[Pen-l] October Surprise??

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Juan Cole <jricole@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 12:52 PM

US troops made a raid inside Syrian territory near Iraq, according to
Syrian media, which left 8 persons (the Syrians say civilians) dead.

What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way
when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian
side was a more significant problem.

I don't know if this is election politics on Bush's part, an attempt
by Bush-Cheney to mire Obama down in a Syria conflict they started.

Or maybe the secular, Alawi-dominated Baath Party of Syria, always
afraid of the Sunni fundamentalists, has grown so terrified of Fatah
al-Islam that they gave a secret go-ahead to the US to hit the
fundamentalists where they had intelligence on them.

The ruling clique in Syria, Alawis, are a kind of folk Shiites much
despised by Sunni fundamentalists. The feuding between the two has
been visible in nearby Lebanon, in the northern port of Tripoli.

-- 
Jim Devine /  "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange
days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL.
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