Syria goes blah-blah over Israeli strike

A consensus seems to be emerging that the targets Israeli jets hit last week were arms supplies destined for Hezbollah, although as Scoop 86, blogging at In From The Cold, writes, there's also a lot of talk about clandestine nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea.

Whatever the target was, Syria is hopping mad, although of course they're pretending that no damage was done - how could there be, when there are no Hezbollah-bound weapons in Syria for Israel to hit?

Syria's UN ambassador Bashar Ja'afari got decidedly prickly when pressed on this matter: "This is blah, blah. This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria."

"There was no target," he added. "They dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defence."

Of course they were. Just like they ran away in 1948, 1967 and 1973. But I suppose you could be forgiven for being a little prickly if your bitterest enemy's air forces had just moonwalked through your air defences, destroyed an expensive cache of weapons destined for your terrorist buddies, and moonwalked out again.

RELATED: Jules Crittenden has a piece on the 'squeezing' of Syria and Iran at Pajamas Media. His conclusion:

Whether by happy coincidence or design, what we appear to be witnessing may be shaping operations for a long overdue curtailing of the what are now the primary destabilizing forces of the Middle East … now that Saddam’s out of the way. As the Iraq Study Group stated nearly a year ago, both Syria and Iran needed to be spoken to. The Israeli-Palestinian situation needed to be addressed.

Hamas graciously saw to the latter, isolating itself in a spasm of unbelieveably murderous bloodshed that has given Mideast peace an unexpected boost. Iran and its partner Syria, with their intransigent meddling and obtuseness on several fronts, have given the United States an open to talks of a different sort than the disingenuous negotiations in Baghdad. At this late date, even Democratic presidential candidates who want us out of Iraq immediately say they are open to the idea of attacks on Iran.

I love it when a plan comes together.