US conducts attack in Syria?

"Iraq this Way!", a photo taken in Syria by Red Betty Black

Since I am now stationed in Korea, this is one incident that I have no inside knowledge of at all, so I feel much more free to discuss this raid (Sometimes I have to be extra-careful not to divulge any classified information):

Syria has protested angrily to both the US and Iraq after what it said was a US helicopter raid inside its territory that killed eight civilians.
Syria summoned US and Iraqi envoys to condemn the "aggressive act".
...
The US has neither confirmed nor denied the incident. It has previously accused Syria of allowing militants into Iraq.

Syria said the US helicopters attacked a farm in the Abu Kamal border area.

If confirmed, the raid would be the first known attack by US forces inside Syrian territory, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.
...
Syria's official Sana news agency said that "four American helicopters violated Syrian airspace around 1645 local time [1345 GMT] on Sunday".

The government said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh farm near Abu Kamal, eight kilometres (five miles) from the Iraqi border.

A building under construction was hit and four children and a married couple were among the dead, it said.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of reporting that is particularly infuriating:

Our correspondent says the timing of the incident is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration's period of office and at a moment when many of America's European allies - like Britain and France - are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus.

The US military is not political!! I've said it before, but I'll say it again: We are not George Bush's personal force. Why do even professional journalists seem to think this is so? The United States is not some third-world dictatorship; the military doesn't do raids for political purposes, and I have never, ever heard of anyone in the Bush administration asking them to. "Broadening ties" is also all well and good - except with terrorists.

If, and I emphasize if - US Special Forces attacked a farm on the Syrian side of the border, it was because they had strong intelligence of foreign fighters gathering there. Guaranteed. Such a raid would have had to have been approved at a very high level, and nobody would want to risk the blowback of attacking innocents, particularly outside of Iraqi borders. Commanders are not stupid, and they know the press would report this, and that Syria and other networks would deliberately distort it.

The report of "children" being attacked is almost a given, and the traditional way to cover your own guilt. If this were so, why not tell us whom, or show photos? Soldiers are human beings, and 99.99% would never attack children unless their lives were genuinely threatened.

But it's not just Syria. Of course, at certain nutjob web sites, they are already condemning the United States before all the facts are even in. A tad impatient for November, maybe?

Keep in mind that this was not too far from the town of Qaim, which has been a hotbed of Al-Qaeda for a long time.

Allahpundit makes a good observation:

Exit question: If they were targeting an AQI safehouse, why put men on the ground to “storm a building,” as the BBC report puts it? Why not just send a missile down the chimney, Waziristan style? Clearly they were looking for someone.

Update: The only two people I can think of who might justify an operation in Syria are al-Masri, the leader of AQI, and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who’s long been rumored to be hiding out there. Roggio will have other guesses, certainly. A snatch and grab operation of some high-ranking insurgent would explain why boots were on the ground and why they felt they had to act now, even with the election so near. Short of that, the only explanation I can come up with is that there was some sort of cargo in transit that simply had to be seized and secured, even at the risk of casualties.

That is a very good explanation and entirely plausible. There is one more possibility, however. If US forces were in "hot pursuit" and aerial reconnaissance observed enemy fighters crossing the border and stopping at that farm, then they would also follow it up. Either way, I'm sure we will get a full explanation in time.

Me: wishing I was there instead of here...



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