AS GEORGE W Bush's presidency enters its dying days, time is running out for the US military to give him the head of Osama bin Laden. Ever since the terrorist attacks on the US seven years ago, senior figures in the Pentagon have been adamant that they will bring the main perpetrator to justice as a farewell gift to their commander-in-chief in order to fulfil his promise that the bad guys would be smoked out and brought to book, dead or alive.

For all the cross-border activity in Pakistan's tribal territories it's now looking extremely unlikely that any such thing will happen. Drones fly missions, missiles are fired, people on the ground are killed - but the al-Qaeda leadership remains pretty much inviolate.

That doesn't mean that the US doesn't possess the capacity to hunt down bin Laden. Last week its special forces showed what they are capable of when four US helicopters swooped over the Iraq-Syria border, landed in a remote compound at Sukkariyeh near the town of Abu Kamal and killed eight people. Depending on which version you believe, four of them were children but this allegation has been vigorously denied by the Pentagon. What officials will confirm is that one of the victims was Abu Ghadiyah, the nom de guerre of Badran Turki Hisham al Mazidih, a high-value al-Qaeda leader responsible for a string of murders in Iraq.

The attack was a bolt from the blue - even the Israelis were taken by surprise, diverted as their attentions were by Tzipi Livini's failure to form a new coalition government and the prospect of an imminent general election. Those in the know fully expected US forces to attack Iran's nuclear reactors as a last hurrah before Bush leaves office. Instead they were treated to a reprise, albeit in a minor key, of their own attack on the Dir a-Zur nuclear facility last September.

Following the recent unexplained assassinations of a number of leading Syrians it seemed to show, too, that the US is following the tried and tested Israeli tactics of targeted killings in which terrorist assets are destroyed through a combination of accurate intelligence and the precise use of lethal force. From a purely military point of view, there were other signs of a change of policy: the unit involved was not drawn from the regular army but from a shadowy special forces hunter-killer unit known as Task Force 88. As planning for the clandestine operation was conducted on a "need to know" basis it was eminently deniable, other than to confirm that it had been a success.

Two lessons can be learned from what happened at Sukkariyeh. The first is that having tested cross-border raids in Pakistan, US forces are prepared to carry them out when in hot pursuit of the opposition. It seems pretty clear that US commanders in Iraq had enough information about Abu Ghadiyah's whereabouts and were sufficiently confident that their forces could carry out the raid in a suitably clinical manner. Before doing anything, they warned Saudi Arabia and Jordan to close their borders with Iraq and as a result the Syrians must have had an inkling of what was coming their way.

The second outcome is just as worrying. Although the Syrian government made a formal protest and then broke off relations with the regime in Baghdad, last week's attack was a none-too-subtle reminder that no-one takes Syrian national sovereignty seriously any more. Granted, the border with Iraq is so long and so porous that defending it is a nightmare, but the US simply pretended that it didn't exist and knew that they could act with total impunity.

Coming on top of the air raid mounted by the Israeli air force last year, it sent the bleak message to Syria's president, Bashar Assad, that repeated violations are likely to be the order of the day as long as his country is regarded as a sponsor of Islamic terrorist groups.

Turning off that tap will not be easy. Recently, courtesy of the Turks, Assad has been trying to reach détente with Israel and through them with the new administration when it is elected in Washington. Obviously he will be comforted by the probability that the next US president will be Barack Obama, who has turned US diplomatic thinking upside down by agreeing to talk with rogue states. But before then Assad has to worry that US forces in Iraq will impose a military solution - namely the eradication of suspected terrorist groups inside his country.

One more cloud darkens his horizon: an Israeli election could see the return of the conservative hawk Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made no secret of his intention to attack Hezbollah and Hamas wherever they threaten Israel. Assad can now be under no illusions that supporting jihadi groups comes at a high cost.