THE HUSTLER'S GAME:

Lights Out (Jed Babbin, NRO, 4/3/2003)

Syria continues to accept Saddamite refugees, his family and staff. And his WMD and the people who make it. We must soon demand the Syrians surrender all of them, and all of the materials and papers. Syria--an active supporter of terror--cannot be allowed to have WMD any more than Iraq can.

Several people commented on this earlier: it's interesting that we quickly seized absolute control of the road from Baghdad to Jordan, while the main road from Baghdad to Syria has had U.S. troops around it for well over a week, yet we keep hearing that cars and buses from Baghdad are getting through to Syria, carrying Iraqi officials, while a bus carrying terrorists from Syria to Baghdad got bombed.

The possibility was suggested that we are letting Iraqi officials go to help prepare a case for war against Syria. But isn't it more likely that we gave Iraqi officialdom free egress in order to hasten the end of the war? We've been in contact with most of them by telephone throughout the war, and surely we've been encouraging them to leave. With the leaders fleeing, it's no wonder that lower-level functionaries have been unwilling to throw away their lives fighting the coalition.

All in all, this war has been handled masterfully. I don't know what the future holds for Syria -- maybe we will use Syria's shelter to the Iraqis, which we are probably grateful for now, as a pretext for war later -- but the administration deserves the greatest of credit for its handling of the Iraq war.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at April 3, 2003 4:53 PM