CAKEWALK II
Fred Kaplan notes that Syria’s military isn’t nearly as good as Iraq’s. And, while saying he doesn’t think a Phase II is likely,
Bashar Assad, the young president of Syria, has got to be more than a little nervous right now. George W. Bush’s press spokesman has called his country “a rogue nation.” Unnamed senior officials are labeling him a member of the “junior varsity axis of evil.” Even before U.S. tanks zoomed into Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld was warning him to stop helping high-level Iraqi refugees or face the consequences. Now that the three-week lightning war is over, Colin Powell is saying that, “in light of this new environment,” Assad should review his “actions and … behavior” across the board.
And, while Syria’s conventional forces are old and unskilled even by Iraqi standards, their chemical weapons cache is much more menacing.
