Make Sense of Our Syria Policy?

The UK’s Telegraph reports that Syria accuses the US of conducting military raids on their soil. I quote from the article starting with the words of Syrian Military officer Major General Amid Suleiman:

“Incidents have taken place with casualties on my surveillance troops,” he said, near the Euphrates river border crossing between Syria and Iraq. “Many US projectiles have landed here. In this area alone, two soldiers and two civilians have been killed by the American attacks.”

The charge follows leaks in Washington that the US has already engaged in military raids into Syria and is contemplating launching special forces operations on Syrian soil to eliminate insurgent networks before they reach Iraq.

“No one in the administration has any problem with acting tough on Syria; it is the one thing they all agree on,” said Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel, who is now head of the Middle East Institute think-tank. “I’ve heard there have been some cross-border activities, and it certainly makes sense as a warning to Syria that if they don’t take care of the problem the US will step up itself.”

But he warned that the increased blurring of battle lines between Iraq and Syria could turn a diplomatic stand-off between the two nations, playing out at the UN, into a fully fledged military confrontation. “It could escalate. With Syrian border guards getting shot, it could turn into a major issue.” — Syria accuses US of launching lethal raids over its borders

Walker says two thinks about cross-border US military operations on Syrian soil:

1. They “make sense,” (at least in terms of administration policy,) “as a warning to Syria that if they don’t take care of the problem the US will step up itself.”
2. They could turn a diplomatic stand-off between the two nations into a fully fledged military confrontation.

It’s the “makes sense” part that confounds Your Dim-Witted Montag. Because it would seem to Your Dim-Witted Montag that #1 “makes sense” in light of #2 only within the context of a particular policy point-of-view which Your Montag does not possess. What must one believe about the conflict in Iraq that would suggest that military confrontation with Syria is a sensible next step?

MTT: Marginal Theory Time
Maybe it doesn’t matter. The ball seems to be already in motion. Perhaps the administration’s hand was tipped when, seemingly within moments of the official invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld posited that Iraqi WMD had been moved across the border into Syria. Since then Syria has been prominent on the shit list. Do these new under-the-radar, cross-border military operations have a familiar ring to them? Has it already begun?