The Wall Street Journal has a serious article which makes a case for Congress getting more involved, but unfortunately, Nelson isn't the only buffoon wanting to visit Damascus. A real parade of fools, three more of the most mendacious slippery mike-hogging show-offs in Congress, Sens. Dodd, Specter, and of course, J[ust] F[or] Kerry are eager to demonstrate their heft and gravitas by going to Damascus, getting the photo-op sitting next to the stick-insect [can't wait to see the bouffant Kerry and crew-cut baby-Assad photo], and then coming back to be interviewed by "serious" journalists like Baby-Face Russert and Earnest Brian Williams. And don't forget Matt Lauer.
These solons are ostensibly going to Damascus about Iraq, but the Arab world will interpret their visits as paying homage to Assad, thereby increasing this incompetent blustering murderous nitwit's prestige and emboldening him to more excesses in Lebanon, the only place that Assad has real influence. Except in Jim Baker's fevered brain.
So serial recidivist megalo-mikehogs like Dodd, Nelson, Specter and Hairdo are going to visit an all-but-open-and-shut-case murderer-wannabe of the country next door. And giving American foreign influence in the region an even less enviable profile.
President Bush and Condi Rice are going to have to exercise what little political clout they have left, and use it wisely, to counter these grandstanders on their self-promoting junkets.
Ah, but there's always Dennis Kucinich, now a presidential candidate. That photo-op will be precious as this five-foot wonder stands next to six-six stick-insect Assad!