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After a recent intensive three-hour meeting with Syria's President Bashar Assad, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced some good news: Assad had made "some closures" of terrorist offices openly operating in Damascus. But the next day, Powell switched to the future tense in discussing these closures: "I welcome what [Assad] said he was going to do." What happened? Powell again and again insisted that Assad not just mouth the right words but really shutter the offices of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command: "It's performance that we'll be looking at in the...

Following an intensive three-hour meeting with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad recently, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced some good news: The Syrian president had made "some closures" of terrorist offices openly operating in Damascus. But the very next day, Powell switched to the future tense in discussing these closures: "I welcome what [Assad] said he was going to do." What happened? Powell again and again insisted that Assad not just mouth the right words but really shutter the offices of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. "It's performance that we'll...

<p>May 13, 2003 -- After a recent intensive three-hour meeting with Syria's President Bashar Assad, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced some good news: Assad had made "some closures" of terrorist offices openly operating in Damascus. But the next day, Powell switched to the future tense in discussing these closures: "I welcome what [Assad] said he was going to do."</p>

(Transcript from MSNBC)... "You know every night we take a moment to highlight examples of liberal elitism in a segment we call, "There They Go Again," and tonight we're exposing an Ivy League school for celebrating a prominent anti-Semitic scholar on its payroll. Columbia University, there they go again. "Now Edward Said is a Columbia professor who just happens to be the leading spokesman for the Palestinian cause against Israel. Today Columbia's celebrating the 25th Anniversary of his book "Orientalism" and which he describes as "an examination of the way the west perceives the Islamic world." With me now from...

Middle East Debate: Should Washington Actively Promote an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Settlement?Council on Foreign Relations May 2, 2003 Panelists: Martin Indyk, Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, The Brookings InstitutionDaniel Pipes, Director, Middle East Forum Presider: Charlie Rose, Executive Producer and Host, Charlie Rose ShowStreaming video: http://cfr.org/publication.php?id=5906Charlie Rose [CR]: I hope you had a nice lunch, and we're indeed pleased to have you here to talk about the cutting edge of where the news is, as well as one of the more profound issues that we have all been dealing with, and that the Council has been focusing on in...

Bring on "Iraqi Freedom." But always keep in mind, as President Bush has done, that the ultimate war goal is to enhance American security. When Bill Clinton deployed American troops in places like Bosnia and Haiti, he was criticized for turning foreign policy into "social work" (as Michael Mandelbaum pungently put it). By what authority, many asked in the 1990s, did the president place troops in harm's way without discernable American interests at stake? George W. Bush has made sure not to repeat this error. He deployed force twice - in Afghanistan and Iraq - and both times he made...

For those of you who have followed the "war on terror" and peripheral events related to it, you have heard of Professor Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum. He, along with Steve Emerson, have been on the point of the spear in the national and intellectual debate and forum in aiding the Bush Administration in forming foreign policy on how to respond to Islamic terrorism. President Bush recently nominated Professor Pipes to the US Institute of Peace. Already, Islamic extremist organizations based here in the US, which ostensibly "defend" Muslim rights but are being found out one...

Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites chanted "No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam" a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces. Gratitude for liberation usually has a short shelf life, and Iraq will be no exception. As a middle-aged factory manager put it, "Thank you, Americans. But now we don't need anybody to stay here anymore." However delighted they are to be rid of the Saddamite nightmare, Iraqis mentally live in a world of conspiracy theories,...

ASHINGTON, April 27 — When President Bush travels to Dearborn, Mich., on Monday to speak to Iraqi exiles and other Arab-Americans, he will trail behind him considerable uncertainty about his administration's intentions toward Islam.Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, Mr. Bush has consistently said that Islam is a religion of peace and warned against anti-Muslim prejudice. Yet he also recently nominated to a government institute a scholar, Daniel Pipes, who has enraged many American Muslims by suggesting that mosques are breeding grounds for militants and that Muslims in government and military positions should be given special attention as security risks.Mr. Bush...

Oppose the Islamists by Supporting the Nomination of Daniel PipesBy Andrew L. Jaffee, 4/24/2003 ACT NOW! - SUPPORT THE PIPES APPOINTMENT In a recent interview Daniel Pipes described Islamism as: a modern, 20th century ideology, arising at roughly the same time as fascism and Marxist-Leninism. It is attractive to a small percentage of Muslims. It is a mechanism, a blueprint, for taking over governments and running societies. It is something very different from Islam. He added: And, by the way, the first victims of militant Islam, or Islamism, are Muslims themselves. We can join together, Muslim and non-Muslim, to...

from UPI's Capital Comment on Apr. 24, 2003 Pipes of peace... Muslims activists from across the United States will be on Capitol Hill Friday, lobbying legislators and their staff on items of interest to their community. The No. 1 item on the agenda, they say, is to stop the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace. Pipes, who runs the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, is a vocal and longtime critic of what he calls Islamic extremism and has suggested on more than one occasion that mosques in the United States are...

The Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is leading a witchhunt against the nomination of a very good man, Daniel Pipes, to the board of the U.S. Institute for Peace. CAIR is not what it seems – not what it pretends to be. It is not a group fighting for equal rights for Muslim-Americans. It is not a group trying to protect the interests of Muslims in America. It is not a group promoting human rights for anyone. It is a group whose real mission is changing the very character of America – remaking it in the image of...

The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite by Robert D. Kaplan New York: Free Press, 1993. 336 pp. $24.95 Wall Street Journal September 16, 1993 Reviewed by Daniel Pipes By the time the Reverend Benjamin Weir was taken hostage on the streets of Beirut in April 1984, he had lived thirty-one years in Lebanon, where he had taught theology, done charitable work, and spread the gospel. Over the decades, he and his wife Carol came totally to identify themselves with the Muslim Lebanese while at the same time disassociating themselves completely from the U.S. government (so much so, they...

A scholar nominated to a federal think tank on peace over the objections of Muslim groups said Tuesday that President Bush should not have characterized Islam as a peaceful religion after the Sept. 11 attacks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A little learning, it is said, can be a bad thing. At this very moment, a controversy is bubbling in Washington to prove that a lot of learning can be even worse. Daniel Pipes, one of the most learned of Middle Eastern scholars, is at the center of the controversy, and it is his vast and recondite learning that has entoiled him in controversy. Pipes knows about the complexity and nuance of ancient religions and long historical evolutions. His knowledge has left him prey to those who insist on simpleminded exegeses of complicated matters -- for instance,...

(CNSNews.com) - The Council on American Islamic Relations is now trying to use the controversy surrounding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to derail the nomination of a Middle East expert and author who's been chosen by President Bush for a spot on the U.S. Institute for Peace. Bush has nominated Daniel Pipes, the author of three books, a syndicated columnist and director of the Middle East Forum for a spot on the institute's board of directors. The institute is self-described as "an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by Congress to promote the prevention, management, and peaceful...

Who's to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what The New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"? The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East. They proceed to compare American leaders to some of the worst mass-murderers in history. * Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University: U.S. political leaders are "destroyers of civilization" like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. * Michael Sells of Haverford College: They are "barbarians" whose "criminal neglect" makes them comparable to Nero. * Said Arjomand of the State University...

<p>WHO'S to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what The New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"? The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East. They proceed to compare American leaders to some of the worst mass-murderers in history.</p>

A controversial Islamic lobby group that casts itself as a mainstream voice for American Muslims is fiercely opposing President Bush's nomination of a leading Middle East scholar to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, charges that Daniel Pipes, director of a Philadelphia-based think tank, the Middle East Forum, is an "Islamaphobe" whose views "have been instrumental in widening the divide between faiths and cultures." Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pipes, who speaks Arabic and has a Ph.D. from Harvard, was castigated by Muslims as a racist...

<p>April 22, 2003 -- WHO'S to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what The New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"?</p> <p>The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East. They proceed to compare American leaders to some of the worst mass-murderers in history.</p>