Policy on Syria Moves Toward Regime Change
BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 8, 2005
URL:
http://www.nysun.com/article/15051WASHINGTON - In the wake of Lebanon's first elections following Syrian withdrawal, American policy toward the world's remaining Ba'athist government is approaching support for regime change.
President Bush's top foreign policy advisers met last week to discuss the government of Bashar al-Assad, mulling, according to two administration officials briefed later, a tougher policy that would allow American forces or encourage Iraqi soldiers to pursue terrorists that escape to Syria from Iraq for safe haven.
At the State Department, the Bureau of Near East Affairs and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor have asked Congress for explicit legal authority to fund liberal opposition parties inside Syria through regional initiatives that have hitherto focused on reforming American allies such as Jordan and Egypt, two administration officials told The New York Sun.
The White House is also pressing to expand the U.N. inquiry into the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, to include a probe of the June 2 murder of the anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir in Lebanon.
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The message to Syria is being carried by some of the president's domestic opponents. On Monday, after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Annan regarding the inquiry into Hariri's death, Senator Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont and harsh critic of the president's foreign policy, said he believed Syria was squarely behind the slaying of the former prime minister.
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Looks like Iran is moving off the neocon scope, but they're back to targeting Syria. Recall that in 1996, Perle, Feith, Wurmser authored the "Clean Break" game plan for a string of preemptive wars to be fought by the US on Israel's behalf. That document prepared for then Likud leader Netanyahu called for regime change in Iraq followed by Syria then Iran. After setbacks in Iraq, have they returned to work with the original blueprint?:bounce:
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