RATS BOARDING A SINKING SHIP

Worried Muslim friends (Uwe Siemon-Netto, 8/22/2003, UPI)

A disquieting new tone has sneaked into my routine telephone conversations with moderate Muslim leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. "Washington's bungling in Iraq worries me so much that I can't sleep anymore; it's damaging my health; it's a scary time," an internationally well-connected Arab-American Bush supporter told me Friday morning.

He begged me not to use his name because, he said, "expressing pro-administration sentiments has become dangerous. Even Arab-American Republicans will call you a traitor if you back Bush." So I'll call this contact Mahmoud. Like Bassam Tibi, a reform-minded Muslim scholar teaching at Goettingen University in Germany, Mahmoud stated, "Iraq is on its way to become another (Taliban-run) Afghanistan, only with lower mountains."

Syrian-born Tibi, a social scientist and ardent proponent of a modernized Islam compatible with Western values, said, his voice shaking with worry, "America's sworn enemies are pouring into Iraq from all sides because the borders are not properly controlled. Iraq has become the new domain for Muslim fanatics."

Added Mahmoud, "When I telephone contacts in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Yemen and Jordan, I keep hearing the same story over and over again: the story of hundreds and hundreds of men seemingly disappearing without a trace. You don't have to be a genius to figure our where they have gone - to Iraq."

How's an American soldier going to tell a Yemeni terrorist from an Iraqi citizen? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2003 6:14 AM