Lebanon in Jeapordy

The Whitehouse has dumbed itself down in an attempt to reverse the Clinton years which saw an absolute romance with multilateralism and the UN. The Whitehouse of the Bush Regime has decided that we go our own way, and the willing can follow or another way to look at it woudl be to say "and you will know us by the trail of our dead." I'm just thinking out loud here. But what does it say to the rest of the world when we say that "Talking isn't a strategy?" Well lets examine the previous strategies? Hm? And where have they brought us? Isn't talking the first and most basic principle of diplomacy? I could be wrong here, I mean I'm only thinking out loud, but lets think of it in terms of couples and counseling, what happens when couples stop talking and wind up on some poor shrink's couch? They sit there with their arms crossed, bodies tuned away from each other, referring to the other in 3rd person, what happens when the lines of communication cease to be a strategy? So if we're not talking, as a strategic measure anymore, then I nominate some other country, like Iceland, to come in and be the shrink.


November 1, 2006
White House Sees Signs of Plot in Lebanon
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — The White House said today that there was “mounting evidence” that Iran and Syria are involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, but senior officials refused to describe in any detail the intelligence they said they had collected.

In an unusual statement, the White House said it was “increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon’s democratically elected government.”

American officials who were pressed today about the assertion on Lebanon said they had evidence that Syria and Iran were trying to engineer the creation of a new “unity” government that they could control, partly through the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. One senior American official, who did not want to be identified because he was discussing an intelligence issue, said there were also indications of “planning for a more violent” attack on the government, but he gave no details.

In the White House statement, issued by President Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, the administration said there were “indications” that Syria was trying to block passage of a statute by the Lebanese Parliament that would cooperate with an international tribunal being put together to try those accused of involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In a warning to Syria, the statement said the tribunal would be established “no matter what happens in Lebanon.”

Syrian intelligence officials, including close family members of President Bashar al-Assad, have been implicated in the attack. Syria has denied being involved in the attack in February 2005, which ultimately led to protests that forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after nearly three decades.

In interviews in recent days, senior American officials have alluded less directly to concerns about Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon’s affairs. They have suggested that the concerns are one reason that the United States could not engage in negotiations with Syria or Iran, as several leading Republicans, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, have urged.

“Talking isn’t a strategy,” the president’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said in an interview late last week, before he headed to Iraq. “The issue is how can we condition the environment that that Iran and Syria will make a 180-degree turn,” he said.