A team of U.S. military planners is in Jordan to help the government grapple with Syrian refugees, bolster its military capabilities and prepare for any trouble with its chemical weapons stockpiles, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday.
"We have been working with Jordan for a period of time now ... on a number of the issues that have developed as a result of what's happened in Syria," Panetta told a news conference in Brussels.
We already had some special forces exercises in Jordan.
And there are other indications that something is up.
And the British and French are active in the eastern Mediterranean.
Recall, too, that we staged special forces and small amounts of conventional ground forces through Jordan for the invasion of Iraq--focusing on the western part of Iraq.
The Jordanians have a decent military, too. Although it has been many decades since they fought a conventional war. In 1967, their troops fought fairly well. They were probably the best Arab troops, man for man. I'd guess that the Iraqis are, now. But the Jordanians have a military organized for conventional warfare while the Iraqis are still working on that.
We can project power around the globe. But we don't just snap our fingers. It takes work. We're working.
It really does seem like we and our allies are edging closer to intervention. My question is do we intervene when Assad's regime is collapsing or do we intervene to help the collapse take place?
