The BBC reports this morning that Syria is claiming four U.S. helicopter gunships struck a construction area in a village within its territory just across the border from Iraq, killing eight, including a boy and a woman. Apparently, the U.S. government has not responded to the Syrian claim.

It's here. The day we strongly suspected would come.

If the BBC report is true (and even if it isn't), the buzz now, on the eve of our general election, will be: "Why did American forces strike a village in Syria?"

The U.S. answer--whether forthcoming or not--will swerve the campaign focus back to foreign policy and away from the subject of economics, which has brought Barack Obama rapid and widespread gains in the past month and a half.

In particular, the topic of American news will shift to a Muslim region that spawned our current wars and the overall "war on terror." It is not a good day to be named Hussein. It is a better day if your name is McCain.

The reason for the strike is yet to be claimed by the White House. The eventual public explanation may  be trumped up, true, or both. It may be purely political. Certainly the timing is curious.

SCAAMD's web site will be open Tuesday at 8 a.m. Central Time. If you think patrolling the press isn't necessary this late in the game, you underestimate the news value of military engagement with a terrorist state that could widen the Iraq war.

Dirty tricks are par for Halloween and presidential elections.