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Syrian Ultimatum Concerning Lebanon?

This sounds serious if true. But is it true?

From the New York Sun.

Secretary Rice's mission to the Middle East has already failed because Syria has issued an ultimatum that augurs a world war soon enough.

The Syrian ultimatum is meant to provoke Israel and to pull America directly into the fighting. The ultimatum threatens that the attacks by Hezbollah — trained, supplied and commanded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards — will increase in intensity unless America negotiates directly with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The ultimatum demands that America force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hezbollah bases and weaponry in Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hamas in Gaza, and to make territorial concessions that would mean that Israel could no longer defend either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Knowing that America cannot agree to such an unprecedented surrender, Syria and its sponsor, Iran, are preparing for the next stage of the escalation, which is meant to draw the American military directly into the shooting war.


"Syria Warns It Will Strike Israel Deeper"
By JOHN BATCHELOR - Special to the Sun
July 26, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/article/36757


1. Why would Syria thus openly avow or strongly imply that it is thus able to control Hizbollah operations?

2. Why would Syria thus affirm that it strategically coordinates its foreign policy decisions with those of Iran?

3. Why would Syria seek "to draw the American military directly into the shooting war?"

The more I mull this over the more it sounds like a Fox News fantasy.
 
It makes sense, the US in Iraq turned out to be a bit of a 'paper tiger' why not try to turn the screw and turn up the gas? It would assist making sure that that the next US administration was a little more restrained.
 
Neo-Con fantasy league war. This line gives it away

Knowing that America cannot agree to such an unprecedented surrender, Syria and its sponsor, Iran, are preparing for the next stage of the escalation, which is meant to draw the American military directly into the shooting war.

Utter garbage to suggest Sunni Muslims are going to take orders or 'sponsorship' from Persians.

Ironically , if you substitute "Israel" in a lot of those places, I really had the sneaking suspicion that this 'mission' was all about dragging the US and the rest of us into dealing with Syria in a terminal fashion.I also can't remember the SyAF buzzing the Israeli Prime Minister's house as a prelude to this fiasco.
 
Not true PTP - can I recommend the following article from todays NYTimes

Op-Ed Contributor
The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still My Enemy
By BERNARD HAYKEL

WITH Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder. That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign.
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Stephen Savage

Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy sites. A Qaeda recruiter I met in Yemen described the Shiites as “dogs and a thorn in the throat of Islam from the beginning of time.”

But now Hezbollah has taken the lead on the most incendiary issue for jihadis of all stripes: the fight against Israel.

Many Sunnis are therefore rallying to Hezbollah’s side, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. The Saudi cleric Salman al-Awda has defied his government’s anti-Hezbollah position, writing on his Web site that “this is not the time to express our differences with the Shiites because we are all confronted by our greater enemy, the criminal Jews and Zionists.”

For Al Qaeda, it is a time of panic. The group’s Web sites are abuzz with messages and questions about how to respond to Hezbollah’s success. One sympathizer asks whether, even knowing that the Shiites are traitors and the accomplices of the infidel Americans in Iraq, it is permissible to say a prayer for Hezbollah. He is told to curse Hezbollah along with Islam’s other enemies.

Several of Al Qaeda’s ideologues have issued official statements explaining Hezbollah’s actions and telling followers how to respond to them. The gist of their argument is that the Shiites are conspiring to destroy Islam and to resuscitate Persian imperial rule over the Middle East and ultimately the world. The ideologues label this effort the “Sassanian-Safavid conspiracy,” in reference to the Sassanians, a pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty, and to the Safavids, a Shiite dynasty that ruled Iran and parts of Iraq from 1501 till 1736.

They go on to argue that thanks to the United States (the leader of the Zionist-Crusader conspiracy), Iraq has been handed over to the Shiites, who are now wantonly massacring the country’s Sunnis. Syria is already led by a Shiite heretic, President Bashar al-Assad, whose policies harm the country’s Sunni majority.

Hezbollah, according to these analyses, seeks to dupe ordinary Muslims into believing that the Shiites are defending Islam’s holiest cause, Palestine, in order to cover for the wholesale Shiite alliance with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ultimately, this theory goes, the Shiites will fail in their efforts because the Israelis and Americans will destroy them once their role in the broader Zionist-Crusader conspiracy is accomplished. And then God will assure the success of the Sunni Muslims and the defeat of the Zionists and Crusaders.

In the meantime, no Muslim should be fooled by Hezbollah, whose members have never fought the infidel on any of the real battlefronts, like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya or Kashmir. The proper attitude for Muslims to adopt is to dissociate themselves completely from the Shiites.

This analysis — conspiratorial, bizarre and uncompelling, except to the most diehard radicals — signals an important defeat for Al Qaeda’s public relations campaign. The truth is that Al Qaeda has met a formidable challenge in Hezbollah and its charismatic leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who have made canny choices that appeal to Al Qaeda’s Sunni followers. Al Qaeda’s improbable conspiracy theory does little to counter these advantages.

First, although Sheik Nasrallah wears the black turban and carries the title of “sayyid,” both of which identify him as a Shiite descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, he preaches a nonsectarian ideology and does not highlight his group’s Shiite identity. Hezbollah has even established an effective alliance with Hamas, a Sunni and Muslim Brotherhood organization.

Second, Hezbollah’s statements focus on the politics of resistance to occupation and invoke shared Islamic principles about the right to self-defense. Sheik Nasrallah is extremely careful to hew closely to the dictates of Islamic law in his military attacks. These include such principles as advance notice, discrimination in selecting targets and proportionality.

Finally, only Hezbollah has effectively defeated Israel (in Lebanon in 2000) and is now taking it on again, hitting Haifa and other places with large numbers of rockets — a feat that no Arab or Muslim power has accomplished since Israel’s founding in 1948.

These are already serious selling points. And Hezbollah will score a major propaganda victory in the Muslim world if it simply remains standing in Lebanon after the present bout of warfare is over and maintains the relationships it is forging with Hamas and other Sunni Islamist organizations.

What will such a victory mean? Perhaps Hezbollah’s ascendancy among Sunnis will make it possible for Shiites and Sunnis to stop the bloodletting in Iraq — and to focus instead on their “real” enemies, namely the United States and Israel. Rumblings against Israeli actions in Lebanon from both Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq already suggest such an outcome.

That may be good news for Iraqis, but it marks a dangerous turn for the West. And there are darker implications still. Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to take a loss of status lying down. Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaeda will soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world — whatever it needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam.

Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, is the author of “Revival and Reform in Islam.”
 
Not_Whistlin_Dixie said:
This sounds serious if true. But is it true?

From the New York Sun.

Secretary Rice's mission to the Middle East has already failed because Syria has issued an ultimatum that augurs a world war soon enough.

The Syrian ultimatum is meant to provoke Israel and to pull America directly into the fighting. The ultimatum threatens that the attacks by Hezbollah — trained, supplied and commanded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards — will increase in intensity unless America negotiates directly with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. The ultimatum demands that America force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hezbollah bases and weaponry in Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hamas in Gaza, and to make territorial concessions that would mean that Israel could no longer defend either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Knowing that America cannot agree to such an unprecedented surrender, Syria and its sponsor, Iran, are preparing for the next stage of the escalation, which is meant to draw the American military directly into the shooting war.


"Syria Warns It Will Strike Israel Deeper"
By JOHN BATCHELOR - Special to the Sun
July 26, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/article/36757


1. Why would Syria thus openly avow or strongly imply that it is thus able to control Hizbollah operations?

2. Why would Syria thus affirm that it strategically coordinates its foreign policy decisions with those of Iran?

3. Why would Syria seek "to draw the American military directly into the shooting war?"

The more I mull this over the more it sounds like a Fox News fantasy.

My question is how would they bcak up their demand that America force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hezbollah bases and weaponry in Lebanon, to cease tactical strikes on Hamas in Gaza, and to make territorial concessions that would mean that Israel could no longer defend either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Sure Hezbollah can up the ante by escalating the fighting, but surely that will only strengthen the backing for Isreal's actions. Might be popular in the middle east, but that means sh1t all when it pisses off the rest of the world. :D
 
Good article AJ , but I meant that Syria wasn't about to take orders from Iran anytime soon.

I think Syria see a chance to regain some of the prestige and 'face' lost when she pulled out of the Lebanon, as evidenced by Bush and Blair's 'Open mike' comments. Syria knows she can regain some influence in Lebanon , especially if something can be done about Hezbollah.

Can I direct you to this piece? (Excuse venom dripping from the writer's pen)

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-07230641400.htm

Uri Avnery: "Stop That Shit!"

What was Nasrallah thinking of, when he decided to cross the border and carry out the guerilla action that started the current Witches' Sabbath?


A woman, an immigrant from Russia, throws herself on the ground in total despair in front of her home that has been hit by a missile, crying in broken Hebrew: "My son! My son!" believing him dead. In fact he was only wounded and sent to the hospital.

Lebanese children, covered with wounds, in Beirut hospitals. The funeral of the victims of a missile in Haifa. The ruins of a whole devastated quarter in Beirut. Inhabitants of the north of Israel fleeing south from the Katyushas. Inhabitants of the south of Lebanon fleeing north from the Israeli Air Force.

Death, destruction. Unimaginable human suffering.

And the most disgusting sight: George Bush in a playful mood sitting on his chair in St. Petersburg, with his loyal servant Tony Blair leaning over him, and solving the problem: "See? What they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing that shit, and it's over." Thus spoke the leader of the world, and the seven dwarfs - "the great of the world" - say Amen.

SYRIA? But only a few months ago it was Bush - yes, the same Bush - who induced the Lebanese to drive the Syrians out of their country. Now he wants them to intervene in Lebanon and impose order?

31 years ago, when the Lebanese civil war was at its height, the Syrians sent their army into Lebanon (invited, of all people, by the Christians). At the time, the then Minister of Defense Shimon Peres and his associates created hysteria in Israel. They demanded that Israel deliver an ultimatum to the Syrians, to prevent them from reaching the Israeli border. Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, told me then that that was sheer nonsense, because the best that could happen to Israel was for the Syrian army to spread out along the border. Only thus could calm be assured, the same calm that reigned along our border with Syria.

However, Rabin gave in to the hysteria of the media and stopped the Syrians far from the border. The vacuum thus created was filled by the PLO. In 1982, Ariel Sharon pushed the PLO out, and the vacuum was filled by Hizbollah.

All that has happened there since then would not have happened if we had allowed the Syrians to occupy the border from the beginning. The Syrians are cautious, they do not act recklessly.

What was Hassan Nasrallah thinking of, when he decided to cross the border and carry out the guerilla action that started the current Witches' Sabbath? Why did he do it? And why at this time?

Everybody agrees that Nasrallah is a clever person. He is also prudent. For years he has been assembling a huge stockpile of missiles of all kinds to establish a balance of terror. He knew that the Israeli army was only waiting for an opportunity to destroy them. In spite of that, he carried out a provocation that provided the Israeli government with a perfect pretext to attack Lebanon with the full approval of the world. Why?


Article continues
 
PartTimePongo said:
I really had the sneaking suspicion that this 'mission' was all about dragging the US and the rest of us into dealing with Syria in a terminal fashion.I also can't remember the SyAF buzzing the Israeli Prime Minister's house as a prelude to this fiasco.

Have you been reading my posts from 2 weeks ago???
 
No , I made this point about 2 weeks ago. Have you plagarised me????????????? :

I demand compensation for my tinfoil hat theories being used in so foul a fashion , a handsome pub lunch should cover my indignation :D
 
PartTimePongo said:
No , I made this point about 2 weeks ago. Have you plagarised me????????????? :

I demand compensation for my tinfoil hat theories being used in so foul a fashion , a handsome pub lunch should cover my indignation :D

You took the words right out of my mouth..... :)

Are we still discussing lefty conspiraciesand being an appeaser? At least, that's what I was getting blamed for ...
 
There has been a lot of war mongering articles that just want to see this kick off in World War 4, its not going to be a World War until France surrenders!
 
Are we still discussing lefty conspiraciesand being an appeaser? At least, that's what I was getting blamed for ...

Ignore them Merkator, for we are visionairies.......

....and probably on some foreign powers' sh*tlist too :(
 

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