From The Guardian: US forces kill eight in helicopter raid on Syria

American helicopters flying from Iraq landed inside Syria yesterday and dropped special forces who killed eight people, the Damascus government said last night, as Washington admitted it had targeted “foreign fighters.”

Syria warned that it held the US “wholly responsible for this act of aggression and all its repercussions”.

It described the dead as Syrian civilians, five of them members of the same family. Syrian state television reported that the attack was against a farm near Abu Kamal, five miles from the Iraqi border. Doctors in nearby al-Sukkariya said another seven people were taken to hospital with bullet wounds.

The incident threatened to unleash a new wave of anti-American feeling in Syria and across the Middle East at a time when President Bashar al-Assad, already being courted by Europe, is looking forward to improved relations with Washington after the November 4 presidential election. News of the attack led bulletins across the Arab world last night – suggesting it will have wide resonance.

Syria summoned the US charge d’affaires in Damascus to explain the incident. It also called on the Iraqi government to prevent its airspace being used in this way in future.

Eyewitness accounts said eight US soldiers landed in two helicopters and that the dead were building workers. A senior Syrian source quoted by the official Sana news agency, said four helicopters violated Syrian airspace and described the target as a “civilian building under construction”.

In Washington an unnamed military official told the Associated Press the raid had targeted elements of a “foreign fighter logistics network”, and that, due to Syrian inaction, the US was “taking matters into our own hands”. It was the first known American attack on Syrian soil…

Reminiscent of President Nixon opening another front in Cambodia, which interestingly started with such raids. I wonder if a Christmas Day B-52 raid over Damascus is in the offing. That’s the problem with megalomaniacs. If they’re hunkered down on two fronts, they open a third.

Syria will draw closer to Iran, Hezbollah will be unleashed, Israel will get drawn into another conflict where civilians deaths will far outnumber combatant casualties, and all this on top of an already tense political-economic situation. The problem for folks like President Bush is that this will not unleash the Second Coming, it will only destroy more of God’s children.

God have mercy on us.