US Troops Strike Inside Syria

Attempting to cut off a route of insurgents into Iraq, the US military has struck within the borders of Syria according to press reports by using helicopters to fire on a farm about 5 miles within the nation.  The Syrian  news agency, SANA, says  three men, a woman, and four children died.  So it's our usual great identification and targeting.  

I know that the military boasts about their accurate air strikes and even planted tantelizing info through Robert Woodwards new book about some special super indentification weapon, but we certainly don't  have very good luck with it.

In it's most scrutinized used in Sadr City, our super identification was getting women and children killed left and right.  I'm certain that not only did that cause the leaders of the rebel Shiites to plea for a new cease fire, but al Maliki knew he'd better grant it before it became quite apparent that America's new super weapon was a pretty crappy gadget and possibly no more than an increased callousness to use airpower against families in the crowded quarters of Baghdad. 

The area is across the border from Qaim (presumably al Qaim) a city captured by insurgents in April 2005 according to an AP report at Google News, recaptured by marines the next month, and finally pacified by the Sunni Awakening.  

The AP notes that flow of insurgents had been halted from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but not across the Syrian border.  A military man points to the Syrian government in the AP report, and, of course, whatever the US military wants, the US military gets according to what I've seen, until the time some government with their own nuclear arsenal decides enough is enough. 

Many of the insurgents come from northern Africa and make up a substantial portion of suicide bombers according to the AP.  

An apparently updated AP report at IHT says an eyewitness told them that grounds troops were also involved.k

Excerpt:

A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said some of the aircraft in Sunday's attack landed and disgorged troops who fired on a building. At least one of the dead was a construction worker, he said. 

It also notes:

The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated 20 a month, a senior U.S. military intelligence official said in July. That marked a 50 percent decline from six months earlier, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence reports.

Ninety percent of the foreign fighters enter through Syria, and foreign fighters toting cash have been Al Qaeda in Iraq's chief source of income, according to U.S. intelligence.

The IHT version of the AP report catches the military complaining that there is no barrier in the area in question along the border and apparently lately the US military was digging ditches and piling the removed soil into berms.  Well it works with tigers if the result is a high enough barrier, though I suspect you can't get a steep enough rise for tigers or insurgents with just sandy soil.

A military official complains that parts of the Syrian military is in league with al Qaeda according to that piece. 

Damascus had complained earlier that they haven't been given materials to construct  a good border barrier according to the article.

CNN reports that the attack was near an Iraqi refugee camp by the town of Al-Bukamal.  Now we owe those poor folks and whole new round of meds, you know.  It's amazing enough to know that 1/4 of the Iraqi population was displaced in a massive interior and exterior flight from sectarian killings, and then John McCain dances around claiming that his "surge" instead of the sectarian division brought about a lessening of tensions in the Shocked and Awed nation.  Now our killing machine follows them.

Riverbend made point of telling us how quiet Syria after her family fled their Baghdad home.  It was such an important change in their lives, after 4.5 years to be where there was no war.  I can't imagine the trauma on the children and adults in that camp as the military went over the line.  

But if this actually works, unlike most of what we've done in Iraq, and helps to cut off a supply of violence then it was worth it.  After January 20, 2009 we can work on cutting off the major supply of violence in Iraq, our own military.  Then maybe they will have peace. 

Al Qaim was a place of interest as well, one of the many fear mongering sites on Iraq, ISIS, noted in a 2002 report that the Iraqis had an operational plant rebuilt in the area where both phosphate ore was made into fertilizer and uranium ore was made into yellow cake in the 1980s before US planes took the refining facilities out in the first Gulf War.  You can guess which kind of plant they were thinking the new structure was, and which kind it turned out to be.  There haven't been inspectors since 1998 they wailed.  Well, later in 2002 inspectors were back into Iraq, but the Bush administration and the warmongers didn't let them finish the job.  Still I bet by the time lil Bushie released the dogs of war, the inspectors had found that the only threat from al Qaim would have come if they used too much of the phosphate in their detergents creating foamy, fish killing waters while rinsing.  

tags: iraq  war  military  syria  sunni awakening  

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