[AmericanInTokyo]

Gee. Right straight from the Arabic-language, Middle Eastern press itself.

Recall Cambodia and vasts portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, essentially 'off limits' to US military action, because of neighboring Cambodian 'neutrality' in the Vietnam War (a major trans-shipment point and sanctuary for the enemy Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars).

Pres. Nixon ended that inaction in April, 1970. But probably too little too late.

No more sanctuaries and safe terrorist havens ("SYRIA") for the daily killers of young American men and women in Iraq!

[AmericanVictory]

No, the Cambodian shutdown worked, particularly on Sihanoukville, and with the cooperation of Lon Nol. The faltering was later, with regard to doing the same in Laos, and earlier, when LBJ decided to not allow the taking out of North Vietnam early on. The ultimate fatal error by Nixon and Kissinger, however, was not making the North Vietnamese regular army (with Soviet tanks and Chinese in the ranks) leave South Vietnam after they came in through the DMZ while we were giving things away at the negotiating table on the foolish theory that being weak would cause them to do the opposite of what they did.--

[kinghorse]

Oh sure. Put the gun in the corpses hand after you lay him out. Syria is a corpse. The propoganda has only just begun. Let's see if the USA public buys into the story. The story being after Dubya wins in 04 Syria and Iran are invasion targets. Come on folks. This starts to look like a done deal.

You have the Jerusalem Post taking all sorts of liberties with a story when the inject the "Islamic Jihad in Damascus" gave the go ahead for those two captured Palis to blow up the school kids. It's a propoganda war and we are headed to the big showdown.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[DJtex]

No more sanctuaries and safe terrorist havens ("SYRIA") for the daily killers of young American men and women in Iraq!

Ten-four on that. I have a feeling that we're just not quite ready to invade Syria (politically risky before the elections), but there is so much evidence that Syria is a prime member of the Axis of Evil that when the good ol' USA is ready, we'll drop on them like a few ton of bricks. I'm sure that Israel has a huge amount of detailed plans for a precision decapitation of the Syrian regime. Hell, for all the foreign aid that we send the Israeli's, we might as well sub-contract out this job to them.

Seriously, we could simply back an Israeli attack from the south and support them with massive air power. Our story would be that Sharon had had enough of state-sponsored terrorism--the USA had tons of evidence of Syria's importation of WMD for Iraq, and exportation of terrorism all through the region--so we flipped a coin and Israel won.

[Billthedrill]

Hmm...the Hashemite family in Jordan has had claims to that region for decades. The Syrians have just pulled 10% of their occupying army from Lebanon, they've just irritated the new Turkish government by their involvement with the Istanbul bombers, and their other neighbor, Iraq, is getting tired of being a battlefield for Ba'ath pretensions. They're running out of friends.

Well, there's always that other country out that way. Maybe the Israelis will come to their aid... ;-)

[DonQ]

Gee, and it was just a week or so ago that Syria was expecting us to side with them against Israel about something!.