces.

As Jack, the Grumpy Forester, notes Syria just turned over Saddam’s half brother and other Ba’athists to the Iraqi government.

The latest human rights report by the US State Department is more concerned with abuses by Russia and Saudi Arabia than Syria.

When the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, was blown up in Beruit, the US recalled its ambassador to Syria, implying complicity in the attack, but providing no evidence.

Following the latest attack in Israel, Israel is adamant on Syria’s ‘guilt’, but their claimed evidence will not be made public.

NTodd informs us that Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) has reportedly told Bush that he would personally fly an F-15 to Syria to drop a couple of nukes and eliminate the “Syrian problem”, because Saddam shipped all his WMDs to Syria.

The Syrian government is populated with murderous thugs, just like most of the other governments in the area, so why are we picking on Syria; it doesn’t even have oil?

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