Three Cheers for Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) delivered a speech on the floor of the U.S. Congressthis week. She is one of two sponsors , together with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), of the Lebanon and Syria Liberation Act (LASLA).

This is the first time that the US Congress actually heard individual violators inside Syria named, people involved in abuses of human rights there. Even more significant and highly unusual is the fact that the tightly controlled Syrian press is reporting the bill. It was carried by Al-Seyassah, al-Khaleej as well as Elaph on their front pages. Other dailies of the Arab world refused to carry the story.

The Syrian Human Rights Committee has documented many individual killings, tortures, and illegal and unjust imprisonment of ordinary citizens by several hundred Syrian intelligence and military personnel that will be used to bring them to justice. They have carried out massacres of Syrian civilians in Hama and Tadmur as well as the simple torturing of people in prisons.

In her speech, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said, among other things:

"Syria is an oppressor state in every sense. It brutally stifles its political dissidents and minority groups. It denies its ordinary citizens freedom of religion, conscience, and belief. It seeks to silence its people by preventing them from exercising their right to free speech. It discriminates against women, condoning violence and sexual assault against them. The police continue to detain people arbitrarily, placing them in prisons and torturing them using methods that seem to herald a return to the Middle Ages—stretching prisoners on racks, or fracturing their spines on wheels. Since 1963, Syria has ruled under emergency law, using the hollow excuse of Israel being a threat to suppress freedom, diversity of opinion, and equality between religions and between sexes. About 600 Lebanese detainees have been languishing in Syrian jails since 1989."

Meanwhile, An-Nahar, a Lebanese newspaper, reports this morning, in an article written by their senior correspondent in Washington Hicham Milhem, that the Syrian Embassy in the US has hired New Bridge Strategies, a consulting and lobbying firm in Texas. They were hired to influence the White House and the President. Joe Albaugh, a close friend of the President, is to handle this task on behalf of New Bridge Strategies and on behalf of the Assad family. The paper reports that Albaugh was approached by Jamal Daniel, a Syrian born American businessmen involved in Crest Investment and on the board of New Bridge Strategies.

We figure Syria Solidarity Days and "Take a Baathist to Lunch Week" should be common on US campuses shortly.