The coming war with Syria.

I don't know enough to make a really good judgement as to just what is going on along the Syria/Iraq border. It seems pretty clear that to some degree, foreign fighters and weapons are indeed coming across that border. But the question is, why is Syria being singled out? There's good evidence that there is also the same sort of leakage along the Iranian border as well as the Turkish, but the US only seems interested in the Syrians.

There may be substantial intelligence showing Syrian government involvement in the smuggling, but I would think that if it were out there, the officials who have been talking about bombing Syria, Ledeen et al. would have made that information very public to drum up support.

And if the Syrian government isn't involved, how can we hold them to account for their border security when I live 400 miles from a border crossing where people and cocaine are brought across in eighteen wheelers? And the US spends the rough equivalent of the entire Syrian budget trying to stop it.

I don't know everything that's going on along that border, but look what was in the NYTimes this morning.

Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.

The broadening military effort along the border has intensified as the Iraqi constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday approaches, and as frustration mounts in the Bush administration and among senior American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist acts inside Iraq.

Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle.

Covert military operations are among the most closely held of secrets, and planning for them is extremely delicate politically as well, so none of those who discussed the subject would allow themselves to be identified. They included military officers, civilian officials and people who are otherwise actively involved in military operations or have close ties to Special Operations forces. ......

American officials say Mr. Bush has not yet signed off on a specific strategy and has no current plan to try to oust Mr. Assad, partly for fear of who might take over. The United States is not planning large-scale military operations inside Syria and the president has not authorized any covert action programs to topple the Assad government, several officials said.

'Cause after all, when we went into Cambodia, that just solved the whole Vietnam problem just solved itself right then.