# Syrian President Assad

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syrian-president-assad/22127>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 12, 2000, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syrian-president-assad/22127 "2000-06-12T15:56:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2000, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syrian-president-assad/22127/21 "2000-06-14T17:49:15Z")

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**Casdave:**  
Please notice that I said “this _new_ Assad”, meaning the son that is being installed now, not his ruthless rat-bastard father.

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**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2000, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syrian-president-assad/22127/22 "2000-06-15T02:54:00Z")

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Assad (the elder) also gained brownie points with the US and Arab moderates by siding with us against the _other_ Baath-party regime (Saddam Hussein’s) in 1990-91.

As to why the Assad’s “look ‘white’”, that’s silly. LOTS of people in that region “look white” because they ARE what we’d call caucasian (Semite is a _linguistic_ designation)

JRD

Interesting curio about preferred styles of dress of current-recent heads of major Arab republics:

H. Assad - military officer - business suits  
H. Mubarak - military officer - business suits  
M. Qaddafi - military officer - exhuberant variation of tribal robes  
Saddam Hussein - street thug - Field Marshal’s uniform

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**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2000, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/syrian-president-assad/22127/23 "2000-06-16T05:39:26Z")

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sorry there **Diceman**  
I had only skimmed through this thread and missed that.

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