Confused Official Unofficial Leaks On Syria Raid

By Cernig

The usual anonymous suspects continue to be unable to get their anonymous stories straight on what happened in Syria at the weekend. This from Fox News:

Abu Ghadiyain, the target of Sunday's Special Operations raid in Sukkariyeh --about 4-5 miles away from Syria's border with Iraq, was at one point in the custody of U.S. forces, the official said. However, another U.S. official from a separate agency said Monday that latest intelligence shows Ghadiyain was killed.

Meanwhile, the official Bush administration line is "no comment" - leaving the field clear for these unofficial officials to spin as they wish. You'd think that if they actually did know the Special Forces folks had captured or killed an important AQI middleman, the supposed Commander In Chief might know about it and the Republican Party would be making hay with it at a time when their electoral prospects are as dismal as...well, the life of a rural farmer on the Syrian border when US Special Forces come calling by mistake.

But hang on a mo' - haven't we seen this particular melodrama before? Back when Israel struck the Box on the Euphrates in September 2007, there was no official confirmation for months, giving plenty of time for neocon "sources" to create all kinds of fairy stories for the world's press. Then, once they had their powerpoints and photoshops right, the powers that be announced it was a nuclear reactor and an imminent threat to world peace. (Thing is, I have my unofficial sources too - and more than one nuke expert has told me off the record that the presentation was better fabricated than the "reactor" was.)

If the administration even knows who it's commandos hit, and that it wasn't a bunch of poor construction workers, then let it say so clearly and present what evidence it has instead of sending out officials to speak anonymously and to contradict each other. Otherwise, Occam's Razor demands that the most plausible explanation is the Syrian one - that mistaken intelligence led to the massace of innocent civilians just as it has so many times before in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Update: I said there's be all kinds of lurid speculation based on less than spectacular sources. Here we go - from Murdoch's Sky News in the UK.

Publicly America is still saying nothing but US officials are making intriguing claims off the record.

Now, a respected Israeli intelligence expert says he has been told the operation was carried out with the knowledge and co-operation of Syrian intelligence.

Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, makes the claim in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, based on briefings with two senior American officials, one of whom he says until recently "held a very high ranking in the Pentagon".

...He claims the Syrian government told the Americans: "If you want to do this, do it. We are going to give you a corridor and carte blanche. We will not harm your troops."

Hang on - how would two "senior officials" - one of whom isn't at the Pentagon any more - know this for a fact, rather than just be speculating? And even if they did, why would they be blowing tacit Syrian co-operation (and the intel coup that would represent) wide open by revealing the fact to an Israeli journalist who works for a tabloid newspaper described as emphasizing "drama and human interest over sophisticated analysis"?

Comments

[anderson]

And why would the Syrians now close an American school and cultural center. Iraq has now denounced the raid in response to Syrian pressure. Was this secret deal kept from high level Syrian officials?

By gum, that's some covert ops! Not so covert, though, that the Israelis don't know about it and happily pass it on to Sky News for all the world to see.

IO, baby, IO.

[Peter G.]

Short answer is they wouldn't leak this information to any journalists unless they are clumsily attempting to diffuse criticism of the raid. I have suspected that there must be some contact US and Syrian intelligence services if only because of the rendering of foreign nationals to Syria for torture. The leak is deniable precisely because it comes by way of Israel but still puts the justification out there.