Time is running out....Our troops are ordered into Iraq-Syrian border.

[LightningFlash]

It's all coming to a head so I hope everybody sees this.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,159858,00.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military launched a major combat operation Friday, sending 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters in a volatile western province straddling Syria (search).

Operation Spear (search) started in the pre-dawn hours in Anbar province (search) to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters, the military said. The area, which straddles the Syrian border, is where U.S. forces said it killed about 40 militants in airstrikes in Karabilah on June 11.

The operation came one day after Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston (search) called the Syrian border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the influx of foreign fighters to Iraq. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile border with Iraq.

The Marines have lost 11 men and two sailors over the past week in separate incidents around Anbar.

Elsewhere, a homicide car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army convoy in northern Iraq early Friday, injuring at least seven people — three soldiers, three civilians and one policeman, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir (search) said. The blast came on the heels of a homicide car bomb on Baghdad's airport road Thursday that killed at least eight police officers and wounded 25 more."

I want everyone to see how serious this is. They are doing it again, and I knew a while ago they were heading to invade Syria. EXXON Mobil has had its head on its oil fields for ages now, and they needed the fanatical religious reich to "remold" the region.

What's truly disheartening is they are sending everyone there at the same time Iran is bombed, it's a two way beginning war. And they are clearly launching it because we're all onto the truth.

We're running out of time to prevent the disasters. So we must, everyone must go out and find the records showing where it was stated exactly what the war was for and how we were going to win and the rest of the lies. We need the actual congressional record, to deliver unanymously to congress, in order to show the scope of their lies.

[radfringe]

1. shades of Nixon and Cambodia

just like when Nixon sent troops into Cambodia to go after Viet Cong...

it's deja vu all over again

[nickgutierrez]

40. That's frightening... but you may well be right. n/t

[mogster]

2. Aaand touchdown on the Greatest!

Thanks for posting this. First time I've recommended something from Fox News ;-)

[SouthernDem2004]

3. Huh? Who said troops were ordered into Syria?

[evermind]

4. No-one, as far as I can see.

All the reports I found are talking about Qaim, which is NEAR Syria.

Anbar itself may "straddle Syria", as Fux report, but that doesn't entail that US troops are in Syria.

Of course, if someone can show me different, I'm all ears. But this Fox article isn't it.

[DFLer4edu]

6. ditto

[lostnfound]

10. "Straddle" is an AP euphemism for invade. nt

[SouthernDem2004]

13. The area straddles the border. It said nothing about the US straddling...

[Nordmadr]

25. We don't straddle, the idea of straddling could bring

sexual thoughts into our mind and that would be a sin.

Straddling is strictly verboten.

Olaf

[maxrandb]

26. So Who's The Patton in This War?

"Give me a week, and I'll have us at war with them sons of bitches and make it look like their fault"

[leveymg]

17. Eurphemism for "provoke", then bomb - invasion unlikely

Military wisdom says, not enough boots without a draft. But, maybe they're crazy enough to try it.

Objective is "regime change" in Syria, then on to Iran - at least, that's the neocon "Clean Break" plan. They even want to start a war between Colombia and Venezuela as a diversion!

However, things are not working out for the authors -- see my "Google: Douglas Feith" post below.:bounce: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :bounce:

[Morose]

34. One way to get boots though it to get THEM

to kill one of us (of course we may have to kill a few hundred of them first to provoke that)...then suddenly you get further stoploss, further troop rotation, and maybe even a draft all justified in the name of DEFENDING ourselves from those monsters (even if we have to spend a lot of money and lives on creating those monsters)

[bobbieinok]

38. been reading about how Nazis justified invasion of Poland???????

[FreedomAngel82]

42. I think there's going to be something with Saudia Arabia

I just heard earlier tonight on Malloy that they're now excempt from being investigated by orders of Bush for WMD's etc. So something will happen with them. Maybe this is how Bush isn't going to have a draft. He's a very scripted and talking points person so he said there will be no draft this last election. But then again a lot of the time he is a very backward person (everything he says you think opposite). So I only wonder. He knows though that if it happens before 2006 the republicans could lose a lot of seats and he can't risk it. So what's up?

[Monkie]

7. dictionary.com definition of straddle:

1. To stand or sit with a leg on each side of; bestride: straddle a horse.
2. To be on both sides of; extend over or across: a car straddling the centerline.

the quotes from the article:
"The U.S. military launched a major combat operation Friday, sending 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters in a volatile western province straddling Syria"

[evermind]

9. Here's a diagram:

(simplified, so I can do it in ascii)
showing how Anbar can straddle Syria and Iraq, US troops can be in Anbar, and yet not be in Syria.

              
       . ----------- .
     /    A N B A R   \
    |                  |   S Y R I A
   |                    |
 --|--------------------|------------
   |                    |
   |   @@@<-US TROOPS   |  
    |                  |    I R A Q
     \    A N B A R    /
       -.___________.-

[Monkie]

11. ascii-art?touche!

i guess i deserved that :D
its just that i cant think of a good reason to repeatedly use a word meaning "To be on both sides of; extend over or across" unless you mean extending over or across the object which is described

[evermind]

36. Right, but it's Anbar that "straddles", not the troops, in the report

[The Stranger]

23. This diagram is fallacious.

See below. Logically, the troops could be on either side of the border.

[evermind]

30. Au contraire, the argument that "if they could be, they must be"

is fallacious. It is only necessary to show how they could be in Anbar and not in Syria, because no-one has claimed they are in Syria.

Imagine this analogy: The US troops are in the Solar System; the Moon is in the Solar System; therefore US troops are ... on the Moon....?

[The Stranger]

31. If it cannot be concluded on which side of the Syrian/Iraqi border

they are on, then it is fallacious to diagram as on the Iraqi side of the border.

[evermind]

35. The diagram shows what *could* be the case, as it says. Until

it is *reported* that they are in Syria, we have no good reason to believe it so. The supposition that they are in Syria, without evidence, is just imagination.

[SouthernDem2004]

14. So the APs poor choice of wording means the US invaded Syria?

Read it again... The region straddles the border. Nothing about the US straddling anything.

[July]

16. Can't really determine where U.S. troops are from the quote above.

If troops are "in" a province that does "straddle" the border, they could be anywhere within that "straddling" area, i.e., in either country or in both. I don't really get, though, how a province can be in two countries, since my understanding of a province is that it's a part of a country -- a single country. Perhaps it's a "region" they're actually talking about?

[leveymg]

19. The AP editor was drunk. His blue pencil slipped. Or else, there's

a disinformation agenda at work here. Maybe both?:eyes:

Could it be there's an attempt here to create the impression of a threat to the Assad regime that doesn't really exist? Are US forces in Iraq really prepared at this point to take a long march to Damascas?

[The Stranger]

22. This is the correct logical conclusion.

The troops may or may not be in Syria. The diagram above is unsupportable from the information presented.

[evermind]

37. "May or may not be" is right - but there's no evidence (unless

you have some?) that they are. The diagram isn't intended to show what *is* the case. As it says, it just shows what *could be* the case. I just think there's no point in jumping to conlusions without supporting evidence, and we have no evidence that troops are in Syria - they've been conducting operations in Anbar for a while, but no-one has alleged any border crossing.

Again, I'm not saying it definitively hasn't or won't happen, just that I'd need evidence to believe it.

[smartvoter]

32. I can't see it. nt

[liberal N proud]

5. Spear?

Who in the hell comes up with these operation names? Rummy himself?

[Ganja Ninja]

8. FOX! Again with the "homicide car bomber".

FOX is just soooo stupid.

I'm not that worried about going into Syria. For one thing we don't have enough troops to stay there for long. And If Bush does that I think it would be the last straw. We will probably hit a target inside Syria with an air strike and then call it a mistake or send commandos on a night time raid but we won't invade them wholesale. They don't have any oil.

[Jackpine Radical]

27. I noticed that "homicide bomber" bit too.

God, they're so transparent, using Luntz's Spin Lexicon, aren't they?

[megatherium]

12. eventually they will have to send Capt. Willard into Syria

to terminate the command of Col. Kurtz with extreme prejudice.

[leveymg]

15. This is according to plan. Google: A Clean Break Douglas Feith

American neocons Feith, Perle and Wurmser authored a 1996 plan for then PM Netanyahu advancing a series of "preemptive" wars that would replace Yaser Arafat and bring regime change in the following order: Iraq, then Syria, and finally Iran. That document was titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" <4> (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm)

So far, things have gone pretty much according to plan -- that is until they hit a snag when the Iraqis resisted and the neocons twisted the wrong arms at CIA and DIA.

THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith

Douglas J. Feith (born July 16, 1953), of Jewish-American background, has served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy for United States President George W. Bush since July 2001. During a press conference on January 26, 2005, United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, when questioned, confirmed that Feith intends to resign his position and return to the private sector before the summer of 2005.

His responsibilities include the formulation of defense planning guidance and forces policy, United States Department of Defense relations with foreign countries and the Department's role in U.S. Government interagency policy making. Feith leads the Northern Gulf Affairs Office, renamed from Office of Special Plans. In July 2004, this Pentagon unit was heavily criticised by the Senate intelligence committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq. The allegation is that the Office of Special Plans sought to sideline the CIA's assessments of intelligence on Iraq. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat co-chair of the committee, said that Feith's office may have undertaken "unlawful" intelligence-gathering initiatives, resulting in calls for Feith's resignation.<1> (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/11/wsept11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html)

Feith is also thought to be responsible for a top secret report, written days after the 9/11 attacks, that called for US retaliation by attacking countries in South America or Southeast Asia (some with an alleged Hezbollah presence). Information about the document has been released by the 9/11 Commission Report. Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, as well as other "non-Al Qaeda targets" like Iraq are given as possible targets. The reasoning advanced is that such a move would have come as a "surprise to the terrorist" which would have been caught "off-guard". <2> (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5570015/site/newsweek)

<SNIP>

A protege of Richard Perle, the former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) who stands at the center of the neo-conservative foreign-policy network in Washington, Feith has long opposed territorial compromise by Israel.

Feith first entered government as a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council (NSC) under Ronald Reagan in 1981, but was abruptly fired after only one year. Perle, who was then serving in the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, however, hired him as his deputy, a post he retained until leaving in 1986 to found Feith & Zell. Three years later, Feith was retained as a lobbyist by the Turkish government and, in that capacity, worked with Perle to build military ties between Turkey and Israel.

In 1996 he participated in a study group chaired by Perle that produced a report called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" <4> (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the report Feith, along with Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser, called for building a strategic alliance with Turkey, Jordan and a new government in Iraq that would transform the balance of power in the Middle East in such a way that Israel could decisively resist pressure to trade "land for peace" with the Palestinians or Syria

[converted_democrat]

21. This is kind of interesting too..........it's an older article.....but

it's interesting.......

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook04262003.html

[KharmaTrain]

18. Assad Is Cornered

IIRC, these missions allow units to follow "insurgents" wherever they go...so if that's into Syria, so go the choppers and things that go boom. The Syrian army and government is in no position (just like the Cambodians in 1970) to prevent this.

Now when I hear these chickenhawks claim the insurgents are using Syria as a "staging area"...I can almost give this some credibility, since the frontier is so open, it's impossible to know where some line arbitrarily drawn by the British really is. Also if our neighbor was invaded by a country we believed to be hostile to our interests, wouldn't we be supporting those who want to throw out the exploiter and invader?

Maybe someone can also answer for me why is it that there's a wide open border with both Jordan and Saudi Arabia (so open we snuck a whole damn army through it in 1991) where any "dead-enders" can sneak in just as easily.

[leveymg]

20. Are you suggesting we should invade Saudi Arabia?

Naw, that's in the classified annex.;-) :evilfrown: :dunce: :nuke:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

28. Excuse me, but how does our illegal occupation of Iraq give us the....

...right to launch attacks into ANY of the countries bordering Iraq?

Let's back up even farther and ask how our invasion of Iraq, based on a complete pack of lies, gives the US the justification to do anything at all in that region.

How many additional independent nations in the Middle East is the NeoCon Junta going to be allowed to draw into this increasingly more violent lie-based fiasco?

[leftchick]

24. The US Dropped 9 500lb Bombs This Morning

:(

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/iraq_dc;_ylt=Ao.cBnrQCqzpWfGwicDkPlmaK8MA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5bGVna3NhBHNlYwNzc3JlbA--

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[maxsolomon]

33. about goddamn time

seciring the syrian border was job goddamn #1, and we've FAILED to even try up till now, which is probably too late.

i hate this war, i've never fired a gun, & i have a BFA in painting, but even i know: SECURE THE HOSTILE BORDER!

[Hissyspit]

39. Are we supposed to invade Syria, or Iran? I'm confused!!

And we and what Army are gonna do this?

[FreedomAngel82]

41. I'm with you

That's why they're doing all these various scandals. Also Saudia Arabia is now except from being investigated for WMD's etc. So they're up to something as well. :\ But what can we do?

[JanMichael]

43. Ooo, OOh ,OOh , Greg Palast predicted this MONTHS ago!

BUT SYRIA'SLY, FOLKS!
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
The New York Times today reported that, at the meeting of nations on the Mideast's future held in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa criticized the US occupation of Iraq. In comments made Tuesday, the Syrian denounced the US attack on Falluja in which Sunni civilians died and mosque minarets were toppled by American forces.



Reached today by phone, the Syrian spokesman elaborated on his objections to US actions in Iraq. Allowing some civilians to escape Falluja was a precedent that concerned the Syrian. The foreign minister noted that, in Februrary 1982, his nation's military attacked the Sunni stronghold of Hama and successfully slaughtered 20,000 civilians, leaving almost no buildings standing.



Al-Sharaa also disapproved of the US setting timetables for elections in Iraq and promising to remove occupation forces at some date in the future. He noted that, by contrast, his nation's leaders would never permit holding elections nor consider ending Syria's military occupation of Lebanon.



Correction: After re-checking my records, it appears that the Syrian minister did not, in fact, speak with me.