You can, of course, prove all this, yes?
http://www.charleston.net/stories/120804/ter_08iraq.shtml
You need to register, but here’s the applicable quote:
I don’t know what the evidence is, but there have been similar reports. Whatever the evidence, Bush has warned Syria, but then again he had good evidence for WMD.
The Americans were not “straying” 15 miles into Syrian territory, but were in hot pursuit. How many miles are you going to limit them? One? Two? If Syria would not be fostering these attacks, no entry in their territory to nab terrorists would be needed.
Unfortunately, this sounds a little like “If you weren’t guilty, we wouldn’t arrest you.”
So there might be evidence, or not, but really who can tell?
Oh so it was a deliberate violation of Syria’s borders coupled with American’s firing on legitimate Syrian forces repelling a deliberate American incursion. Oh by all means, make sure Ms. Rice presents that at the UN.
Few foreigners among rebels captured in Fallujah
The bit about US raids into Syria is a tougher to track. Here’s a few sources on the June 18-19, 2003 incident. There’s lots of inconsistancies between the stories, but something fairly serious happened:
U.S. Syria raid killed 80 (UPI)
Is Syria Harboring Saddam? (Middle East Intelligence Bulletin)
Zero. When armed forces cross a border, it’s an act of war. Calling it “hot pursuit” is just a transparent attempt at putting it in law enforcement terms. Syria has every right to fight foreign troops on its territory with whatever force it can bring to bear. The act of letting your troops violate a sovereign country’s territory comes with the risk of them being shot at. That can’t possibly be a surprise.
If your administration hadn’t been even more incompetent at diplomacy than at planning an occupation, Syria might even have been cooperative in disarming an aggressive neighbour. Fat chance of that now, of course.
The “hot pursuit” doctrine gets broken out when ever it provides a convenient rationalization for one country to disregard the sovereignly of another nation. It was, I think, the excuse / justification / rational for the US invasion of Mexico before WWI –Black Jack Pershing and a fair hunk of the regular army were simply in hot pursuit of Poncho Via and a bunch of banditos. That the Mexican Expeditionary Force clashed with the Mexican Army was of no international consequence, it was just a police operation, like Korea.
Great nations act like gangsters when it serves their purpose. Small nations act like whores. A truism and a fundamental principle of international relations.
True. But, in fairness, sheltering military, paramilitary, or guerilla forces in one’s country is pretty much an act of war as well.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for the plight Bush’s foreign policy finds itself in, myself, but it’s not like Syria’s some innocent lamb in this whole affair. What’s well and truly fubared is that those idiots in the White House didn’t recognize that what we’re seeing right now was far and away the most likely result of their Mesopotamian Misadventure. It didn’t have to be this way.
If Syria aids insurgents in Iraq, surely Iraq is the nation sinned against, not USA. USA is only in Iraq to help the (cough) independent, (coughcough) sovereign nation of Iraq to put down the rebellion against the soon-to-be mostly-lawful more-or-less-democratically elected government, right? So if any nation should consider invading Syria, it’s Iraq. They might, of course, ask their dear friend and ally USA to help them.
It would be interesting, in a horrifying trainwreck sort of way, to see what would happen with the relationship between US and their current allies if US made another attack on a “because we say so” casus belli against a sovereign nation within the next few years. I wonder if NATO would survive the pressure.
Invasionists, let us cut the crap.
An invasion of Syria would be nothing to do with Iraqi insurgents, nor destrucive weapons, nor aid for terrorists, nor any of a thousand other reasons which might make headlines on Fox News.
It would simply be another atrociously-conceived Neoconservative experiment in establishing Middle East democracy by force (which utterly ignores the reasons why democracy is not already there in the first place).
If we agree that this would be the real reason for invasion, we can have an honest debate. The smokescreen for the Iraq invasion was as noxious as any elusive nerve gas - now that it has won the election we can explore the genuine reasons without the despicable Straussian obfuscation.
I think we can work around it. How would the Cuban missile crisis go if it happened nowday? We find a launch site, determine that it’s the only one, and decide to go for a quick destroy-it-all sweep. Iran retaliates by attacking our troops on the Iraq border, and we start rolling in to Iran. At the point of nuclear missiles and offensive attacks, people wouldn’t be so opposed to starting a draft if it were needed.
Trust me on this one. Syria comes after Iran. I betcha five bucks on it.
What’s the time frame?
Regards,
Shodan
Great. Again an other thread by someone who thinks the USA owns the Middle East.
Citizens of a sovereign nation need to cross their border into other nations in order to excape the criminals who invaded and keep under occupation their own sovereign nation. You make these citizens “the enemy” of the invader of their own nation.
Very logical reasoning, this. Only (and take care now, cold shower follows): The USA is the enemy of these people who have every right to kill every US’er they can find busy in occupying their nation.
Get it?
Thank you.
And if you would mind thinking about it that you don’t talk about “land” only but you talk about people living on that land and likely to get murdered by your heros when they go on an other criminal invading tour.
Thank you again.
Whenever I read threads like this, I fee like getting a gun, going to Iraq and start shooting there at the criminals who invaded and keep it under occupation.
Really. I do. That angry these type of lunatics on a message board, claiming the US owns the whole Middle East and can invade and kill at will, makes me.
I have SO ENOUGH of this criminal minded hypocritical arrogance that I can’t find words to describe it.
Think for a second about this and how mad, and I mean: really outrageous mad, many many people in my region of the world are and how much more enraged they will get if the US dares to invade yet an other nation starting the massacre there.
Salaam. A
If the following editorial is true (David Ignatius article on The Pentagon’s New Map), then the militray brain trust may not have any great desire to push for an Iranian invasion. Whether or not the political brain trust orders it is the more important question.
A simple tactical question really. If there’s so much problem with ‘leakage’, why didn’t the US sealed Iraq’s borders? Surely that would put an end to foreign insurgency immediately.
On what basis do you say this?
According to Farid Ghadry (the Syrian Ahmed Chalabi, and a member of AIPAC):
Do you see anything there that can be disputed?
Do you really expect the Franklin/AIPAC case to “heat up” to the point of gathering any steam?
Let’s try to understand what’s what in advance for once.
Speaking of “gathering steam”, this is more about water than anything else. You don’t think water is an important factor???
Okay, in case that doesn’t make the case:
Meet the Syrians:
63 percent are Sunni Arabs or “Arabised” Sunnis.*
*A lot of Sunni Syrians are the remnants of Turks and Mamluks who adopted the Arabic language.
The Sunnis in Syria are divided between rural Bedouins and urban settlers.
11 percent are Alawis.
They are the current ruling faction in Syria.
**10 percent are Kurds. **
For the most part, they aspire to join their fellow Kurds in Iran, Turkey, and Iraq.
10 percent are Christians.
Syrian Christians belong to more than ten different churches.
Of the Christian, between 3-4 percent are Armenians.
3 percent are Druzes.
1.5 percent are Ismailis.
1.5 percent are other minorities.
The Muslim Brotherhood has returned to Syria. I invite the “invasionists” to tell us how usurping Assad will lead to “democracy” in Syria.
Based on our experience in Iraq, just how will this happen for the best? Please tell me how the US would be better off without Bashar Assad?
Simple. Franklin/AIPAC looked to me like it was dying down through november, then on Dec 1, the FBI serves new search warrants, and now there’s rumors (linked above) of significant tension developing at a high level between US and Israel over it. (The rumored demand may or may not be real, but its publication means that someone thinks there’s still much juice to be wrung out of this particular turnip.)
You’re right to some extent in that the CIA housecleaning could help produce a more anti-Syria stance by the US, but the pentagon is cleaning house too, and, surprisingly, the FBI still looks to be on this like a dog on a bone. That’s nothing to worry about if you think that there’s nothing to be found, but is that really the case here?
But the reasons you come out with are inadequate because they are in defence of regimes which are terrible. How about when Syria completely flattened a city in the 80’s because it harboured Islamic extremists who were threatening the regime for starters.
well they’d be out of Lebanon for a start.