Syria has claimed repeatedly that the bad guys aren't there and that they can't police such a vast border area. How can they protest our helping them restore order to their frontier?
"Senior Defense Dept. officials have stated that we know exactly where the staging points and safe houses are inside Syria. With cruise missiles the problem could be significantly rectified in 90 minutes without the loss of a single GI.
Syria has claimed repeatedly that the bad guys aren't there and that they can't police such a vast border area. How can they protest our helping them restore order to their frontier?"
Quite fair response. I realize what could be done with launching tomahawks on designated targets. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem is with people who appear not to have a grasp as to the difficulties we face in how we use our forces as not to appear as bullies, occupiers etc., make it rather difficult to just start mashing up surrondidng Iraqi neigbors. If we do it in Syria, then by default we should do it in Iran. Iran is the second offender as far as allowing their national sponsored goons to enter as well as letting other elements use their borders, which quite frankly I have not found list of their consistency if they actually exist.
On your second paragraph. A very interesting way of posing a solution to the problem. heh heh. I can't fault your view point on this one. In fact now that you mention it. I perhaps way plagerize your question for use elswhere and try to remember who introduced it in the first place.
I will say this. As you probably know, when Collin was still in as DoS, he approached Assad more then once on official visits to crack down on the border problem as well as rounding up all the known Iraqi Saddamist Baathist that where working in Syria. Izzat el Douri and his goons etc..
Basher was given a timetable to round them up, and deliver them to the coalition forces. He did not do his part. It is possible they scattered once this info was perhaps stupidly taken to press. After Condi took over, she has repeated much of what Collin had asked for, given un-offical ultimatems etc.. Assad continues to say his forces are not capable of finding all terrorist that might enter his country. I believe to an extent this may simply be factual. No country could do this. Many crossing the border can appear to be geniune visitors. How does one pick them out if they carry no weapons etc.? I think we have to put ourselves in his shoes. Lastly, not to be to verbose. He does now have over 7000 troops detailed for border patrols. And they have for some time been building sand berms on their side where it makes sense to do it, have tried to plug up things like creek beds with concrete an wire in some wadi that tranverse the border, and other supposed air patrols.
A recent article posted here decribes some of the things Syria has been in the process of doing. But one thing that appears to be rather clear is Syria is only doing it because of continued pressure.
Perhaps what you suggest may come to pass. One thing for sure is that Bashar Assad realizes his days are numbered. He has battled for a number of years all types of dissent by various groups in his country. All Syrians are not against the USA. Just as all Iranians are not. In both these countries there are growing numbers of peope that say the hell with Islamic rule, they are tired of it's heavy yoke, they want to become westernized. So Natural Law, it is remotely possible that the POTOS and his think tanks are holding out hope, once Iraq elects a full government for all the people, the UN supports it, commerce starts to bud, etc., that the hope is the Syrian and Iranian tyrants will fall from power. As for how many terrorist are actually crossing the Syrian border per month. Who knows. It may not be anywhere as many as some of us may conjure up in our minds. We do have it on authority of a Marine full bird Colonel (Davies who is in charge of the 4 BNs between Al Asad and H3 ..where my nephew is at), that there are continued signs of foreign terroist now leaving the country when the can get the chance. This has been based on recent results of interrogations they conduct on these guys. It was featured in one of the articles I posted or someone else did about a week ago. So perhaps there are reasons we continue to hold off from laying into the Syrians for reasons unknown to most of us.