BLEW A HOLE IN THAT COLUMN:

Breaking The Assassins (David Ignatius, December 14, 2005, Washington Post)

This is the time of the assassins in the Arab world. On Monday they killed a brave Lebanese journalist who dared to tell the truth about Syria. This week in Iraq they will try to kill people who want to vote. They kill wives to intimidate their husbands. They kill children to frighten their parents into silence. Their power is the ability to create raw fear.

The shame for America isn't that we have tried to topple the rule of the assassins but that we have so far been unsuccessful. We thought we were cracking the old web of terror when America invaded Iraq in 2003, but it's still there, in the shadows of the shadows. George W. Bush gets a lot of things wrong, but he knows that he's fighting the assassins. On days like these, I'm glad that he is such a stubborn man.

Wasn't he just arguing that we should keep the head assasssin in power?

MORE:
U.N. Weighs Next Move on Syria: Lebanon is urging the Security Council to widen the inquiry into the slaying of its former premier and to create a tribunal to try suspects. (Maggie Farley, December 14, 2005, LA Times)

In a closed-door Security Council session, Mehlis described interviews with five high-level Syrian officials at the United Nations compound in Vienna last week. He said a sixth had not yet been interviewed, who a diplomat close to the investigation confirmed was Asef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law and head of Syrian military intelligence. Mehlis did not reveal the names of those interviewed or urge their detention, saying that "it would not be helpful" at this point in the inquiry.

An early draft of Mehlis' first report to the Security Council named some of Syrian President Bashar Assad's close aides as suspects, including Shawkat and Maher Assad, the president's younger brother and commander of the Republican Guard. The names were not in the final report released to the public. [...]

[U].S. Ambassador John R. Bolton said that details in the report about disappearing documents, grudging testimonies and witness intimidation made it clear that Syria was trying to block the inquiry and should be pressured to comply with investigators' demands.

"On the part of the United States there is absolutely no wavering from the proposition that Syria is not going to get away with obstructing this investigation," he said. "It's not going to cover up the actions of its senior officials, and it's not going to escape the consequences."

How many more Lebanese does Assad get to blow up before they do something?

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2005 12:04 PM