But officials said the raid Sunday, apparently the first acknowledged instance of U.S. ground forces operating in Syria, was intended to send a warning to the Syrian government. "You have to clean up the global threat that is in your back yard, and if you won't do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our hands," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the cross-border strike.

The United States has offered similar justifications for recent cross-border strikes in Pakistan, where it has launched missile attacks and at least one air assault against suspected members of Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency. "As targets present themselves, and are identified . . . they become more and more at risk. Just like in Pakistan, there will be steps taken to deal with it," the senior official said.

A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine -- the one that Sarah Palin couldn't name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats -- this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in "hot pursuit" of anyone it doesn't like.

They're already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?

After making a comment the same day saying that Russia must reduce its nuclear arsenal, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on the United States to begin testing its nuclear weapon program and fund a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration is at odds with Congress on a law that would authorize the funding for a Reliable Replacable Warhead project -- the so called "next generation" of nuclear weapon designs.

"To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program," Gates told the Carnegie Endowment, where he spoke Thursday, according to prepared remarks posted by .

The Bush administration allowed Phoenix-based Neutron Energy to stake 20 new mining claims south of the Grand Canyon on August 7, in violation of an emergency Congressional resolution passed seven weeks earlier that declared off limits to mining activity approximately 1 million acres adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park.

A new Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis of records generated by the Interior department's Bureau of Land Management unearthed evidence of Neutron Energy's claims, filed in defiance of a Congressional resolution aimed at protecting the Canyon and the Colorado River that flows through it from a surge of uranium mining activity sparked by uranium prices escalating in anticipation of new nuclear power plant construction.

"The Bush administration's Grand Canyon giveaway is a direct violation of the law," said EWG Senior Analyst for Public Lands Dusty Horwitt. "This is the environmental equivalent of a subprime mortgage on the nation's most iconic natural treasure. Mining companies get in cheap today, and the public pays tomorrow for what is certain to be a major environmental disaster."