Schizophrenic U.S. foreign policy: Syria's Foreign Minister Moallem at center of U.S.

extrication plans for Iraq while State's over-rated graduate student, Rice, calls Syria "dangerous."

November 20, 2006 -- On Nov. 10/11/12, WMR reported, "With the Iraq Study Group led by Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker and including Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates engaged in negotiations with Syria to work out an American military withdrawal from Iraq, the neo-con charges against Syria for the Hariri assassination are being cast aside, according to U.S. intelligence sources."

The U.S.-Syrian rapprochement is now being reported by the mainstream media. On Nov. 19, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem paid a surprise visit to Baghdad, the first by a senior Syrian government official to Iraq. The Syrian visit would not have been possible without the diplomatic, security, and logistics support of U.S. military occupation officials at Baghdad International Airport and in the Green Zone. Moallem previously met with Baker in New York and Baker and other members of the Iraq Study Group have met with Syrian ambassador to the United States Imad Mustafa.

Moallem called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces as one way to reduce the violence in Iraq, which today claimed over 100 lives.
Schizophrenic U.S. foreign policy: Syria's Foreign Minister Moallem at center of U.S. extrication plans for Iraq while State's over-rated graduate student, Rice, calls Syria "dangerous."

Moallem reportedly called on Iraqi government officials to dismantle the "De-Baathification" program established by the neo-cons under Paul "Jerry" Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. Syria is governed by a rival branch of the pan-Arab Baath Socialist Party. There were also discussions on restoring diplomatic relations between Damascus and Baghdad. Diplomatic ties have been severed since 1982. Syria is also calling for Washington to pressure Israel to return to Damascus control of the Golan Heights as a price for its help on Iraq. However, as a way to placate Syria in the short term, Baker and his group may pressure Bush to muzzle Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week in Washington, called Syria "a dangerous state that is behaving in a dangerous manner."

In another sign that the Baker Study Group is eclipsing the neo-con foreign policy agenda of the increasingly marginalized clique of Dick Cheney, John Bolton, the State Department's Robert Joseph, and others. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is also one of the two key Kurdish leaders, announced he will pay a visit to Tehran on Nov. 25. The involvement of Syria and Iran with U.S. diplomatic moves to extricate America from Iraq has long been opposed by the neo-cons. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki recently returned from Turkey where a number of "compromises" between Baghdad and Ankara were hammered out. It is likely that one of them was an Iraqi commitment to prevent the establishment of an internationally-recognized independent Kurdish state in the north of Iraq and, instead, maintain the status quo of a de facto autonomous Kurdish state.

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