A Syrian intelligence officer is arrested in Iraq and confesses to training a group of Iraqi insurgents to behead people, using animals for practice. He confesses also to providing them with explosives training and promising them money to carry out attacks against the US presence in Iraq. A couple days later, Syria hands over Saddam Hussein?s half brother and number 36 on the US most wanted list of Iraqis, Sabawi Ibrahim Tikriti, in what is called a gesture of good will. Further, amid accusations that the Syrian government was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri (Terrorist Incident and WAR Report), al-Assad promises to pull troops back to the eastern Bekaa Valley as the first step toward a comprehensive withdrawal. A day after that, al-Jazeera reports that he told the Italian paper ?La Republica? in an interview that he was not prepared to withdraw troops from Lebanon after all, and further, that he expects a war with the United States.

The schizophrenic behavior Syria has exhibited in the past 7-10 days is difficult to interpret and makes developing a plan for dealing with them very hard. It arises in part from two central factors that plague al-Assad?s regime and have contributed to the United States? confusion over the behavior of the strange and insular country since the Iraq invasion. These factors are the composition and power distribution in the al-Assad government, and the regime?s belief and fear that the United States ultimately has plans to invade it.