"PARIS, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The European Union has criticized the U.S. military raid targeting suspected terrorists in Syria.

France, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, criticized the U.S. helicopter attack on a Syrian village near the border with Iraq, which, according to Damascus, left at least eight people dead.

National boundaries had to be treated with "strict respect," a statement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office read. It called for "light to be shed" on Sunday's cross-border raid and added that Paris "deplores the loss of Syrian civilians."

Russia, the Arab League and Iran, Egypt and China already have criticized the U.S. move, which Washington claims killed a leading al-Qaida terrorist whose network smuggled insurgents into Iraq. Washington previously has criticized Syria for not doing enough to halt the influx of terrorists from its territory.

Damascus has protested the unannounced violation of its territorial sovereignty, demanding an official apology. Syria might close its embassy in Washington, officials in Damascus have warned."


Strange events are taking place lately...

EU, a major American ally, did not have to say anything but it did.

G8 summit just got cancelled, not postponed (!) by Japan.

Russian naval bases in Syria, Libya and Latin America are a matter of few remaining technicalities.

Syria reacting strongly to the latest American attack while being virtually silent about the same Israeli action few months back.

Don’t know if it’s all connected but the coincidence is hard to escape.

I see another player, absent for quite a while, behind some or all of these events

Ballless Syria should have done what was within their rights...otherwise this will always happen...

Ohh well I guess we are stirring things up!!!

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P5 card hacked
'our curr€ncy, your problem'
Bavarian Motor Wrong
:

Nice theory. Except for the part where I'm Jewish.

You have absoutely no understanding of the "war on terror" or of terrorism. The solutions you support will cause terrorism to continue to grow, as it has greatly over the past 7 years. However many members of Al-Queda there were in 2001, there are probably 10 times as many now. Same with Hamas and Hezbollah -- ten years ago both of them were small fringe groups in a Palestinean territory dominated by Yasser Arrafat and the Palestinean Authority. Now they both enjoy unprecidented popularity throughout the entire Middle East. Good work!! The Israeli government has their heads up their asses even more than our own government. If they continue on the current course, maybe we'll have a nuclear war in the next few years and we'll all be dead.

Instead of wondering "how do you deal with terrorsm if you don't kill them?", how about you look at how it was successfully dealt with in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are plenty of examples. It's not big secret.

Germany had neo-nazi groups after WWII, the United States had the KKK, Spain had the Basques, and there are dozens more. All of them were incredibly powerful terrorist groups at their peak, and all were successfully defeated without ever firing a single shot. Even Alpha 66, the Cuban terrorist group discussed earlier in this thread was defeated without Cuba ever firing a single shot.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

Syria is the only ones here using their brains. There's no point in starting a war over a rather small incident like this. But if it happens again and again, public presure will be too much for the Syrian government and they will have to respond. Syrian people are no different than Americans. When they are attacked in their homeland, they want their government to respond militarily. When they don't, they see their leaders as weak.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

Oh sure...yeah...Syria is stupid enough to respond to us if it happens again and again. Public pressure ?Right...Respond like how? Miltarily as you claim? Yes of course. Because of public pressure they're going to pick a fight with United States and get stomped quicker then anything you've ever seen in your life. On top of that, they'll think doing all of that is worth the risk of a plethora of Syrian lives. That makes perfect sense for your argument.....

You've gone in circles so many times you're chasing your own tail....

Everyone has their breaking point. As dumb as it may sound to pick a fight with the United States, take a look at history and you'll see that sort of thing has happened time and time again.

How about France picking a fight with Germany in 1939, and then getting stomped quicker than it took us to defeat Saddam Hussein's army. But in the end, who won that war?

The United States may have the best military in the world, just as Germany did in 1939, but we cannot take on the entire world. Each time we invade another country, we anger everyone a little bit more. Eventually there is going to be a breaking point where the rest of the world says enough is enough. For Germany it happened when they invaded Poland. That is after they had invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia in prior years. Where will that breaking point be? I have no idea. But I can tell you that if our leaders don't soon do an "about face" on their foreign policies, this is all going to end someday in our lifetime with bombs falling on the United States. History repeats itself over and over, which is why we study it (or at least some of us do).

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

Uh yeah....but your vast array of knowledge on terrorism has led you to believe that AL-Qaeda tried their hardest to minimize casualties on 9/11..yes of course... That makes perfect sense.. "Lets fly some planes into some buildings where thousands of innocent Americans (and others) are going about their daily lives" ..."oh but wait, lets make sure we only kill the least amount of them as possible"....."Yes thats our plan"...

Eric..As many others have confirmed on this thread....You are certifiably insane....have a nice day.

OMG, where do I begin....Israel has their heads up their asses? What has happened with Hamas is exactly the OPPOSITE of what you've stated. A few years ago, Israeli families were getting blown to bits by Hamas and Islamic Jihad homicide bombers, literally every other day. This went on for like three years, with hundreds of innocent civilians being slaughtered in the name of "Allah". When the Israelis finally said "enough is enough" and started targeted assasinations of Hamas leadership, including Yassin (your hero, no doubt ), Rantissi (his replacement), and built a wall to protect thweir civilians.....I'm sure you were crying foul.....but guess what? There's now a terrorist bombing in Israel once every...6 months? maybe once a year? The Israelis have done what they needed to do to protect their civilians from this nonsense. They didn't "play nice" and try to credit their enemies with justification for intentional murdering of civilians and children.

The fact that you are Jewish does not invalidate my anti-Semitic description of you. Indeed, assigning justification and giving un-abashed moral high ground to murderers of civilians and families in your midst (no matter how henious their act) is a clear sign of self-loathing.

Oh, and don't give me the crap about "the Israelis kill innocent civilians also". There's zero moral equivalence between unintentional (and very regrettable) death to civilans from targeted military strikes, and the specific, brazen, hateful targeting of dense gathering places by strapping a bomb belt around your waist and detonating it in the middle of a crowded street market. Intent matters...Carry on....

For sure!!

I may have missed it somewhere in this long thread, but how do you suggest we should have handled the situation? I am all for the U.S. having a better global immage, but crossing that border and killing an upper level enemy while we had him may have helped prevent the loss of many American lives who are over there fighting in Iraq. I am not trying to downplay the loss of innocent life, but this is war and this happened less than 5 miles from the border of a country that has been involved in war for over 5 years now. If it were me and I lived in Syria, I would have moved way out of harms way by now. I don't know the ins and outs of the situation, but it sounds as if terrorists were simply crossing the border and hiding in what they thought was a safehaven and sort of out-of-bounds area, which is garbage. Makes me ask why Syria didn't have better border protection set up to stop terrorist and other from freely crossing borders whenever they wanted? I am not putting the blame on them, but it doesn't sound like they helped prevent the situation and may have brought some danger upon their border residents by ignoring the situation. Now that the U.S. has crossed this boundary, it may change how the terrorists operate as far as simply corssing a border and feeling safe, which is a good thing.

I feel like the terrorist have been using the rules of war against us from the beginning and it does feel somewhat good to turn the tables and get a terrorist that thought he was manipulating the rules of war.

Once again, I do think it is horrible that innocent civilians died, but it may help prevent the loss of many of our troops in the future.