U.S. forces ferried by helicopter Sunday crossed five miles into Syria from Iraq and launched a commando raid that left at least eight people dead, Syrian news outlets and sources reported.
Syria has long been a conduit for foreign fighters attempting to slip into Iraq to attack U.S. troops. American officials say that military action in Iraq has reduced the number of those fighters. And tense relations between Damascus and the Iraqi government have improved enough that this month Syria sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time since the early 1980s.
But U.S. officials complain that militants still are able to operate openly in Syria, and that the Damascus government needs to do more to rein them in. They accuse fighters who filtered across the Syrian border of fomenting trouble recently in the northern city of Mosul, and of an attack in May that killed 11 Iraqi policemen.
Details of the attack Sunday were sketchy. A military officer in Iraq confirmed that U.S. forces had conducted a raid into Syria, but declined to provide more information. In Washington, several military representatives who were asked about the operation did not deny that a raid had taken place. Although they would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by secretive special operations forces.
It was unclear how the raid would affect U.S.-Iraqi negotiations over an agreement to extend the American military presence in Iraq. Syria and Iran have opposed the agreement, in part out of fear that U.S. forces would use Iraq as a base to strike at them.
U.S. officials have asked Arab leaders to pressure Syria to tighten its visa restrictions on “military-aged males,” in an effort to prevent would-be militants from flying to Damascus and then making their way to the Iraqi border.
Syria is not as forgiving as Pakistan.
There may be eight days left until we elect Barack Obama as our President, but there are still 85 days left that George W. Bush will have complete control over the country… kind of makes me wish we can simply let Barack begin making the decisions for the country in eight days.
Bush should have never started a war with Syria… he’s a colossal idiot.
Bush is determined to entrench the US in muddled warfare with the entire Middle East by hijacking the American voters to vote Republican. Makes me wonder if the US had anything behind the Benazeer Bhutto assassination now, because that’s what gave Mccain a boost in the primaries. Kind of makes me wonder if this Syrian attack wasn’t the last remaining trick “W” had up his nefarious sleeves to ensure global instability to entrench us in his ideological quagmire for centuries. George W. Bush kills everything he touches, and thinks of.
Hello Daniel and thank you for the visit….to me it is a bit suspicious that the attack was done a week before an election. Maybe they arte hoping that Syria will do something stupid and it will help McCain.