Condi and George are lying to the American people about cartoongate

why are we not surprised...? juan cole sets things straight...

Condoleezza Rice is a Liar
Blames Syria, Iran for Inciting Violence over Caricatures of Prophet

Secretary of State Condi Rice on Wednesday blamed Iran and Syria for inciting violence over the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The problem is that she is lying, and this irresponsible charge is another in a long series of propaganda ploys whereby the Bush administration manipulates public opinion in the United States. Reuters reports,

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran and Syria, both at loggerheads with the west, of inciting violence over the cartoons for their own purposes.

Speaking at a Washington news conference with Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Rice said: “Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes — and the world ought to call them on it.”

She said nothing justified the violence and appealed to governments to urge calm.

“There are governments that have used this opportunity to incite violence,” she added, referring to Syria and Iran.

I have done keyword searches in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the CIA, which translates radio broadcasts and newspaper articles, for all of 2005 and 2006, using "Denmark and Syria." I found nothing from 2005 mentioning the caricatures in FBIS transcriptions of the Syrian press. The only things there for 2006 concerned the past week, which saw a violent demonstration in downtown Damascus.

I then did a similar keyword search in Lexis Nexis, which includes the BBC World Monitoring of the Arab press. I again found nothing for 2005. I print below what I found for 2006; the record begins only on January 31.

In short, it simply is not true that Syria has whipped up sentiments in the Arab world about the Danish caricatures. Neither the CIA, nor the BBC monitoring, nor any of the wire services, noticed any Syrian official saying anything at all about this matter until the past week! Since Syria is ruled by a secular Arab nationalist Baath regime, this finding is not surprising. And what influence would Bashar al-Asad, a heterodox Alawite Shiite and a secular Baathist, have with his Sunni Muslim or orthodox Twelver Shiite neighbors?

It is being alleged that the Baath regime was behind the burning of the Danish embassy in Damascus, on the grounds that it could not have happened unless the police state allowed it. But things have gotten out of hand before in Syria, sometimes on a large scale. It is likely that the regime allowed the initial demonstration, which radical Sunni Muslims took advantage of to torch the embassy. The Syrian regime hates radical Islam and doesn't like disorder, either. We cannot assume that the embassy burning was directed by the Syrian state. There is no evidence for it, and it actually doesn't make any sense. What would Bashar have to gain from that?

Rice and Bush have decided to get Syria, and are using the current crisis as a stick with which to beat it, and are lying shamelessly to the American public.

lying shamelessly... has a familiar ring to it, doesn't it...

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