If the Saudis are doing it, let's blame Syria.

Today, the NY Times reports:

"BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 9 - A Marine task force swept through a wide area of western Iraq near the Syrian border today, killing at least 100 insurgents and raiding desert outposts and city safehouses belonging to insurgents who have used the area to import cars, money, weapons and foreigners to fight American and Iraqi forces, American military officials said...senior American commanders have increasingly blamed the porous border with Syria for allowing a never-ending stream of armed jihadists to enter Iraq and replenish the insurgency as quickly as United States and Iraqi troops can kill and capture them."

Gosh, I hope we don't accidentally go over the border and create an "incident" with the Syrians.

While we're focused on the Syrian border, more than half of the foreign insurgents in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia. I'm sure we'll be conducting a slash and burn raid on the Saudi border next, right?

In an interview on NPR, Bruce Hoffman of the Rand corporation said the vast majority of the foreign insurgents were Saudis.

MSNBCalso did an investigation into foreign insurgents and found almost half were Saudis

An official from the pentagon also said in a press briefing that "Foreign insurgents operating in Iraq seem to be coming from about 25 countries...The majority, he observed, are from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran."

The Daily Texan reported:

"Iraq as a battleground offers the solution to a quandary facing the Saudi clerics who have to both placate the kingdom's rulers and keep their radical base happy.

"If they preach that there ought to be absolutely no jihad, they would lose credibility and support among their followers. So what they do is preach jihad - not in Saudi Arabia, but in Iraq," said Abdul-Aziz Khamis, a Saudi human rights activist in London.

"To them, Iraq is the answer to their dilemma."

In Iraq, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army - a group that follows Wahhabism, claimed responsibility for a Dec. 21 suicide bombing at a U.S. base in Mosul, Iraq, that purportedly involved a young Saudi. The bombing killed 22 people, mostly American troops, and was one of the worst attacks since the war started in March 2003.

While Ansar al-Sunnah indicated the bomber was Iraqi, the London-based Saudi Asharq Al-Awsat daily identified him as Ahmed Saeid Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a 20-year-old Saudi medical student from Riyadh."

So why aren't we putting any pressure at all on the Saudis? Bush just had Crown Prince Abdullah to his ranch in Waco, do you think they talked about any of this? Pump more oil! Will Bashir Assad be next?

Allawi's end of insurgency countdown:
(U.S. Troops killed hits 1,600)

The same article from the NY Times also reports:

"In Baghdad today, a suicide bomber attacked a police convoy in the Saidiya neighborhood, killing two officers and two civilians, an Interior Ministry official said. Six police officers and two civilians were wounded.

The military also reported that a Task Force Liberty soldier was killed by small-arms fire near Samarra on Sunday afternoon.

Today's violence follows the killing of eight American servicemen over the weekend. In one ambush, insurgents took over a hospital in Haditha, a haven west of Baghdad for the militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and killed three marines and a sailor."

And the beat goes on.