Report: U.S. drones flying over Syria to monitor crackdown

The United States is flying unmanned reconnaissance planes over Syria to monitor the regime's escalating crackdown on dissent, U.S. defense officials told NBC television on Saturday.

www.haaretz.com...

Important to note:

The Pentagon officials stressed that the U.S. is not preparing the ground for a military intervention, but is simply collecting evidence of President Bashar Assad's crackdown on protesters.

also:

The West has ruled out a Libya-style military intervention in Syria to stop 11 months of bloodshed.

Source linked in OP.

Syria is a tinder box right now in the middle of a larger tinder box of the Middle East.
It will be interesting to see what follows here.
I honestly dont think we will see any overt military action from the west.

Hmm.. I'm wondering something on this. Who precisely gave us the right and permission to fly our aircraft over and loiter above a nation that is not ours...we aren't at war with..and did not ask us to come? Satellites are annoying, but tough..it's in space. They can deal with it. The old U2, SR-71 and Aurora or Phoenix craft are another step and a real gray ...or not so gray... area depending on who one asks.

What the heck is gray about flying American launched drones in the AIR space ...not SPACE above or the stratospheric altitudes of those other spy platforms..but right above other nation's cities and people??

I think it's *VERY* safe to say that if an Iranian drone began flying a race track pattern over Miami or Mobile, Alabama, we'd shoot the damn thing down and give Iran a real slap across the face in some hard military way to teach them a lesson in manners about flying toys in other people's nations.

Who died and made Washington leaders the rulers of the world, where we can do that very same thing we'd go absolutely ballistic over (Perhaps literally) and actually have the arrogance to announce it in public like it was routine and absolutely nothing the world should even raise an eyebrow about?