NB: And one might also ask just what is the quality of Syrian "intelligence" regarding al Qaida, which as the WSJ explains, is one of the reasons for the kid-gloves approach to Damascus.
Wall Street Journal February 7, 2005 REVIEW & OUTLOOK Warning to Damascus Among the notable parts of President Bush's State of the Union speech last week was its blunt warning to Syria, next door enemy of free Iraq. "Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region," Mr. Bush said. "We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom." Let's hope the President finally means it, because this is only the latest U.S. warning to Damascus since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Colin Powell visited Bashar Assad soon thereafter -- despite Pentagon objections that the Syrian dictator would consider it a sign of U.S. weakness. And sure enough, Syria has been adding to our troubles in Iraq ever since. In November, U.S. troops in Fallujah found GPS systems "with waypoints originating in western Syria," according to the Washington Post. Captured Iraqi and foreign fedayeen report being trained in small arms and explosives at camps in Syria. The Treasury Department has also implicated Syrian individuals and financial institutions in financing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network and in terrorist-related money-laundering schemes. More worrisome, General George Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has said he has information that Iraq's Baathists have established the New Regional Command, "operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq." The leader of this command, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, formerly Saddam's No. 2, reportedly moves freely between Syria and Iraq to direct the insurgency. The U.S. also knows that in recent months the Baathist Regional Command has invited Sunni tribal leaders to meetings in Damascus hotels in order to recruit them to the insurgency. Yet so far the U.S. hasn't mounted a single Predator strike on any of these or other insurgent targets inside Syria. In part, this is because the State Department wants to engage Syria in a peace process with Israel, and in part because the CIA seems to be heavily reliant on information obtained through Syrian intelligence about al Qaeda. As a result, both State and CIA tend to treat Syria's behavior either as a function of its relations with Israel, or as a matter of "not doing enough." But the real problem is that Syria uses its minimal cooperation to disguise its larger efforts to undermine U.S. interests and allies throughout the region. It is true, for example, that Syria has provided the U.S. with actionable intelligence that helped prevent a terrorist attack on a U.S. military facility. Yet as former CIA Director James Woolsey noted in these pages last year, "too-heavy reliance on intelligence provided by liaison [i.e., foreign] services can sap our will to challenge a foreign government that is trying to buy our quiescence with dollops of intelligence." As for the positive role Syria might play in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, those interests are far less important than the imperative of preventing Syria from abetting the insurgency in Iraq. With a new government soon to be formed in Baghdad, now is the time to make clear to the young Assad that he will pay a price if he continues aiding the enemies of free Iraq.
