Analysis: Surprise or not, U.S. strikes can still hurt Assad
It would hardly be a surprise to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or his military if American missiles start hitting Syria soon.
With weeks to prepare for an attack, Assad might benefit in some ways from the delay in any strike caused by President Barack Obama's decision to seek approval from a divided U.S. Congress.
U.S. officials and defense experts say Assad's forces cannot take enough targets out of reach to blunt the U.S. military mission, especially since it is billed as having very limited objectives.
Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said if successful, hitting fixed targets would eliminate key assets to Assad that "can't easily be replaced,
like command and control facilities, major headquarters."
"
These are lasting targets," Cordesman said
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff,
acknowledged publicly to Congress that Obama has ordered the military to develop plans that keep a lid on collateral damage - civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure.
"
Though they are in fact moving resources around - and in some cases placing prisoners and others in places that they believe we might target - at this point our intelligence is keeping up with that movement," Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, told lawmakers on Wednesday.....snip~
Analysis: Surprise or not, U.S. strikes can still hurt Assad
Yet they don't know which oppositions groups belong to whom and who is backing whom. But they do know many of these groups are on the terror list.
Why let any of them leave?