Syria bristles at US charges

The Bush gangster administration managed to keep a straight face while spinning these tales and then bombed Iraq on faulty intelligence. Today, five years on, everybody knows that Saddam Hussein was not developing WMDs.

The Syrians cannot tolerate more sanctions and are fed up with the chorus of accusations coming from Washington since 2003. First it was harboring Saddam and all of his henchmen after the fall of Baghdad. These accusations proved baseless when all of them - Saddam included - were hunted down, arrested and executed, in Iraq.

Then came accusations of sending jihadis into Iraq. Although insurgents did cross into Iraq through the Syrian border, it was clear - by 2005 - that Syria was unable to keep full control of the 605-kilometer border (nor were the Americans for that matter) and was doing its best to keep tabs on Islamists entering or leaving the country, deporting many of them to their countries of origin.

Colonel William Crowe, who controls the border between Syria and Iraq, spoke to reporters at the Pentagon in January 2007, saying, "There is no large influx of foreign fighters that come across the border [with Syria]." One month later, US Senate majority leader Harry Reid said that based on the National Intelligence Estimate, "Syria is not causing strife within Iraq ... the Syrians have nothing to do with it." atimes