U.S. launches attacks in Syria (or, hello October Surprise)

[ArcturusMengsk]

From the Telegraph:

Media reports gave conflicting accounts of the incident, which they said had involved an air strike on civilians.

State television, quoting unnamed officials, said that an attack took place near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It gave no further details on the incident.

The private television channel al-Dunia said that nine people had been killed when an unknown number of American helicopters attacked the village of Al-Sukkiraya.

"Nine people were killed and 14 wounded in the raid, which hit a group of builders while they were working," the television station said. "All victims were civilians."

Local residents told the Associated Press that two helicopters carrying US soldiers raided the village of Hwijeh, 10 miles inside Syria's border. They claimed that seven people had been killed and five others wounded innthe attack.

Sgt Brooke Murphy, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said that commanders were investigating the reports.

If confirmed, a US strike inside Syria is likely to have been targeting al-Qaeda operatives. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the regional terrorist group allied to so-called "core al-Qaeda" based in Pakistan, has operated across the Syria-Iraq border in recent years.

Israel last year launched air strikes inside Syria. Officials later claimed later that the target was the site of a nuclear facility which was under construction with the help of North Korea.

Unbelievable.

[Kar Kar]

National borders? What national boarders?

At this point America is nothing more than a dog with rabies biting indiscriminately.

[/necessary anti-American sentiment]

If true I wonder of they're just testing the waters, assuming they care.

[Sea Skimmer]

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable? Why? Because you think wars are neat tidy things that carefully keep themselves within lines drawn on a map?

‘War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared. It can engulf states and peoples remote from the original scene of hostiles.’ –words spoke by Franklin Delano Roosevelt this month in 1937. Its more true now then ever.

US troops have crossed into Syria before despite what certain moronic media sources are claiming, and they have been fired upon from insurgents within Syria before, and Syria continues to be a major pipeline for weapons and equipment funneling into insurgents in Iraq. The only reason we haven’t seen a whole lot more strikes like this is because the US has held out hope, without much success, that it actually can work with the Syrian government to secure the boarder. Insurgents are a dying breed in Anbar, particularly in the big cities like Ramadi, and so US forces and pullout out, and shifting west and north which means more presence along that boarder.

Anyway, you might also recall that UN treaties allow a right to hot pursuit in the first place.

[Pelranius]

Strange how the US military isn't really confirming this. Sounds a lot like the Pakistan mess.

[Ubiquitous]

Strange how the US military isn't really confirming this. Sounds a lot like the Pakistan mess.

Probably because of the negative publicity surrounding such a move. Which is dumb. If US forces went into, say, China ... then yeah, that would be a dumb move and worthy of negative PR. But what's wrong with pursuing targets into a nation that harbours terrorists and is already hostile to the US? And it's not like this is the first time something like this has happened.

[Broomstick]

But what's wrong with pursuing targets into a nation that harbours terrorists and is already hostile to the US?

We have to make nice to the Arabs because we need them to sell us their oil. Or at least we pretend to make nice to the Arabs.

[Sea Skimmer]

We have to make nice to the Arabs because we need them to sell us their oil. Or at least we pretend to make nice to the Arabs.

Are you kidding? Arab states have no choice but to sell oil, even back in 1973 when they had way smaller populations and a greater stranglehold on the world market they could only afford a very short embargo, today they couldn't afford one at all. Syria in any case is not a major oil exporter, with exports dropping rapidly in recent years to the point that the nation is expected to start importing oil in 2009. The most likely and by far more convenient source (existing pipelines, railroads and highways could be used) of that oil is… Iraq.

Its not like any of the Arab states have any reason to want Iraq to fall apart anyway, Syria is now about the last of the secular Arab dictatorships, while the monarchies of the Gulf States are outright declared enemies of Al-Qaeda. The Syrians just don’t want to cooperate because of the whole Israel issue, and a fear of being literally totally encircled by US allies. Turkey-Iraq-Jordon-Israel-Lebanon. Not fun for them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Also I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, this town is right on the single biggest crossing point between Iraq and Syria, and yet US forces crossed and recrossed the boarder after attacking a building without being opposed by Syrian forces at all? It might have been nighttime, but Syria doesn’t have the worst equipped or trained army on earth, they should easily have been able to oppose a couple helicopters.

This suggests two possibilities. The first is that Syria actually consented to this raid, and is just going through the motions of objecting to hide its cooperation (plenty of political and military reasons could exist for this). The other is that Syrian just doesn’t have any significant forces in the area, which would show how little Syria cares about securing its boarder.

[Patrick Degan]

October Surprise? This is just another cross-border tiff which isn't really going to change the status quo on anything. Will hardly even register on the radar screen.

[Samuel]

We don't have the troops to do it. This will be like the constant problems with Pakistan and Turkey.

[Big Orange]

This does not sound as a bad carpet bombing the Cambodian border.

[Pelranius]

Also I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, this town is right on the single biggest crossing point between Iraq and Syria, and yet US forces crossed and recrossed the boarder after attacking a building without being opposed by Syrian forces at all? It might have been nighttime, but Syria doesn’t have the worst equipped or trained army on earth, they should easily have been able to oppose a couple helicopters.

This suggests two possibilities. The first is that Syria actually consented to this raid, and is just going through the motions of objecting to hide its cooperation (plenty of political and military reasons could exist for this). The other is that Syrian just doesn’t have any significant forces in the area, which would show how little Syria cares about securing its boarder.

You might be right about that with the former possibility. The Syrians have had a long history of problems with the Sunni fundamentalists (Assad the elder killed several tens of thousands back in the eighties when he turned Hama into a parking lot) and there was a recent bombing in Damascus, so this could be payback in a roundabout sort of way. The Alawites, a Shia sect that the Assad clan belongs to, is a mortal enemy to ranking right up there with the Israelis and Ayatollahs to many Wahabis.

[Commander 598]

Posted on SB:

US Strike Into Syria Serves Major Blow to Al Qaeda

Oct 27 at 8:08pm by David Tate

An American commando raid into Syrian territory has resulted in the “decapitation” of the primary network responsible for facilitating the Iraqi insurgency from Syria, this according to Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal.

According to Roggio, the raid killed the group’s leader, Abu Ghadiya, as well as his entire senior leadership.

By Bill Roggio
October 27, 2008 4:51 PM

“Al Qaeda leader Abu Ghadiya was killed in yesterday’s strike inside Syria, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. But US special operations forces also inflicted a major blow to al Qaeda’s foreign fighter network based in Syria. The entire senior leadership of Ghadiya’s network was also killed in the raid, the official stated.

Ghadiya was the leader of al Qaeda extensive network that funnels foreign fighters, weapons, and cash from Syria into Iraq along the entire length of the Syrian border. Ghadiya was first identified as the target of the raid inside Syria late last night here at The Long War Journal. The Associated Press reported Ghadiya was killed in the raid earlier today.”

http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/conte ... -al-qaeda/

[Molyneux]

Oh, for fuck's sake.
We're not a nation anymore, we're just the international equivalent of a drunken barfighter.

[TimothyC]

Oh, for fuck's sake.
We're not a nation anymore, we're just the international equivalent of a drunken barfighter.

No, Drunken barfighter would be glassing the last remaining arab dictatorship. Besides, it's looking like the Syrians wanted this to happen:

Syria: the leadership in Damascus closed the American School in Damascus and took other minor reprisals against the US in retaliation for Sunday’s (26 October) commando raid. It asked the UN to take the border violation under consideration and do what it thought best.



Those kinds of actions signify this was an inside deal.

Syria-US: During this Watch, a “Pentagon spokesman” confirmed that yesterday’s attack against a Syrian village resulted in the death of one of the most notorious al Qaida facilitators, Abu Ghadiya,



According to the International Herald Tribune account published during this Watch, unidentified American officials said the mission had been mounted rapidly over the weekend on orders from the Central Intelligence Agency when the location of Abu Ghadiya, was confirmed. About two dozen American commandos in specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters swooped into the village of Sukkariyeh near the Iraqi border just before 5 p.m., and fought a brief gun battle with several militants, including Ghadiya, the officials said. It was unclear whether Ghadiya died near his tent on the battlefield or after he was taken into American custody, one senior American official said.



One official described Ghadiya as Al Qaida in Mesopotamia's "most prominent" smuggler of foreign operatives crossing the Syrian border into Iraq. The official said that Ghadiya was in his late 20s and came from a family of smugglers in Anbar Province in western Iraq. The Independent reported from a different unidentified US official that Abu Ghadiya was the nom de guerre of Badran Turki Hisham al-Mazididih, a native of Mosul and an aide of al-Qa'ida's Iraqi leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed two years ago.



Feedback from a brilliant reader noted the legal similarity between the French attack against pirates off Somalia and the US helicopter attack against outlaws that the Syrians decline to arrest but who persisted in undermining security in Iraq. Good analogy. The Syrian government has been making promises for five years to stop infiltration along the border, but the International Herald Tribune article pointed out that the flow of weapons, fighters and money from Syria continued. As with the Somali pirates, an object lesson was overdue.



A major Syrian concern has been that it could become a primary target for al Qaida terror operations, if it cracked down too hard. This remains a significant concern for the government. The Syrian protests over the territorial intrusion in public are likely to be tempered in private by the setback delivered to al Qaida operations that Syria could not manage alone.



The international reaction has been predictably and uniformly negative. The nations are unnerved whenever the sole superpower takes effective action to protect its interests.

Let me requote that last analysis

The international reaction has been predictably and uniformly negative. The nations are unnerved whenever the sole superpower takes effective action to protect its interests.

Well Duh. You guys don't like it when it comes out that our idea of 'listening to the rest of the world' consists of listening to the rest of the world and then doing what is in our best interests.