From a virtual news blackout on the Bush-Putin summit session in Sydney on September 7th, to a series of puzzling stories about an Israeli air operation in eastern Syria on September 6th, to some odd reports on U.S. and Israeli casualties in the past few days, we need to ask if any of these events are connected.
Below the break I'll list the incidents (including links), offer some speculation, and ask for refutation or confirmation.
Are there connections among these five events which have occurred in the past few days?
(1) In the early hours of Thursday, September 6th, Israeli jets conducted some sort of military strike in eastern Syria.
(2) On Friday, September 7th, President Bush and Russian President Putin held talks at a Sydney hotel on the margins of the APEC summit. They spoke for one hour, allegedly about U.S. plans for a missile defense in Europe. What else did they discuss? Putin was described in this press report as “visibly grim” after the meeting. There was virtually no other reporting on this bilateral summit session.
(3) On that same day, September 7th, the Russian Novosti press agency quoted U.S. writers in an article mocking Bush and in a second article heaping scorn on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Novosti tends to be a rather colorless outlet of staid Russian official spin, so these two pieces seemed unusual and even odd, almost like some Soviet-era between-the-lines signal.
(4) On Monday, September 10th, several news services reported that seven U.S. soldiers were killed and eleven injured in a single "traffic accident" in western Baghdad. Perhaps I am mistaken, but do not the announcements of U.S. casualties in Baghdad tend to be made a day or so after they occur, thereby giving time for notification of the families? Did these casualties really occur on Monday, or did they occur in Syria in the early morning hours of Thursday?
(5) On Tuesday, September 11th, the Israeli Defense Forces reported that sixty-nine Israeli soldiers at the Zikkim training base near Gaza had been wounded in a rocket attack.
Now perhaps there are no connections at all among these events, but when there is a virtual news blackout on what should be an event of some significance, i.e., the Bush-Putin summit, I hear a dog that should have barked, but did not. What really happened?
Here follows some pure speculation. Can anyone out there substantiate or refute it?
Might Israeli and U.S. special forces have undertaken a major ground operation on the evening of September 5th/6th in eastern Syria? Could they have been taking out Syrian radars or communications facilities, and not the “weapons shipments from Iran” as alleged in the press reporting on the Israeli air operation? Might the operation have gone badly after the Syrians discovered it and inflicted heavy casualties on the intruders? Might the Israeli air operation have been launched to suppress the Syrian reaction and help extricate the killed and wounded? Was the operation initially intended by the Bush/Cheney White House to be a perfectly timed poke in Putin's eye to convince him that it would be pointless to provide intelligence or material support to Syria in any imminent conflict in the area? Might Putin have read the riot act to Bush in Sydney on September 7th to complain about the incident? And might the press reporting we see about a “traffic accident” in western Baghdad resulting in 18 U.S. casualties and a rocket attack at Israel's Zikkim base resulting in 69 IDF casualties simply be cover stories to obfuscate the actual cause of the casualties, i.e., a provocative but bungled operation in Syria?
Beats me. But inquiring minds want to know. Can anyone shed any light? No tinfoil hats, please. Just facts.