I admit to being easily shocked- but
The criminal, and incompetent U.S. occupation is now spreading the conflict into Syria, whose Iraqi border was just raided by U.S. helicopters.
US military helicopters have attacked an area along Syria's border with Iraq, causing casualties, according to state-run television and witnesses.
A report quoted unnamed Syrian officials and said the area is near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It gave no other details on the attack.
Residents said two helicopters carrying US soldiers raided Hwijeh village, killing seven people and wounding five.
I suggest that it is not unrelated to this development from yesterday, considering that the raid was staged in the Sunni regions of the far west.
And, given the stupidity and obviousness of this Administration, and its complete lack of any kind of strategy but the crudest and most costly- to itself and to life in general- we must look at yet a third development- something whose latest twist actually shocked me just now -
Beirut - The New York Times reported on Saturday that the United States was providing light arms and new equipment to the Lebanese army, in keeping with its policy of supporting the Lebanese government.
I admit, while googling for a report on the -in my view- incredibly stupid plan to tighten the screw on Syria by arming the Lebanese Army, the last thing I excpected to see was Israel attempting to block it.
Since Israeli companies- run by American felons- collect all our NSA data, we had better not attempt anything drastic- or this could make that phone sex scandal look like child's play.
From the story that Josh has on the front page-
"He added that the U.S. was helping construct a sand berm and ditches along the border."
Building structures in sand, indeed.
October 26, 2008 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are they trying to make it as complicated as possible for Obama, or are they just completely incompetent. Possibly both, I suppose. That aside, I agree that they both are disturbing developments, both the foray(?) into Syria and Israel's trying to thwart our activities. Israel may be correct, mind you, but it doesn't help having allies at loggerheads. Perhaps Cheney and Israel aren't communicating any longer.
October 26, 2008 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israel has been trying, through Turkey, to reach a rapprochement with Syria. i doubt that endears them to Cheney, who would love at this point, any war, so in the confusion he can make off with his man-sized safes.
I think the Israelis are justifiably afraid of where a weakened United States has left them. I think they are very close to panic, after Cheney assured the naive Olmert and his clueless Defense Minister that Lebanon would be a cakewalk in 2006. It truly is a surprise, and dismaying, to see the U.S. now at cross purposes with Israel.
The U.S. sees Lebanon as the Crusader state that can take up the cause against the Sunni Crescent. But Israelis have to live in the real world.
October 26, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Juan Cole has this to say:
"US troops made a raid inside Syrian territory near Iraq, according to Syrian media, which left 8 persons (the Syrians say civilians) dead.
What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian side was a more significant problem.
I don't know if this is election politics on Bush's part, an attempt by Bush-Cheney to mire Obama down in a Syria conflict they started.
Or maybe the secular, Alawi-dominated Baath Party of Syria, always afraid of the Sunni fundamentalists, has grown so terrified of Fatah al-Islam that they gave a secret go-ahead to the US to hit the fundamentalists where they had intelligence on them.
The ruling clique in Syria, Alawis, are a kind of folk Shiites much despised by Sunni fundamentalists. The feuding between the two has been visible in nearby Lebanon, in the northern port of Tripoli."
http://juancole.com/
The last paragraph feeds my suspicions that Lebanon is being used (again, stupidly) as some kind of proxy battleground in a neocon dream.
There are so many neocons floating around the Middle East and Washington who are soon to lose their jobs that anything is possible. The good thing is that the scanario Cole sketched in his third paragraph of election politics is the least likely.We know the Admin is trying to execute its ill-advised schemes in Lebanon and that this is aimed against the Syrians. But this represents a retreat to the west, and is more a concession of defeat than anything else.
October 26, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I realize that there is an incoherence in my explanation. But it is not MY incoherence; it is the incoherence of the Bush policies. The "Sunni fundamentalists" of Tripoli are allies of convenience, perhaps, because of their resistance to Syria and Hezbollah. But it is "Sunni fundamentalists" we chased into Syria from the other side of the country from Lebanon!
Just as during the Iran-Iraq wars, we are supporting both sides in the conflict, and far from showing our evenhandedness, it illustrates our duplicity and fecklessness.
W.H. Auden adopted the beautiful expression "paid on both sides' from "Beowulf." That expression describes perfectly the behavior of Iranian double agents such as Ahmad Chalabi, the neoconservative hero, who was slated to bring Jeffersonian democracy to Iraq.
Neocon Randy Schneumannn is both a patron to Chalabi and an adviser to McCain. He, too, is a person for whom the expression "paid on both sides' was devised.
October 27, 2008 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink