Following my item on Syria yesterday, here are some insights into the regime’s thinking, courtesy of the Syrian government-controlled daily Al-Thawra.

So why exactly is President Bush so graciously hosting representatives of the Syrian regime today?

Here are some extracts:

“ President Bush Jr.’s escapade in Iraq is a significant turning point that will go down in history as the beginning of the fall of the great American empire.

“Though the entire tyrannical media is mobilizing in a vain attempt to present the events [in Iraq] as the complete opposite [from what they really are], [eventually] it is geography that will [have the last word]. That is what happened to the great Roman Empire, to the British Empire, and to the French empire, in the tripartite attack on Egypt in 1956… This is also what history wrote on the death certificate of the Nazi beast – the Fuehrer – who in his day held every crucial [source of] power, and relied on [this power] as he set out to destroy part of humanity and conquer the rest, so as to turn them into slaves in the service of the ‘Aryan übermensch’…

“Yes, that is hubris, the deadly disease of the mighty. And now George Bush Jr. – the Fuehrer of the 21st century – is falling victim to the same deadly disease of hubris. [This is] a failure to use and manage power [wisely]…”