Are you ready for this?

From Newsday - Syria, Libya Listed as 'Rogue States' (excerpts, emphasis added)

The Bush administration named Syria and Libya yesterday as "rogue states" whose weapons of mass destruction must not just be controlled but must be eliminated by whatever means necessary.

In what Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) called "the axis of evil plus," Bolton testified that Syria and Libya had weapons of mass destruction programs that must be "rolled back" and eliminated. Two years ago, President George W. Bush named North Korea, Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein as the "axis of evil."

Bolton said diplomacy is the administration's preferred approach but that "every tool in our nonproliferation toolbox" was an option. Bolton refused to rule out "regime change" as an administration option in Syria.

We are puzzled by this. According to Sy Hersh, Syria was very cooperative in the wake of 9/11.

From the Middle East Information Center: (excerpt, emphasis added)

... after September 11th the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States. The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated—and others who wanted to participate—in the September 11th attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives.

Within weeks of the September 11th attacks, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, with Syria’s permission, began intelligence-gathering operations in Aleppo, near the Turkish border. Aleppo was the subject of Mohammed Atta’s dissertation on urban planning, and he travelled there twice in the mid-nineties. “At every stage in Atta’s journey is the Muslim Brotherhood,” a former C.I.A. officer who served undercover in Damascus told me. “He went through Spain in touch with the Brotherhood in Hamburg.”

Syria also provided the United States with intelligence about future Al Qaeda plans. In one instance, the Syrians learned that Al Qaeda had penetrated the security services of Bahrain and had arranged for a glider loaded with explosives to be flown into a building at the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters there. Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, told me that Syria’s help “let us thwart an operation that, if carried out, would have killed a lot of Americans.” The Syrians also helped the United States avert a suspected plot against an American target in Ottawa.

Syria’s efforts to help seemed to confound the Bush Administration, which was fixated on Iraq. According to many officials I spoke to, the Administration was ill prepared to take advantage of the situation and unwilling to reassess its relationship with Assad’s government. Leverett told me that “the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the Agency’s expectations.” But, he said, "from the Syrians’ perspective they got little in return for it.”

That's for damn sure.


posted by Quiddity at 9/17/2003 03:16:00 PM