Old Wars Get Me Bored

We've almost gone a whole term without any new invasions, which is just so ordinary. Finally, the Bush Administration has snapped out of it and decided to spice things up.

The U.S. launched an airstrike Monday on a Somali town held by Islamic extremists to go after a group of terrorist suspects, U.S. defense officials said.

Three missiles hit Dobley, a town four miles from the Kenyan border, destroying a home and seriously injured eight people, police and witnesses said. The remnants of an Islamic force that had once ruled much of southern Somalia took over Dobley last week.

"It was a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates," one U.S. military official said in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record.

That's not entirely new, of course, since we ran a proxy war with Somalia last year, using the Ethiopian army, and have bombed suspected Al Qaeda targets on the Horn of Africa in the past. The fact that we're still having to provide ordnance after that war was supposed to be "over" suggests that the Islamists are still alive and well.

But the NEW war could be in South America, where Hugo Chavez has massed troops on the border with Colombia.

Venezuela and Ecuador ordered troops to their borders with Colombia, sharply raising tensions after Colombia killed a top rebel leader on Ecuadorean soil.

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday promised Venezuela would respond militarily if Colombia violates its border, where he ordered tanks as well as thousands of troops. He also ordered closed Venezuela's embassy in Bogota.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said he deployed troops to the border while also withdrawing his government's ambassador from Bogota and expelling Colombia's top diplomat.

''There is no justification,'' Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the military incursion.

Seems like a clear case of Colombia violating Ecuador's border sovereignty. And this might just be posturing. But consider - The White House has wanted to depose Chavez for years. They even aided an attempted coup back in 2002. Colombia's major donor of military aid is the United States. Of course, most of that goes to fighting the useless Drug War. But the mix of a US-backed government in a threatened war with Venezuela is combustible. Watch to see if we send any "advisors" down there in the next few weeks.