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12:14 PM, Sep 21, 2011 • By DANIEL HALPERFrom Jamie Weinstein's interview with the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford:
The American Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford called Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad evil in an extensive interview with The Daily Caller Wednesday from his mission in the Middle Eastern country.
“Yes, actually I do because what’s happening under his authority in terms of people being tortured to death, people being shot who are unarmed and no one being held accountable for it,” Ford responded following a pause after being asked by TheDC if he thought Assad was “evil.”
“I can understand it if it was against orders and you just were trying to remake a police force or you were trying to remake a prison system and so there are a lot of orders being disobeyed, but you would want people held accountable. But because I see no accountability, I can only assume that on some level that he accepts it if not encourages it. To me that would be evil.”
Whole thing here.
8:45 PM, Aug 2, 2011 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s confirmation hearing of Robert S. Ford, a first rate foreign service officer now serving as ambassador to Syria under a recess appointment, was held Tuesday, August 2nd. If the United States is to have an ambassador in Damascus, Ford is an excellent man for that post. But the senators should use the confirmation process to extract a far better understanding of U.S. policy toward Syria. Because most of the Senate left town immediately after the debt limit vote, only one actually attended the Ford hearing—meaning that it was not a serious examination of American policy toward Syria and Ford's role in it.
Read more... 12:22 PM, Jul 20, 2011 • By DAVID SCHENKER
There’s no blast wall around the Syrian embassy in Washington. Nor is the wrought iron gate crowned with barbed wire. During a handful of peaceful protests outside the embassy in the Kalorama neighborhood in recent months, no one threw tomatoes or attempted to scale the fence. The embassy and its staff are safe here, no matter how much most Americans might detest a government that has helped kill American troops in Iraq, while supporting attacks against U.S. allies in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s latest outrage against the United States was the assault on the U.S. embassy in Damascus on July 11.
Read more... 3:26 PM, Jul 12, 2011 • By LEE SMITH
Yesterday, Claire Berlinski wrote about meeting a couple of Syrians from the city of Hama, which was leveled by Hafez al-Assad in 1982 and is now again threatened by Hafez’s scion, Bashar al-Assad. Today, Berlinski explains why events in Syria matter to the U.S., from Ambassador Robert Ford’s trip to Hama last Friday to yesterday’s attack on the American embassy in Damascus.
Read more... 3:02 PM, Jul 8, 2011 • By LEE SMITHSyrian protestors greet US ambassador Robert Ford with roses as his car entered Hama this afternoon during the midst of more Friday protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Ford wished to show his solidarity with the opposition, but is he also signaling a change in American policy?
Read more... From the Scrapbook.Feb 7, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 20 • By THE SCRAPBOOKIn Tunisia, a street vendor set himself on fire, antigovernment protests followed, and Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country. In Egypt, liberal opposition groups chanted “Freedom, Freedom” in rallies beginning January 25, and by week’s end Egypt’s authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak was wondering whether his 30-year reign was about to come to an end. Even in Yemen, protesters took to the streets seeking to destabilize the 20-year-old regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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