Casdave:
Please notice that I said “this new Assad”, meaning the son that is being installed now, not his ruthless rat-bastard father.
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
sorry there Diceman
I had only skimmed through this thread and missed that.