No, Really, Officer, It Was This Way ...

Let's see if I've got this right. The United State attacks one foreign country from another, occupied, foreign country, and it's ... what did you say that was?

U.S. cites self - defense in raiding Syria from Iraq

By Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker Published: October 28, 2008

WASHINGTON: A raid into Syria on Sunday was carried out by American Special Operations forces who killed an Iraqi militant responsible for running weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, American officials said.

The helicopter-borne attack into Syria was by far the boldest by American commandos in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq and began to condemn Syria's role in stoking the Iraqi insurgency.

The timing was startling, not least because American officials praised Syria in recent months for its efforts to halt traffic across the border.

But in justifying the attack, American officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provided a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries' consent.

Don't worry, though; the Syrians say that not more than half a dozen children were killed in this heroic raid -- hardly enough to be worth mentioning.

Perhaps you, like me, are still not clear on how this is "self-defense." Leonid Dubya Brezhnev explains it all:

Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President George W. Bush's speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date.

"As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders," Bush said. "We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime."

Yep, and you dead kids will just have to try to understand that a Greater Good is being pursued here. No omelets possible without a few cracked eggshells, don'tcha know?