This sort of validates what Wretchard is writing over at The Belmont Club. For all the news of enemy ambushes and whatnot, the news that five Marines died in an engagement that saw the destruction of an entire enemy battalion up on the Syrian border suggests a wider secret war that is going on. For the Marines' part, they appear to be using every scrap of intelligence, no matter how insignificant, towards the end of painting a picture of fedayeen Command, Control, and Communications. Wretch suggests, as I do in my blog, that the enemy is being set up for a counterstroke.
Watch the skies.
Be Seeing You,
Chris