Syria is worried about the US

Good article in The Guardian today on Syria and the threat from the US and its Weapons of Mass Invasion.

'The Americans won't control their side of the border, accept our offers of collaboration, allow us the surveillance equipment we need - then accuse us of aiding a resistance that, they know, is basically Iraqi, even if some foreign fighters do get over our frontiers, which - they also know - cannot be sealed without investing resources way beyond our means." The Syrian commander who made this lament was deployed at Wadi Sawab, in a hilltop outpost only a few metres high, but sited in a desert landscape so flat and featureless that from it you could see deep into Iraq - across the berms, barbed wire, concrete blocks and observation posts manned by 7,000 soldiers that Syria has put up along this central and most desolate stretch of its 600km frontier.

It wasn't proof that Syria is doing its utmost to stop foreign jihadists (the place to prove that is inhabited regions to the north), but it was proof it was seriously doing something. However, from the diplomats who agreed to go on this unprecedented public relations tour, Americans were conspicuously absent. And that, for the Ba'athist regime, was yet another instance of America "not wanting to know".

Officially the US might say that all it wants is a change of Syrian behaviour; but, said a senior official, "we have concluded in recent months that they really want to bring us down". European diplomats tend to agree that an apparently systematic refusal to engage the regime at any level reflects the influence of neo-conservative hawks, for whom Syria is a prime candidate for regime change in the region. Even if George Bush isn't ready to embark openly on such a policy, the neocons are strong enough to block any inclination in the opposite direction.