RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. The Syrian spokesterrorist was on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer last night, Gwen Ifill was interviewing the Syrian ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha. Gwen Ifill says, “Would you reject President Bush’s suggestion today that President Assad speak to Hezbollah about this?”
SYRIAN SPOKESTERRORIST: That was such a simplistic approach. With due respect, President Bush thinks it only suffices for Secretary Annan to call President Bashar Assad through a telephone conversation and voila, everything is resolved. History did not start six days ago in the Middle East. We are talking about half a century of occupation, of humiliation, of despair. Israel is a country that continuously occupy our territories, including the Syrian Golan, the Shaba Farms in Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, imprisoning our people. Enough is enough. Occupation is the mother of all evils, and that should come to an end.
RUSH: All right, so Assad had nothing to do with this, why, Assad can’t stop this. We’ll have further explanation of that. Gwen Ifil says, “So Syria has no pull, no influence over Sheikh Nasrallah or Hezbollah?”
SYRIAN SPOKESTERRORIST: The myth that Hezbollah is a puppet of Syria or of Iran is a very silly Israeli story. Hezbollah is part and parcel of the Lebanese social fabric. These are Lebanese guys; they are Lebanese people. They are actually not a militia, a professional militia. They are the everyday worker, farmer, employer here, medical student there, who also defends their country against the Israel aggressions.
RUSH: Oh, okay, a merry band of farmers and medical students. Screw me. I had a whole different picture of these guys. And finally, the question, “If Secretary Rice does, as the president suggested today, head to the Middle East to try to broker the conflict, what does she have to bring to the table?”
SYRIAN SPOKESTERRORIST: If she’s going to do what previous administrations used to do, please remember this. In the past, whenever there was a crisis in the Middle East, the US administration would immediately dispatch an envoy to the Middle East that will actually work with all parties, reaching a settlement, a compromise, calming down the situation. So it’s up to the United States. If they really want to fulfill their role as the world’s unique superpower, they have a moral obligation, or they just want to engage in a P.R. exercise.
RUSH: All right, so it’s Bush’s problem now, Bush and Rice, they’re the ones that have to solve this because we’re the superpower. (Laughing.) The individual combatants had no responsibility whatsoever. [Spokesterrorist impression] And we in Syria, we have nothing to say. Nothing.
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