Epstein Secrets

had put its power behind liberty. Saddam Hussein was flushed out of a spider hole, the Syrian brigades of terror and extortion were pushed out of Lebanon, and the despotism of Hosni Mubarak, long a pillar of Pax Americana, seemed to lose some of its mastery. But post-Saddam Iraq held out mixed messag

led its affairs with relative ease. It elected a constituent assembly in which al Nanda, an Islamist party, secured a plurality. Al Nanda's leader, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, was a shrewd man; years in exile had taught him caution, and his party formed a coalition government with two secular partners. In Libya, foreign

by Jordan's King Abdullah in 2004, during the Iraq war, to describe an arc of influence from Shiite-dominated Iran to its allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Today, these rival crescents risk turning countries in transition into battlefields over the region's future. The Salafis represent a painful long

all want to many you." Marriage may have been a euphemism. Other more modern Islamists fear the Salafi factor. "The Salafis try to push us," said Rachid al-Ghannouchi, founder of Ennanda, the ruling Islamist party in Tunisia. The two Islamist groups there are now rivals. "Salafis are against drafting a constituti

al leaders to choose the same system as the ten post- communist countries that have been admitted to the European Union: parliamentarianism. Finally, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who leads the largest Islamic- inspired political party, Al Nahda, went out of his way to tell me that he has signed an agreement with some secular

l. Since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, U.S. policymakers had viewed the Assads as pragmatists capable of facilitating or blocking U.S. policy in Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli peace process. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030074 --- PAGE BREAK --- 16 If only the Syrians could be brought around, presidents have belie