TIME TO THROW BABY ASSAD OUT WITH THE IRAQI BA'ATH:

Syria defies U.S.; more volunteers stream into Iraq (Ze'ev Schiff and Nathan Guttman

Despite American warnings, in the last few days Damascus has expedited the passage of volunteers wishing to join the Iraqis in their war against the Americans. Thousands of volunteers, most of them Syrians, are thronging to the Mosul and Kirkuk regions in north Iraq.

It started with a few dozen volunteers, mostly from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Damascus allowed them to cross the border to Iraq at the official border passes in its control. This went on until one of the volunteers' buses was hit in Iraq by a missile from an American plane, killing five passengers. [...]

The dozens of volunteers who first passed from Syria to Iraq came mostly from Lebanon and from the Palestinian refugee camps in it. Damascus let them cross into Iraq through the official border passes, and became the first state bordering with Iraq to permit the passage of volunteers. One of the buses driving the volunteers in Iraq was hit by an American missile and five of its passengers were killed.

Recently, the Syrians invited journalists to two border passes on the Iraqi border, claiming they are closed. Now it appears this was a deception. The volunteers are brought to the border far away from the official crossings and allowed to pass over on foot. Nearby, on the Iraqi side of the border, trucks await them.

The trucks do not go east toward Baghdad but northeast, to the Mosul and Kirkuk regions, on routes still free of American military activity. It is not known who receives these people when they arrive, where they stay or how they are organized.

The Ba'athist dictatorship in Syria would appear to understand, as Europe and the American Left does not, that it has nothing to lose, because it's next. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2003 7:48 PM