yoavh@nsc.UUCP (01/10/84)
I find the suggestion that Assad was moved by the moral stand supposedly staked out by Mr. Jackson (well known for his warbling of "We Shall Overcome" with that famous humanitarian Yassir Arafat) amusing. Tell me, do you think that "moral appeals" hold much weight with a man who - massacred 5 to 20 thousand residents of the Syrian city of Hama (depending on whose numbers you believe - Mr. Assad is a little too busy being impressed by moral appeals to let foreign observers in to count up the bodies). - applauded politely at a recent Ba'ath youth militia rally as male and female scouts bit off the heads of snakes and strangled puppies (a striking display of youthful idealism and vigor recently broadcast on Syrian state television). - in a statement to the Syrian stooge congress in 1973 praised the mannner in which Syrian troops murdered Israeli POWs.