Compare And Contrast
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. had started the war of words on Friday, when he accused Damascus of shipping sensitive military technology to the Iraqi Army, specifically night-vision goggles. These shipments, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “pose a direct threat to coalition forces.” He added, “We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government responsible.”
Three days after Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged night-vision goggles had been supplied by Syria to Iraq, a top US commander said Monday he was unaware of any Iraqi battlefield use of such devices. “What I know is that we have not to my knowledge seen any at this point,” Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a briefing at the Central Command’s forward headquarters in Qatar in reply to a question.
What I see here is the first steps in a carefully calculated raising of the diplomatic temperature against Syria (and also Iran) to leave open the option for invasion or punitive raids on those countries following a successful “resolution” of the Iraq invasion. Remember that the neocons have a grand game plan for the Middle East and it involves balkanizing the entire region. Everything that the Bush Gang has done in the Middle East so far has progressed more or less according to plan. Thanks to the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon, they were not constrained to act through their local proxy regime, Israel, but instead could amass enough political consent to intervene directly. This bears repeating:
“Israel can shape its strategic environment’by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq’Iraq’s future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly.”