More on the US raid on a house in Syria:
The LAT wonders if the attack will derail US-Syrian steps toward rapprochement.
Syrian officials are complaining that the raid, which left 8 Syrians dead, was ‘irrational’ and contravened international law. Other Syrian denunciations are given in Arabic by al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Farmhouse raided in Abu Kamal village, courtesy Syria-news.com
Joshua Landis at Syria Comment carries an account from a physician of the killed and wounded that casts doubt on the US military story that the workers killed were part of a logistics operation in support of fundamentalist vigilantes on their way to Iraq.
Landis speculates that Bushco. figures that it would get a lame duck freebie in attacking Syria now, on the brink of an Obama administration.
It seems to me more likely that the attack was aimed at making sure that what the administration calls “al-Qaeda in Iraq” did not have the means to mount a spectacular bombing or assassination campaign that would hurt McCain and help Obama. I was told by NGOs when I was in Amman last summer that the Bush administration had for the first time pledged money to help Iraqi refugees, and that US officials had admitted to them that the reason was that the administration wanted the refugee crisis kept off the front pages this fall. Scott McClellan has already told us that the Bushies are in campaign mode 24/7. I’d say that every single thing they are doing, whether raiding Pakistan or raiding Syria, is intended in some way to help the Republican Party in the election, in addition to whatever local military goal the action had.
Update: Helena Cobban argues that a) it is past time for an October surprise to work and b) that the US public would not put up with being transparently manipulated, given what they’ve been through with Bush/Cheney.
Aljazeera English reports on the US raid into Syria.
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