[Dog Gone]

Boy, crossing the border into Syria would have been a hard sell. I'm sure we would have lost British support for that, and all our other allies.

We made no case for doing that, and even these vague reports of convoys of "stuff" from Iraq to Syria aren't terribly convincing, even to me.

There's just no way to conquer and change the entire Middle East. We have our hands full with Iraq, and those people wanted to be liberated. I'm not sure that's the case with Syria.

[AndyTheBear]

Boy, crossing the border into Syria would have been a hard sell.

Sure, but anytime you sell a military action first, it can't be a surprise.

You still have a good point that you can't hide a big military build up. But my point was that in some cases you can gain surprise through trickery and deception.

Of coarse, such actions may make other countries very nervous. But this is two fold, because making ruthless terror sponsoring dictatorships afraid makes the world safer.