Posted by
Wanda Gag on Tuesday, April 03, 2007 4:35:34 PM
"The U.S. House members, who included Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts and Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, also said they had raised with Syrian officials the issue of stopping the alleged flow of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq." source:
http://www.thestate.com/372/story/24186.html
Nancy Pelosi is merely heading this congressional delegation on their fact-finding trip to the Middle East that includes visits to Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. I'm wondering why there is no mention of the Republican congressmen that are accompanying Pelosi in the article above and no remarks from the President scolding his own party members. I hope the congressional delegation will at least mention to Assad that there will be problems if he entertains any ideas of arming some of the estimated 800,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria and sending them back across the border. Fortunately for Syria many of Iraq's best and brightest have come and are doing so well that Syria economy is benefiting. Why should we talk to a country that is hosting a large refugee population from a country we invaded?
"as many of the refugees have come from relatively wealthy strata of Iraqi society, and their presence has acted as an economic stimulus and an important source of foreign exchange inflows. Syria, for example has recently revised upwards its real GDP growth figures for 2004 and 2005 (to 8.6% and 4.5% respectively) and has altered its current-account figures for those two years to show a surplus rather than a deficit through adding some US$2bn in to its export figures in both years. These exports are mainly from the non-oil private sector, and turn up in the accounts as originating from “other countries”. The possibility that these funds relate to transfers into Syria from Iraq cannot be ruled out. "sourcehttp://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=163
We might not like them, but they are more than worth talking to. If we could only open up a couple Walmarts and Mc Donalds there, I'm sure the Iraqi engineers, scientist and businessmen that fled to Syrai could help with the logistics and infrastructure Walmart would require...Too bad about Iraq, but at least somebody is benefiting from that mess. They will need to make sure our Embassy in Damascus isn't bombed again, but maybe we talk about supressing their radical Jihadists while were there. |