Just days after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the Bush Administration was already contemplating a new scrape. A group of the President's top foreign-policy advisers--including Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell--gathered in the White House to discuss the road ahead. Only half the meeting was devoted to developments in Iraq. The rest of the session was spent debating how to tackle a fresh target: Syria.
With Syria keenly aware of the 250,000 U.S. troops next door, Bush's advisers decided "to rattle the cage" of Syrian President Bashar Assad, says a White House aide. Overnight the Administration swung its big guns...