"President Bashar al-Assad on Monday stressed the importance of differentiating between the people's legitimate demands to which the State responded through issuing decrees and laws and the organized armed groups which utilized these demands to create chaos and destabilize the country.
Meeting U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the accompanying delegation in the morning and holding another meeting with British Conservative Party MP Brooks Newmark, President al-Assad reviewed the recent events taking place in Syria and the advanced steps achieved in the comprehensive reform program."
As if this was not enough, Kucinich initiated a letter to Hillary Clinton, also signed by five other representatives, asking that she "do everything in [her] power" to help "ensure the safety of all American citizens on board The Audacity of Hope," which is seeking to breach the Israeli blockade of Gaza (see: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=226947).
Did it occur to Kucinich that it might make more sense to warn the radicals participating in the Gaza flotilla, some of whose names appear on the FBI Watch List, that any attempt to breach this blockade, intended to prevent Hamas from receiving advanced weaponry, recklessly endangers lives and is contrary to American interests?
Kucinich was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 elections. Imagine the consequences if he had won the nomination and election in 2008.
Equally appalling, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, participated this week in a tour of northern Syria sponsored by Assad. As reported by Yahoo News in an article written by Bradley Klapper, entitled "US defends participation in Syrian-organized tour" (http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_syria):
"The Obama administration struggled Tuesday to explain why its ambassador to Syria participated in a sanitized trip to the country's restive north that was sponsored by President Bashar Assad's regime to attempt to justify its military crackdown.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday's trip to the abandoned town of Jisr al-Shughour allowed Ambassador Robert Ford to 'see for himself the results of the Syrian government's brutality.'
Yet it was unclear how Ford would have gathered such evidence on the government-organized tour."
Bypassing Senate confirmation and seeking to avoid public scrutiny by acting while many were on holiday, Obama appointed Ford as ambassador to Syria at the end of December 2010 (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122904168.html).
There had been no ambassador to Syria following the murder in 2005 of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a friend of the West, which was carried out at the behest of Damascus.
To her credit, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is demanding that Obama immediately recall Ford (see: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/06/27/ros-lehtinen-pushes-obama-to-recall-ambassador-to-syria/)
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