Syrian villagers carried the coffins of relatives who were killed in what the Syrian media reported as an American military attack on the village of Sukkiraya, on the Syria-Iraq border. Hussein Malla/Associated PressFrom The New York Times:
WASHINGTON — A raid into Syria on Sunday was carried out by American Special Operations forces who killed an Iraqi militant responsible for running weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, American officials said Monday.
The helicopter-borne attack into Syria was by far the boldest by American commandos in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq and began to condemn Syria’s role in stoking the Iraqi insurgency.
The timing was startling, not least because American officials praised Syria in recent months for its efforts to halt traffic across the border.
But in justifying the attack, American officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provided a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent.
Together with a similar American commando raid into Pakistan more than seven weeks ago, the operation on Sunday appeared to reflect an intensifying effort by the Bush administration to find a way during its waning months to attack militants even beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States is at war.
Administration officials declined to say whether the emerging application of self-defense could lead to strikes against camps inside Iran that have been used to train Shiite “special groups” that have fought with the American military and Iraqi security forces.
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My Comment: This was a targeted killing that was also successful. Two things can be learned from this operation. Syria is harboring Al Qaeda agents who are permitted to send fighters to Iraq, and Syria is now infiltrated by Iraq and CIA agents who can pinpoint these agents..