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Pastimes : Next stop Damascus? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (44)	4/15/2003 1:33:03 PM
From: Tarzan	Respond to of 156

Chemical weapons program is no secret Large and advanced: Sarin, mustard, VX and the means to deliver them Jan Cienski National Post Tuesday, April 15, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Rattled by U.S. accusations it is harbouring refugees from Saddam Hussein's government, sponsoring terrorism and building weapons of mass destruction, Syria insists it has nothing to hide. Syria is thought to have the largest and best-developed chemical-weapons program in the Middle East, with hundreds of tonnes of stocks. In an unclassified report to the U.S. Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency said Syria has stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin, as well as mustard gas and VX nerve gas. The country has been producing chemical weapons since the 1980s, often with foreign help and based on an initial donation of chemical-weapons artillery shells from Egypt in the early 1970s. Hundreds of tonnes of the chemicals are manufactured annually at factories near Damascus and Homs, the Monterey Institute of International Studies says. The Syrian military can deliver these weapons via 500-kilogram bombs or using Soviet-designed Scud-B missiles with a 300-kilometre range. Syria has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, so it is not illegal for it to be deploying such weapons. Chemical weapons are thought to be part of the arsenal of about half the countries in the region, both U.S. allies and enemies. Among them is Israel, which has a chemical-weapons program with a testing facility in the Negev desert and a well-developed nuclear program. Egypt, which first used phosgene gas in Yemen in the 1960s, has a program, as does Saudi Arabia, which is reported to have bought 50 CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China for the purpose. Iran developed a chemical weapons capability in the 1980s to respond to Iraqi attacks during the Iran-Iraq war. Libya used chemical weapons in Chad in 1987 and is thought to have an underground chemical weapons manufacturing plant and hundreds of tonnes of blister and nerve agents. Analysts believe Syria's biological-weapons program is only in the early research phase. Damascus has long expressed interest in a nuclear program, but there is no evidence of a weapons program. Syria has one research reactor operating under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. U.S. and Israeli opposition scotched research-reactor deals with China and Argentina, but Russia has signed a nuclear co-operation agreement. As with chemical weapons, Syria's ties to terrorist groups are well documented. "Syria is a terrorist state," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. "Yes, indeed, they harbour terrorists." Although Syria has not been directly implicated in a terrorist attack since 1986, the U.S. State Department says it allows terrorist groups to run offices in Damascus and allows Iran to funnel weapons to the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon. Most terrorist groups in Syria are Palestinian, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Syria does not allow any of these groups to attack Israel or the West from its territory or to attack Western targets in Syria. The Syrian government maintains these groups are not terrorist, but fighting for Palestinians. However, Syria is one of seven nations annually condemned by the United States for sponsoring terrorism. In its latest human rights report, the State Department criticizes Syria as a one-party "military regime with virtually absolute authority in the hands of the President." However, last year there were no reports of political killings or politically motivated disappearances. Syria has much smaller oil resources than Iraq and its economy is hobbled by red tape and corruption. Its military is underfunded and was easily bested by the Israelis when the two countries faced off in Lebanon two decades ago. The country still owes Russia about US$12-billion from the Cold War days, when it was Moscow's chief ally in the Middle East -- much more than the sputtering Syrian economy can hope to repay. The debt is also preventing Syria from modernizing its military. It wants to buy air defence systems, MiG-29, Su-27 fighters and modern T-80 or T-90 tanks. The United States insists it has no plans to attack Syria. But Washington is warning Damascus to pay attention to what happened to Iraq. "I think it sends a message to nations that engage in terror, nations that engage in tyranny and nations that engage in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that that is a route that does not lead to a good future," Mr. Fleischer said. jcienski@nationalpost.com © Copyright 2003 National Post

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (44)	4/15/2003 1:34:22 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 156

Tim - Emile is a master baiter who has tons of cut and paste posts. You have just set up yourself for a flurry of posts re propaganda from 35 -55 years ago. It doesn't disguise his ignorance nor his bigotry nor his cowardice.

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (44)	4/15/2003 1:59:24 PM
From: Emile Vidrine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 156

"Israel did not attack the U.S. on 9-11." Maybe and maybe not? There is mounting evidence that Israel at least knew about the attack before it occurred and evidence that the Israeli Mossad possibly aided the terrorists ! Putting aside 9/11 for the time being, Israeli terrorists did attack America and Americans on a number of occasions. Here is the documentation for two of these attacks: 1. In USS Liberty in an unprovoked attack by Israeli military terrorists who wounded 170 young Americans and murdered over thirty of these US servicemen. home.cfl.rr.com 2. In the Lavon Affair where the Israeli government disguised Jewish terrorists as Arabs to attack US personnel and property in Egypt. There intent was to provoke hatred against Egyptians in America and prepare the road for an Israeli attack on Egypt. Their plans failed when Egyptian and American intelligence caught the Israeli/Jewish terrorists. The terrorist were young Jewish-Egyptian men who had been trained by the Mossad and convinced to betray their native Egyptian homeland on behalf of the Jewish state. geocities.com