I was looking for a newspaper printed in New Haven Connecticut in the 1600's

Good analogy, Almaden.
But reflect...
...the US cannot be compromised in that way because of the constitutional infrastructure we have built, which Ben and others have noted is lacking in the Baathist tribal dictatorship.
...however, we can be bribed and by Arabs, and by FBI pretending to be Arabs. Remember Abscam, that Murtha escaped the scandal by the skin of his teeth.
Also consider...
...the wingnut KGB, which renamed is still out there with polonium poisons and bombs galore, only was behind coups in ALL of Eastern Europe in the 1940s, but of course, it must have gone back to its knitting in the 1950s and 60s.
...and the supreme irony that Syria does have a wingnut "CIA" that ruled Lebanon by intimidation and still works to that end to this very day (can you say UN Hariri tribunal!!!)

Those who have the summer reading habit, even Robert of Smogville, may wish to peruse the nauseating account of how an American CIA station chief on the make mounted a coup in Syria in the 1950s which failed disastrously (his Syrian accomplices were shot, he himself embarrassingly detained and humiliated). That U.S.-backed coup would be merely low comedy if it weren't for the fact that it set much of the Middle East on an anti-American binge that continues to this day, starting with the Ba'ath, the UAR, Jordan becoming essentially an American-funded CIA station for decades. See "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA", by Tim Weiner (2007). Imagine what would be the attitude of Americans today if a wingnut Syrian CIA had mounted a coup against the American Government, bribing the Joint Chiefs and the FBI to overthrow the President? What would our view of Syria be going forward? Think we might be a bit skeptical of our Syrian friends and how they fit into our part of the world? Think we might take refuge in scoundrels and even dictators who used the plot to scare us into submission?

Mr. Moubayed: The United States has never had warm relations with any Syrian government. Every Syrian government has been a murderous dictatorship. Although Syria is supposed to be a republic, it now has devolved into a monarchy for the benefit of the Assad clan.

What is remarkable about Mr. Moubayed's post is that it had to be cleared by the Syrian government. Access to the internet is controlled by the Syrian monarchy, and publishing an article in an American newspaper would similarly require the approval of the Assad government. Therefore, his faux remembrance for good times past is Assad-approved propaganda.

Perhaps relations with the Syrian government would be better if it did not burn down foreign embassies (Mohammad cartoon outrage), assassinate foreign leaders (Rafik Hariri of Lebanon), and offer a haven and highway for jihadists to attack out troops in Iraq.

If you wish to learn something from the American constitution, then I suggest that you read the First Amendment. Within the First Amendment are two clauses. One clause ensures freedom of speech from governmental abridgement. The other separates religion from acts of state. When Syria and Syrians adopt and implement a similar style of enlightened governance, rather than primitive clan rule, then American relations will warm with Syria for the very, very first time.

I wish people would stop confusing "America" with the politics of the moment, and in particular stop assuming that recent behavior will somehow become long-term trends.

Yeah, Bush as a president is a horror, and the Constitution has taken a beating, but it's happened before folks. See http://www.greens.org/s-r/28/28-02.html for a sampling. The 200-year-old quote at the beginning of that link still seems fresh.

What we've had recently is an unfortunate confluence of events. The fact that Bush is an idiot is only part of the problem. It was unfortunate that the other branches of government, the one's that were supposed to supply "checks" on his power, and thus limit the damage, were controlled by the same party. Furthermore this party was used to operating in opposition, and thus were in the mindset of worrying about things like party loyalty more than they were concerned about actually governing (picture the Maliki government in Iraq at the moment).

Add to that the fact that all of the above-mentioned politicians lived most of their lives in a "Cold War," where fear mongering and stupid short-term thinking were the norm, and you have the current mess.

But, keep in mind, things change. That Congress is gone. This one's not much brighter, but they aren't all that fond of Bush, either. And Bush's expiration date is approaching.

Sami: in your "unfolding events" you managed to overlook 9/11...so much for your historical education.

Sorry Robert of LA

This is how a CIA officer reported the 08/02/1963 coup to a US Senate hearing "The target suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad." And this is how James Critchfield, former head of the CIA's Middle East Desk described it "It was an operation where all the "t"s were really crossed. It was a great victory." 'Out of the Ashes' by Andrew and Patrick Cockburn. What does he mean by crossing the t's?

Roger Morris comments on the Baath/American company by saying: "We climb into bed with these people without really knowing anything about their politics". Morris also says. "It's not unusual, of course, in American policy. We tire of these people, and we find reasons to shed them." Roger Morris was a staff member of the National Security Council. He also puts in a nutshell saying ""It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary"

James Akins, an attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, 1963-1965, and later became the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, commented on the 1963 coup saying "The Ba'ath Party had come to control. We were very happy. They got rid of a lot of communists. A lot of them were executed, or shot. This was a great development. And things opened up in Iraq. We resumed diplomatic relations."

And in case Sami Moubayed is reading this then I would like to ask him whether he knew this before 2003?

One final note, all of the above is on the Net and Google will find it all.

Kind Regards

Sorry SM
Your links and google terms lead to sites that all seem to reference each other and not to definitive journalistic or academic sources. Most have 2 unlikely elements: 1) King Hussein of Jordan admits to being a co-conspirator to this coup, 2) How does the CIA get to know who are communists and symphathizers in Iraq better than Iraqis???. I assume until convinced otherwise that this is a "mythology" taken from some scraps of possible truth: That Jordan would not have been antagonistic to a "anti-communist" coup, that the CIA probably knew of a FEW names of actual Iraqi agents of the KGB. In reality, Arabs have taken the law into their own hands many times for THEIR own reasons, especially during the Cold War, sometimes the West supports or doesn't stand in their way. In conclusion, this just adds to the almost psychological malady of "victimology" where Arabs refuse to take responsibility for their past, present, and future.

Dear Sami,

Luckily I took an early, very early, anti-American line, It was on the 5th of June 1967. I should have taken an even earlier stance but then I was too young for politics. This is what the Americans did in Iraq so that Albaath party (Saddam was a young member in it at the time) come to power slaughter America's enemies in that now devastated country:

"The CIA thus provided the February coup leaders with a list of names for the campaign, around 5,000 of whom were hunted down and murdered. They included senior army officers as well as lawyers, professors, teachers and doctors. There were pregnant women and old men among them, many of whom were tortured in front of their children. The eliminations were mainly done on an individual basis, house-to-house visits by hit squads who knew where their victims were and who carried out on the spot executions. ‘The coup is a gain for our side’, Robert Komer, a member of the National Security Council, told president Kennedy immediately after." Sounds familiar? Reference (http://tinyurl.com/2docjx).

I guess you know all that but just in case you don't here (http://tinyurl.com/3e5mfb) I prepared for you a Google search (you can do your own by looking to the American who engineered the coup, i.e., William Lakeland and put 1963 as an extra search word.

Currently I am doing a soul searching (as to why I did fight Saddam most of my life) and I recommend you do one namely: as to why you believed in America. Sorry for this less than formal suggestion but I really feel strongly against those within us who glorified America for us.

Kind Regards

Robert of Los Angeles, certainly has a worthy point.

I think USA should take some time out to re-evaluate its positions.

If Muslim immigration to USA is reduced, which is certainly within the right of USA, then many problems shall cease to exist.

Second, to "force" Muslim countries like the ones in the middle east and Pakistan (hotbed of radical Islam) take responsibility for their own woes, USA should cut off all aid to all Muslim nations. Thus, Sudan and Somalia should be left to their own devices. USA did a great mistake by siding with the Bosnian Muslims and Bill Clinton bombed the hell out of Serbia. What happened ? 9/11 took place. This is a sign of ungratefulness. Muslims, like the hypocrite Sami Moubayed, shall complain about US support for Israel. Well, he does not mention that USA bombed (actually NATO) Serbia to take the side of Muslims in Bosnia.

USA always gives aid to Pakistan, and we see Daniel Pearl beheaded, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, taking credit for that. Pakistan has always used the anti-USA sentiments of Muslims to its advantage. It is time to take these out.

Robert seems to have the most reasoned argument here.

The U.S. certainly has a tainted history internationally, but what nation doesn't? As the only superpower remaining, the US has a certain responsibility to the world's citizens; however, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't: the US is in a very unusual position of being simultaneously criticized for both intervening and not intervening in international affairs (often regarding the same situation).

Perennially scapegoating the US for country/regional problems won't solve anything. Until the citizens of the MidEast take control of their own destiny, nothing will change. You have to WANT democracy for it to happen. Democracy takes a lot of work and a lot of time. It's folly to expect results overnight. It's also folly to think you can't do anything about the despots currently in power over there. If you accept the status quo of tyranny, you deserve your current condition. The MidEast is the way it is because of the choices it made, regardless of what the British, the French or Americans did there. The people of the MidEast have allowed colonizers to control them, despots to rule, corruption to reign, and religious fanatics to hold the region hostage. They only have themselves to blame. Israel and the US are convenient distractions--if those countries didn't exist, the MidEast would blame someone else.

Why pretend anymore that our beloved US wants to spread democracy and freedom when at every turn it supports tyranny and injustice? $4 billion a year to Israel's occupation, $3 billion a year to Egypt's dictatorship, $2.5 billion a year to Pakistan's pseudo-secularist despotsim, $20 billion in weapons to the incendiary, oil-glazed Gulf and $30 billion to a nuclear and belligerant Israel. What more evidence do we need that the furthest thing from our government's mind is the right of Arabs for self determination.

That, my friends, would imply one state of Jews and Arabs living together in Palestine with an Arab majority. Democracy and a Jewish state are no longer a possibility for as soon as the Palestinians and Jews are equal citizens, Israel becomes a Jewish and Arab state with an Arab majority.

Democracy implies that 80 million Egyptians get to decide their own government and as well as the end of a peace treaty shoved down their throats by Sadat. As long as Palestinians suffer, Egyptians cannot be Israel's allies. Sadat himself signed the peace agreement as a prelude to Israeli withdrawl of all 1967 lands. Read "Peace Not Apartheid in Palestine" by Jimmy Carter.

Democracy implies that the Gulf Arabs no longer buy $20 billion in weapons that they have never used and will never use just to please our military industrial complex. Why do all these Gulf states buy weapons worth billions of dollars every five years. When did a single Gulf country every fire a bullet?

Democracy means listening to what moderate Islamists such as Hizbullah and Hamas have to say. Democracy implies understanding the grievances of the other. Democracy entails treating nuclear Israel and a potentially nuclear Iran equally. But then again We would rather show who's boss. Stomp on them with sheer force so formidable that they will cower to our demands under their respective despots, monarchies, dictators or occupations. And then we are surprised when every once in a while they strike at us and it sticks. Boy did 9/11 hurt but boy did we do alot more.

I want to encourage all us citizen registered voters to support Mrs. clinton. I think she's a great person thus a great president.

Radical Islamists and American progressives have nothing in common - why do they love each other??
Sounds like the Molotov Ribbentrop treaty to me.

Anti-Zionist Arabs should know that progressives will talk a good game but will NEVER sell out Israel. Why? Well the secular Jews among them are self-hating but they're not suicidal.

Secular Muslims should know that progressives DONT CARE about their freedom to worship and act in a modern society.

Support real democratic and secular institutions through out the Middle East. Do not support terrorists and tyrants. Is that so difficult?

Like I said to Sami Moubayed: Why don’t you start Pacifism at home first - 1) demonstrations in the streets like MLK would have done 2) tell Assad to make the bold step for peace like Sadat did, 3) commit to an Middle East Peace Corps that an Arab JFK might imagine. Their martyrdom is the kind to emulate, not a suicide bomber.

Robert of Smogville sounds a bit addled. It's not "progressives" but Bush and Cheney who love dictatorships. Look at their best buddies: Musharraf in Pakistan (a shaky tyrant, it's true), the Saudi royalty (they have weekly hacking events, chopping off the limbs of dissenters and criminals); the Gulf princes (who float on a sea of oil and bribe their subject peoples into silence).

Hey, don't forget Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan (who boils his political foes alive). Or the late lamented Stalinist who ran Turkmenistan (whose cult of personality floated on a sea of natural gas). Now those are true Republican-conservative-backed dictators we can all cheer. Really muscular and decisive. See, for the GOP, like them, ends justify means.

Robert of Smogville is quite right about Israel. This scofflaw state, with its 200 nuclear bombs, stays outside the NPT and perpetuates its illegal conquest of the West Bank by police-state oppression. What's a mere nuclear war to this little nest of ruthless faith-based zealots?

Israel had no compunction in literally obliterating much of Lebanon's physical infrastructure in retaliation for the kidnapping of merely two Israeli soldiers. So, as Robert avers, Israel is quite capable of incinerating Syria AND IRAN if "they get too close" or as soon as the pipsqueak caudillo Bush gives Israel the green light, which may come before he leaves office, if he so intends.

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST BEFORE HE BOMBS IRAN AND MAKES THINGS EVEN WORSE.

No, Asim - Democracy is Democracy everywhere. Tyranny is tyranny. My simple point is that non-interventionism now (even more than non-interventionism in Taft and Wilson's day in the imperial era) would serve not only to let the regimes of Assad and Khamenei hold the whip hand but usher in a "reign of terror" in all Arab streets with China or Russia picking up the pieces.

SAMI,
WE ALL AGREE ABOUT THE GREATNESS OF THE US CONSTITUTION-WHICH IS ONE THING, WHILE US POLICIES ARE COMPLETELY SOME THING ESLE: US POLITICANS, AT LEAST SOME, HAVE SOLD THEIR SOULS TO THE DEVIL, AIPAC AND CO., NEOCONS...ETC

US VULGAR BIAS TO THE APARTHEID JEWISH STATE DID NOT STATRT IN 2000-IT STATRTED WITH TRUMAN WHO SAID "I HAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JEWISH VOTERS BUT I DON'T HAVE ANY ARAB VOTERS." MIND YOU MRS.TRUMAN WAS AN ANTI-SEMITE!!

HOW COULD U BE A SYRIAN ARAB AND BE PROUD OF SOME ONE LIKE SADDAT? WHO SOLID HIS SOUL TO OLD KISSINGER AND RIPPED OFF EGYPT FROM THE ARAB FRONT AND LEFT SYRIA STANDING ALONE? NEXT TO SADDAT'S DEAL WITH THE RACIST JEWISH STATE IS ITS INVASION OF LEBANON IN 1978 AND AGAIN ITS EXTENDED OCCUPATION FROM 1982-2000 WHEN THE LEBANSE RESISTANCE EVICTED IT BY ARMED STRUGGLE-OF COURSE ANY ONE RESISTS THE RACIST STATE IS A "TERRORIST."

THE ISRAELI AGGRESSION, INTRANSIGENCE AND APARTHEID WOULD NOT BE WHAT IT IS NOW, WERE IT NOT FOR SADDAT ISOLATING EGYPT FORM THE ARAB WORLD.

CLEARLY AS ONE CANADIAN MP SUCCINCTLY PUT IT: "AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IS NOT FOR EXPORT," NOR ARE US PRINCIPLES. US PRINCIPLES ARE GREAT AND WILSONIAN PRINCIPLES WERE ALSO GREAT BUT WERE FOR THE TIMES OF INOCENSCE BEFORE THE US BECAME AN IMPERIAL POWER-WORST OF ALL UNDER BUSH AND HIS NEOCONS: “GREAT EMPIRES AND LITTILE MINDS GO ILL TOGETHER."

Things change, countries change and views evolve. The current bunch in WH are simple minded: are you with us or against us?

But this "us" gang has not been able to articulate what it is that they want and they continue to make bad bets and the wrong bets. Some how the line between Hollywood fiction and the real world has faded, thus the confusing state that the world is in today. With hindsight, the bi-polar world was a lot more stable and calm, if only more tense. But it is all a relatively brief period in history and the American might is testing its own realistic limits, all as it wants to project a fictional image of itself.

I agree with Almaden 100%. Look at all the things Syria did. And all Bush does is stay with his so called "Chief" Israel; which he called the country so many times

Almaden (of the People's Republic -- of Frisco Berkeley, as we like to call it) is absolutely right. We should be grateful to Syria for maintaining strict dictatorial control like the Middle East should be run.

I've noted elsewhere don't count on the "love" of American pacifists / progressives. When push comes to shove, they prefer a good dictatorship but if you're so inclined you're free to have a nice genocide if you'd like. If you do cross a progressive so he must respond, he'll say "Let's nuke". Believe it or not, you're seeing the good side. If we ignore you now, it will all be Beirut and Baghdad in a couple years as jihadists cannibalize your countries. Except Israel, who WILL nuke you if you come too close.

There is no accounting for ingratitude. The Bush regime (as we call it here in San Francisco) should be thanking Syria for hospitably receiving and torturing the innocents CIA snatched off the streets of Canada and Europe and "extraordinarily renditioned" to Syrian prisons. Bush should thank Syria for effectively entering Lebanon and putting an end to a 12-year civil war but, no, what does Bush do but get Syria kicked out of Lebanon and investigated for assassinations. Does Syria get any thanks for turning key terrorists over to the CIA four years ago and clamping down on jihadists entering Iraq more recently? Not on your life -- it's just one complaint after another from Bush and the neoconservatives who still want Bush to change the regime in Damascus and replicate in Syria his splendid success in Iraq. Bush points to arms reaching Hezbollah through Syria but does he say anything about arms reaching Israel from the U.S.? Not on your life. Hey, he just upped the ante with $20 billion more arms to Israel to offset the $30 billion to Saudi Arabia. How about giving Syria some? Then we'd be talking the start of a beautiful friendship with good old Damascus.

Robert of LA:

Democracy for the ME is the farthest idea for your corrupt government. You are in need of reading of USA and world history - even by USA authors to see the damage the USA done in the last 50 years - notably always attacking such world powers as Chile, Iran, Iraq, Grenada, Panama, Sudan, Lybia etc. Your care for democracy is indicated by your absolute fealty to Oil rich Saudi Arabian rulers, to training Osama and Sadam in the ME, Noirega in Panama,. Pinochet in Chile, Mubarak in Egypt, and all their ilk. Notable is your contribution to death squads in Nicaragua, Lebanon, Iran, Chile, Chemical warfare in IRaq, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, supporing imperialist notions of Israel [with ammunition, cluster bombs, high tech planes and their high tech bombs and money]. Your government is also well known for breaking the Constitution of the USA, almost all international laws of War and Occupation, and a few other despicable mass acts.

Without doubt you are proud that you contributed to human misery in Cuba, Iraq, Lybia, Panama, Nicarague, Chile, Argentine and many other places. Indeed you are proud that the USA managed to kill directly and indiractly in excess of
5 000 000 civilians of Soverign states in contravention of the UN Charter which was composed by your president and his officials since the Korean War.

With respect to Stalin, be most grateful that he was willing to sacrifice 20 000 000 russian lives to defeat Hitler. Without the battle of Stalingrad you would be under the thumb of the Third Reich.

Aside from the above, were the USA as Mr Sami Moubayed depicted before afganistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, then your country and her government would be held in high esteem by the people of the world. Unfortunately for the USA and the world, his assessment OF THE PRESENT TIME is correct and your assessment of both the past and the present is faulty beyond repair.

US bias towards Israel during 2000 - So we can blame Clinton, too, thank goodness it's bipartisan.

Then came Afghanistan - Excuse me!!!! The most justified invasion of the 20th century, at least as emotional reaction as well as hot pursuit.

Alleged murder of Yasser Arafat - Must have smoked one the CIA poisoned cigars we failed to get to Castro? What are you talking about? As IF you really cared about Arafat anyhow.

To a mother whose child was killed in Lebanon last summer (actually over 1,000 people perished) - Millions have died in Mid East conflicts and suddenly you catch the drift that violence is bad.

Difference between ‘my America’ and the one that was refusing to call for a cease-fire in Lebanon in 2006.
Give it a rest. Hezbollah itself says if there hadn't been a ceasefire it would have crumbled under a couple more weeks, since it had run out of civilians to hide behind!!!

Frankly, I don’t get the irony, unless it’s a double irony against your interests or rather that of your country’s leadership. Taft stands between 2 presidents who actually accomplished something in foreign policy, Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson. Taft, and Wilson / Sec. of State Bryan (before being dragged into war) were advocates of non-interventionism, to be sure, but how did that benefit the Middle East? It was the European powers and the Ottoman Empire itself that dominated Arab life, so pacifism of America actually benefited the imperial status quo. America’s non-interventionism - the failure of follow thru on its treaty commitments to Belgium enabled World War I , its ambivalence over Armenian human rights had untold ramifications on 20th century horrors, and lack of investment in solutions in the Middle East even after the Great War - that’s what you advocate??

All that’s past history. But without America involvement after World War II, which included the support of the creation of Israel, your original enemy, Stalin and his successors would have been the empire du jour dominating Middle East affairs. But of course, Bush and Iraq changes everything. From another perspective, though, our boots on the ground are fighting and dying ALONGSIDE a weak but democratic Iraqi people. And you remain in Damascus promoting a new pacifism. What will that new American pacifism do? Create such joy and good feelings in Assad that he will reneg on his commitments to Iran to no peace with Israel? I hardly think so, perhaps you will remember again what Anwar Sadat meant to you. Is he and JFK and MLK the kind of martyr the Middle East needs to emulate rather than your current breed, backed by both the Salafis and the Twelver extremists, the trails of which come thru the domain of Assad. Why don’t start Pacifism at home first, demonstrations in the streets like MLK would have done, tell Assad to make the bold stroke like Sadat did, commit to an Middle East Peace Corps that an Arab JFK might imagine