SYRIA: Did Damascus green-light U.S. attack?

Everyone's still scratching their heads about Sunday's dramatic U.S. attack on a Syrian village five miles from the Iraqi border.

Plenty of unanswered questions remain, like why didn't the Syrians do anything to thwart the Americans, such as launching anti-aircraft batteries deployed along their border?

Ronen Bergman, an Israeli intelligence expert and author of the recent "The Secret War with Iran," speculates that Syria green-lighted the U.S. operation.

In an interview with an Israeli newspaper and in a chat with Britain's Sky News, Bergman cites two senior American officials who he says told him the Americans went after an alleged Al Qaeda leader in Syria only after getting Damascus' OK.

He says the Syrians were at first reluctant to appear to be submitting to U.S. pressure by going after the guy themselves. In the end, they discretely gave the Americans permission to cross their border and hunt him down ...

According to Bergman, Syrians told Washington they wouldn't block their way if commandos entered their country in broad daylight:

"If you want to do this, do it. We are going to give you a corridor and carte blanche. We will not harm your troops. ... The Syrians have invested so much in aerial defences, especially against choppers and the Americans go in in daylight and nothing is being done."

According to U.S. officials, the target of the raid was a man named Abu Ghadiya, an Al Qaeda figure responsible for funneling guns and fighters through Syria and into Iraq. But journalists who reached the site quoted villagers as saying the only people killed were innocent civilians.

Does it make sense that Syria would OK such a dramatic U.S. attack?

There's been a slight thaw in relations between Syria and the U.S. over the last few months. Syria's secular leadership has been fighting radical Islamists for decades.

From a Syrian point of view, why not let the U.S. take care of the region's Abu Ghadiyas?

And as for the timing, it's better for Damascus to let the U.S. finish the job now and blame the Bush administration, whose reputation in the Middle East could hardly get worse, and make a fresh start with the Obama or McCain teams.

-- Borzou Daragahi and Khaled Hijab in Beirut

Photo: A damaged vehicle sits in the area where the raid occurred. Credit: Hussein Malla / Associated Press

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Comments

[E.T WALLING]

fun to see the negativity writing in and supporting a rouge alqeada affiliate nation. shame on you joe for your s.s ,nazi view of freedom of speach. you are the idiot!

[joe]

Fun to see the the truth attacked by E walling and its favorite LA propaganda "paper" which sees any pro-american terrorist, anti-human nazi behaviour as a justification for is masters crimes. Note the hate-humanity ETW the idiot writing in!

[E.T WALLING]

YOU KNOW, IFYOU DISAGREE WITH FREEDOM OF SPEACH, GO LIVE THERE WERE AMERICA IS NOT A FAVOR. GO TALK TO OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORM ABOUT WHAT YOU DONT LIKE. AND THEY WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU JUST READ. IF YOU DO NOT LOVE THIS COUNTRY , THEN GET THE HELL OUT. SORRY ABOUT COLLATERAL DAMAGE , BUT YOU ARE LIVING TO BLOG ANOTHER DAY . HUH? YOU HARBOR BAD PEOPLE WANTING TO KILL MY CHILDREN, YOU ,HOPFULLY WILL DIE FIRST! GOD BLESS AMERICA! AND GOD BLESS OUR MILITARY! WHOOOO!

[john]

Fun to see the the truth attacked by james and its favorite LA propaganda "paper" which sees any pro-american terrorist, anti-human nazi behaviour as a justification for is masters crimes. Note the hate-humanity jamey the idiot writing in!

[James]

Fun to see the LA Times attacked from the Left, which sees any pro-terrorist, anti-American dictatorship as a bulwark of political correctness. Note all the hate-America first groupies writing in!

[E.T WALLING]

IF I WERE PAKISTAN, I WOULD START HUNTING BINLADEN. THIS IS JUST A WARNING SHOT FIRED AT NOT ONLY SYRIA BUT THESE OTHER ROUGE DICTATOR NATION'S. THE US I S FED UP WITH YOUR ,GIVE ME MONEY MY PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY BULL.DO YOUR PART LIKE YOU SAY YOU WILL, OR YOU SHOULD BE NEXT .YOUR EITHER WITH US OR YOUR WITH THE TERRORIST. OPEN YOUR EYES WORLD, WILL COME FOR YOU TO!

[Cato]

This does not seem to make sense. Given the record of the US forces in Iraq, Damascus must have foreseen the high probability of civilian casualties.... Or are you suggesting that Damascus deliberately suckered the US into a raid that Damascus could present to the world as an atrocity by the US on Syrian soil, and the US was stupid enough to walk into the trap?

[mohamed]

If your were under 13 years of age you may believe one word in this article. This is an article written to promote the notion that "secular" Islamic Arab Dictatorships do not support Al Qaida. This junk theory is in the wastebin now. No point in recycling the theory on why we should support dictatorships because they are better than the extremists created, funded and supported covertly by the very same dictatorships.

[Mr.Bilko]

The border between Iraq and Syria is essentially no man's land. Iraq does not control their side of the border. Syria does not control their side of the border. You cannot fault Syria for not policing their border region. The cost in resources (Syrian lives) does not justify the benefits derived (fewer terrorists infiltrating into Iraq).

The unofficial wink and a nudge approach by the Syrians is pretty atypical of how the Syrians have been cooperating with the U.S. since 9/11.

[Lenny]

Oh brother. Can we really believe anything our administration tells us anymore?

[Art]

This article is a TRAVESTY - a desecration, of the diminishing integrity still extended to US journalism.

The authors states "Ronen Bergman, an Israeli intelligence expert and author of the recent "The Secret War with Iran," speculates that Syria green-lighted the U.S. operation." note: SPECULATES

Then goes on to outline this highly improbable situation, as though its FACT - anyone skim reading this article might assume it was. That Damascus operates under schizophrenic leadership, that the US is a poor unfortunate and indeed MUTE to its own defense underdog, and all this - with a clear political intent: That the attack 'wasn't all that bad - even Syria approved of it.'

I mean anyone who believes such obviously politically rationalized through a filter of twisting self-justification rubbish would have to the brainwashed epitome of gullibility.

Get some integrity!

[ash]

interesting, at least we are negotiating with syria

[john]

this is the same old PROPAGANDA nonsense of you spew in your so called newspaper. To serve your puppetmasters your propaganda is designed to make victims out off aggressor and vice versa. with each passing day your loose even the bare pretense of of objective reporting. SHAME ON YOU.

[Tom]

We'd better hope this is the case. This attack in Syria really sets a new high watermark for the Bush Doctrine of "legitimate warfare" against a vague and entirely global threat. Attacking Waziristan is one thing, it's a region that is partially autonomous and admittedly only notionally under Pakistani sovereignty. Syria is an unfriendly state, but a clearly sovereign one that has been responding to diplomatic pressure. I don't see any hard lines between attacking there today and calling the casualties enemy combatants or whatnot and scrambling some jets from Germany to go bomb a Paris banlieue tower tomorrow on the grounds that undisclosed intelligence says there were terrorists working there. This is step one towards asserting the US' right to global government and you can't blame the world for being unhappy with that.

[Dark Wraith]

Yes, your claim that Damascus green-lighted the cross-border incursion makes all the sense in the world: a behind-the-scenes agreement between the leadership in Syria and the Bush Adminstration for U.S. attack helicopters, Special Operations personnel, and CIA mercenaries to penetrate five miles inside sovereign Syrian territory to kill an al-Qa'ida in Iraq operative.

The propaganda valence of this piece veritably drips from this Website.

Why not try another, more plausible scenario? The Bush Administration's Pentagon, displaying the same utter disregard for sovereignty that it has shown over and over again throughout the past seven years, gets questionable "intelligence" from dubious sources that a shadowy figure in a name-of-convenience "terrorist" organization is holed up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so the U.S., carrying out yet another exercise in its "forward-leaning" military policies, charges in to take out said "al-Qa'ida in Iraq" bad man. Using well-known jamming technoloy, the Syrians' defensive missile batteries are switched off, the U.S. team rolls in, kills people indiscriminately, drags away one or two folks to be rendered to a Second World country for torture, and sweeps back across the border.

Days later, this story about how Syria gave a "green light" is fed to gullible journalists through Israeli disinformation channels, and the LA Times, still fresh from its purge of many high-quality reporters and its take-over by Right-wing interests, gladly pushes the story out as if it is plausible, logical, and downrigt good journalism.

Congratulations. Better late than never for the LA Times to move from investigative, contemplative reporting to the much easier work of reprinting what U.S. and foreign propagandists provide.

[Zeke]

I haven't any idea whether permission was given or not. But aren't you assuming the defences cannot be breached?