Mideast leaders fear another Iraq in Syria -Annan

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Middle East leaders want Syria to cooperate with a U.N. inquiry into the killing of a former Lebanese leader but fear a U.N. confrontation with Damascus could lead to "another Iraq," Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday.

During a recent tour of the region, every capital Annan visited wanted to see Syria convinced to cooperate through diplomatic means rather than via a change in regime or military action as occurred in neighboring Iraq, Annan told reporters.

The 15-nation council ordered the U.N. inquiry into the Feb. 14 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in a Beirut truck bombing, and also demanded that Syria cooperate.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N21665066.htm

:puke:

:puke:

* will go to war anyway. Remember all the weapons inspectors in Iraq? Remember how Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti had to cave on one point after another? He dragged his feet, and rattled his sabers loudly enough to maintain minimum credibility (read: fear) in his own country and with his immediate neighbors, but in reality, eventually he had to give in on everything. Bush attacked anyway, before it got to be *too* obvious that SHAT was a toothless tiger.

Shortly after the Iraq Invasion began -- and after it had become perfectly clear that Iraq had no major WMD programs left -- I read an opinion piece that said that * was the only one in the international community (I know, I know, he's not *really* part of it, and doesn't want to be) who failed to understand that Saddam's bluffing had only one purpose: to intimidate IRAN, or at least to raise doubts that Iran could bear the cost of attacking Iraq. My thought at the time was that SHAT had been too clever by half: he bluffed so successfully that the USA thought he really *was* a menace, and did something about it. Knowing what I now know (thanks to Smirking Chimp, DU, and all the bloggers, and not at all to the Conglomeramedia) about the protracted, thoroughgoing, systematic efforts of the * misadministration to mislead the Congress, the press, the citizens of this country, and the world, I now realize that far from being dumb enough to fall for Saddam's bluff, * and his neocon handlers saw this as a golden opportunity -- they wanted to invade Iraq, and SHAT was playing exactly the right role to let the underinformed see him as a threat, to get them to believe that "something must be done". So in a way he was too clever by half, but not the way I originally thought -- * & Cheney were all too happy to have him play the role of bogeyman in their little bit of political theatre. Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences!