Ed Morrissey posts on something I have been waiting to hear for a year now – Iraq giving Syria a clear and unmistaken warning to straighten up or Iraq will help them straighten up (with our assistance – of course). Here is the snippet from a cnn article

Iraq’s defense minister criticized Syria on Tuesday for ignoring Iraqi demands “to stop the infiltration of terrorists.”
The official, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, singled out Iraq’s western neighbor as among states that are slack on stopping the flow of militants into his country.

“When the lava of the exploding volcano of Iraq overflows, it will first hit Damascus,” al-Dulaimi warned during a news conference to discuss an upcoming nationwide security plan.

Here is Captain Ed’s take on this

The fact that Iraq feels strong enough to publicly challenge Damascus tells us two things. First, Baghdad has increasing confidence in its ability to deal with Syria as equals. Second, Baghdad considers Damascus as a much lower threat than it would have before the Syrian retreat from Lebanon. Baghdad hopes to continue to increase its prestige by pushing Assad into further retreat — and with American backing, that looks pretty realistic

Captain Ed is 100% correct about how 120,000 US military personal armed with the most advanced military equipment this planet has ever seen can give Iraq a bit of confidene. And Syria better not underestimate this capability.

The US does not have to move a muscle. It has survellience assets that can pinpoint and track every bit of Syria military equipment from the safety of Iraq and the skys above. It has ‘reach out and touch you’ stand off weapons it can bring to bear at the request of its hosts – the Iraqis. Syria never had to face GPS guided bombs, cruise missiles and artillery that can blast away with pinpoint accuracy.

And the Iraqi’s have ‘safe base’ they can use if they do incursions into Syria. Any time they feel like pulling back to protect themselves they can escape to the Iraq border an hide among the 100’s of Abrams M1 tanks and Apache Gunships. Any Syrian force foolish enough to come within 20 miles of the US protectors would be demolished.

The only question is Syria smart enough to realize this is one bluff they really do not want to call. Saddam was force to be reckoned with in his hedday. And we tool him out on a matter of weeks.

Pay attentions Syria. You will not get too many more warnings before the eruption hits.