Shades of Cambodia. Only pale shades at the moment- let's hope they stay that way. If we enlarge this conflict, we are truly doomed, I think. Not that the picture is so rosy as it is- I simply cannot imagine our exit strategy- even if it IS after those 5 years they think we may need.
Pentagon Says Details Are Still Fuzzy on Syria Border Raid
By DAVID STOUT
ASHINGTON, June 24 — Pentagon officials said today that they were still trying to sort out the facts surrounding a clash between United States forces and Syrian border guards nearly a week ago as the Americans were pursuing a convoy suspected of carrying fugitive Iraqi officials.
The firefight, which took place on Wednesday near the Syria-Iraq border, wounded several Syrian guards, some of whom officials said were still in custody today receiving medical treatment.
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"We struck two elements of a convoy, one on a highway and one in a compound," the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said at a Pentagon briefing. "We are continuing to gather information from the strike, so we don't have any additional details at the moment."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and General Myers deflected numerous questions about the incident, the details of which they said remained murky. They asserted, for example, that among the salient facts still unknown is whether at least part of the clash took place inside Syria.
"Borders are not always distinct in life," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
The secretary and the general declined to say whether American forces had been authorized to pursue fleeing Iraqis into Syria. "As you know, we don't discuss rules of engagement," Mr. Rumsfeld said, an answer he has given many times.
Nor would either official discuss how the Syrians had come to engage the American troops in the first place, or whether the Syrians might not have been mere border guards, as one questioner today suggested.
Mr. Rumsfeld said discussions were taking place between Washington and Damascus as to how the Syrians would be repatriated. He did not describe the tone of those talks. At one point, Mr. Rumsfeld even challenged the use of the word "held" to describe the status of the Syrians.
The United States has had an uneasy relationship with Syria for decades. In recent years, Washington has accused Syria of being far too tolerant of terrorists and has pressured it to demonstrate that it is really interesting in rooting them out.
The border clash comes as lawmakers — including some Republicans — call upon the administration to be more forthcoming about how long American forces may remain in Iraq, and to provide more concrete justification for the war, particularly with regard to prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Rumsfeld said today that the search for such weapons is continuing, and that before the war there had been wide agreement, among Republicans and Democrats alike, that they existed.
The Pentagon officials said the American forces in the incident near the Iraq-Syria border had attacked the convoy on the basis of "very good intelligence," as General Myers put it. The general said Pentagon analysts still did not know who, if anyone, among the "most wanted" from the old Baghdad regime might have been eliminated in the raid.
American officials said on Monday night, as news of the raid began to emerge, that as many as 20 Iraqis had been detained in the aftermath of the combined air-ground assault in far western Iraq, near the village of Qaim.
Mr. Rumsfeld defended his and General Myers' reluctance to talk about the incident, saying that they had an obligation to be accurate when they appear before journalists.
One day, Mr. Rumsfeld said, a formal report on the incident may be issued. By that time, he said in a sarcastic reference to anonymous news sources sometimes cited today by reporters, "the senior defense officials will have drifted away with their inaccuracies."
Defense Department officials said on Monday that United States Special Operations forces had engaged in a firefight with several Syrian guards, wounding five of them. At least one of the Iraqi vehicles destroyed in the attack was hit by American attack helicopters on the Syrian side of the border, the officials said. They said three of the five Syrian border guards, who exchanged gunfire with American ground forces, remained in American custody for medical treatment.
The attack was was carried out by Task Force 20, a secret military team, as well as American helicopters and AC-130 gunships with support from Predator drone aircraft, the officials said.
Despite wide speculation in news reports, several senior American officials said they now had no reason to believe that Saddam Hussein or his sons were among the Iraqis killed in the strike or that Mr. Hussein or his sons, Uday and Qusay, were even traveling in the convoy.
American officials say Special Forces troops in the Iraqi-Syrian border region have carried out other, smaller raids in recent days as part of the search for Mr. Hussein and his sons.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has said his government closed its border with Iraq. He cited strong tribal connections between the countries, however, and noted the vast desert areas on either side of the 300-mile border. |
