Today, Secretary Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States would not rule out the use of military force with Syria. “I’m not going to get into what the president’s options might be,” Rice said. “I don’t think the president ever takes any of his options off the table concerning anything to do with military force.”

But this weekend, the New York Times reported that U.S. forces are already engaged in a “shadow struggle” with Syria:

A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government officials. …

…other [Bush administration] officials, who say they got their information in the field or by talking to Special Operations commanders, say that as American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the operations have spilled over the [Iraq-Syria] border – sometimes by accident, sometimes by design.

Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.
“¦
Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle.

Looks like the military option isn’t so much of an “option” anymore.

In the wake of the federal government’s ineptly-administered response to Katrina, President Bush pledged, “This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.”

One of the key lessons learned was that the Department of Homeland Security needed to better balance its spending between being better prepared for natural disasters and preventing potential future terrorist attacks. The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

[T]he country’s obsession with terrorism has left it vulnerable to other disasters“¦ many believe that unreasonable fears borne from the Sept. 11 attacks drove the country, and its leaders, to overreact to the terrorist threat and divert precious resources from the near-certain catastrophes of nature.

The criticism prompted Secretary Chertoff to respond: “I’ll tell you my philosophy, since I guess it’s my responsibility now. I think we have to plan for both, because I think they’re both mutually reinforcing.” [CNN, 9/3/05]

President Bush missed an opportunity yesterday to demonstrate a renewed commitment to both priorities. In remarks after signing the Homeland Security appropriations bill, Bush made not even a single mention of the administration’s commitment to being better prepared for a natural disaster (read his full statement here).

The White House fact sheet distributed along with the President’s remarks demonstrate clearly that the administration was most concerned with demonstrating its commitment to defending the homeland and trumpeting its efforts on immigration. (Recall, immigration was also Bush’s topic of conservation in his call to Chertoff while Katrina was making landfall).

It appears the government still hasn’t learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.