The announcement comes just days after Syria allegedly launched Scud missiles from Damascus at rebels in the north. Syria has denied using Scud rockets.

But U.S. officials claimed one of the missiles came close to the Syrian border with Turkey, reported CNN.

The move to send the reinforcements was approved by U.S Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is currently en route to Turkey.

The plan calls for two Patriot missile batteries that can hit planes and missiles emanating from Syria, and 400 soldiers to operate them.

Panetta was frank about the possible reaction from Damascus: "We can't spend a lot of time worrying about whether that pisses off Syria," he told CNN.

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“Ah, sì,” I replied in my barely passable Italian.

“Bene,” he answered. Good.

In front of us, a backhoe’s guttural engine whined into action and empty dump trucks rattled along a dirt track. The shouts of men vied for attention with the metallic whirring of drills and saws ringing in the distance. Nineteen immense cranes spread across the landscape, with the foothills of Italy’s Southern Alps in the background. More than 100 pieces of earthmoving equipment, 250 workers, and grids of scaffolding wrapped around what soon would be 34 new buildings.

We were standing in front of a massive 145-acre construction site for a “little America” rising in Vicenza, an architecturally renowned Italian city and UNESCO world heritage site near Venice. This was Dal Molin, the new military base the U.S. Army has been readying for the relocation of as many as 2,000 soldiers from Germany in 2013.

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By the time his shocked colleagues reached him, Branislav Milinkovic was dead.

His motives are a mystery. Three diplomats who knew Milinkovic said he did not appear distraught in the hours leading up to his death Tuesday night. He seemed to be going about his regular business, they said, picking up an arriving delegation of six Serbian officials who were to hold talks with NATO, the alliance that went to war with his country just 13 years ago.

Belgian authorities confirmed that the ambassador had killed himself.

"It was indeed a suicide," said Ine Van Wymersch of the Brussels prosecutor's office. She said no further investigation was planned.

A former author and activist opposed to the authoritarian regime of Serbia's former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Milinkovic was outgoing, had a warm sense of humor and worked to keep good ties with ambassadors from other ex-Yugoslav countries, according to diplomats and acquaintances.

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The alliance's 28 members decided to limit use of Patriots solely for the defensive purpose of warding off the mortar rounds and shells from Syria that have already killed five Turks. But the announcement also appeared to be a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime at a time when Washington and other governments fear Syria may be readying its chemical weapons stockpiles for possible use.

"We stand with Turkey in the spirit of strong solidarity," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. "To anyone who would want to attack Turkey, we say, `Don't even think about it!'"

Fogh Rasmussen stressed that the deployment of the Patriot systems - which includes missiles, radar and other elements - wouldn't be a first step toward a no-fly zone over parts of Syria or any offensive operation against the Arab state.

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Just days before the Chicago NATO summit last May, Senakiewicz drunkenly told undercover agents that he had two homemade explosives hidden in his Chicago residence in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A search of his home found the bombs to be as fictitious as the boy wizard -- there weren't even any Harry Potter books at the address. But the 24-year-old anarchist, who Tuesday pleaded guilty to one felony count of falsely making a terrorist threat, could face deportation.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

At a hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Judge Nicholas Ford imposed the 4-year prison term and recommended that Senakiewicz be admitted into a prison boot camp. If he successfully completes the program he could be released in as little as 6 months, but prosecutors said the Polish native would be subject to deportation on completing his sentence.

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As the civilian casualties mount and refugees flood neighboring countries — and more state and non-state actors enter the fray — the Syrian conflict is widening in a way that threatens to engulf the entire region.

TURKEY

Turkey is perhaps the nation closest to directly clashing with Syria. Sharing a 560-mile border with Syria, the NATO-member nation now hosts more than 100,000 refugees and has actively assisted the Syrian opposition.

“I’ve been told by the Turks that they’ve played a role in terms of providing aid and money and even arms” to the Syrian rebels, said Michael Hanna, a fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation.

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Unfortunately, they are likely to continue to ignore the most important question posed by the Sept. 11 murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American officials by an Islamic militia that may be connected to an Al Qaeda affiliate, namely: “How is it that one year after the US provided essential military and diplomatic support to the NATO operation that enabled Libyan rebels overthrow dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Libya finds itself at the mercy of hundreds of lawless militias and without a functioning state?”

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Washington is keeping Pakistan, with its collapsing economy and bloated military, afloat but also cripplingly dependent on its handouts and U.S.-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans.  Meanwhile, CIA drones unilaterally strike its tribal borderlands.  Islamabad returns the favor. It holds Washington hostage over its Afghan War from which the Pentagon won’t be able to exit in an orderly fashion without its help. By blocking U.S. and NATO supply routes into Afghanistan (after a U.S. cross-border air strike had killed 24 Pakistani soldiers) from November 2011 until last July, Islamabad managed to ratchet up the cost of the war while underscoring its indispensability to the Obama administration.

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Shells from Syrian government forces struck the Turkish border town of Akcale on Wednesday, killing more than 10 people, including two women and three children. Turkey fired back, killing several Syrian troops. Now, based on the bill passed today, Turkish forces are permitted by parliament to pursue military action across its border any time in the next year.

"This mandate is not a war mandate but it is in our hands to be used when need be in order to protect Turkey's own interests," said Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay in a statement on Turkish television. Meanwhile, the international community has expressed growing concerns about the Turkey-Syria tensions and commentators are elaborating on concerns and worst case scenarios.

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NATO said it is investigating the cause of the crash. The coalition had no immediate comment on the insurgents' claim that they shot down the helicopter.

Officials in Kandahar province said the helicopter went down in the north of the province. Kandahar is a traditional Taliban stronghold and the spiritual birthplace of the hardline Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan before being ousted in 2001 by the U.S.-led alliance for sheltering al-Qaida's terrorist leaders.

Among the dead were seven American service members, three members of Afghan security forces and one Afghan civilian interpreter, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition.

He said the aircraft was a UH-60 Black Hawk but declined to give any details of the aircraft's mission

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said insurgent fighters shot down the helicopter in Kandahar province on Thursday morning.

"Nobody survived this," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone.

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Here is the show's self-description:

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A Syrian general, two colonels, two majors, a lieutenant and around 30 other soldiers crossed the border into Turkey last night, according to state television reports cited by Reuters.

They and their families were reportedly among some 200 people who made their way to Turkey's southern Hatay province overnight. They have been taken to a refugee camp a few miles inside the border, the BBC said.

Turkey says 12 other Syrian generals have already defected, but according to Reuters, "there has been little indication of any broader trend to desertion in the senior ranks of the armed forces, bound often to Assad by their Alawite background."

Most defectors so far have been "low-level conscripts," Al Jazeera said.

One Syrian colonel, one of at least four officers reported to have defected last week, told the network that many more members of the military wanted to join the opposition, but feared violent repercussions for their families.

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He was right to panic. It was Sunday evening, 6 sharp, the end of the first day of the NATO summit in Chicago. A swarm of global press was gathered around the convention hall’s lone display, a slick industry-sponsored video exhibit of NATO’s ballistic missile defense system. Any minute, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his entourage would come sweeping out of a nearby tunnel for a tour the installation. It was the last photo op of the day.

There was just one problem. The televisions lining Rasmussen’s entrance path were turned to CNN and looping fresh footage of Chicago police raining nightsticks down on the skulls of protesters. The waiting press was glued to the screens, pointing and murmuring about the violence in a dozen languages. Also drawing attention was a very public huddle by NATO staff. “Shut off the damn TVs!” one of them said. “The optics might be worse if we shut them off now,” said another. But it was too late. Before a decision on the TVs could be reached, Rassmussen entered the hall trailed by a gaggle of attaches and military men. The world’s cameras snapped away.

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I wrote here last week, following up on a Rolling Stone piece by Rick Perlstein, about the proliferation of FBI entrapment schemes aimed at activists and anarchists in the past decade. Following the arrest of five individuals in Chicago over the weekend who now face terrorism charges, the question of entrapment perpetrated by law enforcement seems more important than ever.

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On the second and last day of the international meeting, the demonstrations were notably smaller than weekend protests that drew thousands into the streets.

Outside Boeing Co.'s headquarters, a relatively small crowd of protesters gathered in the street. Some released red and black balloons and confetti or blew bubbles. Others staged a "die-in," lying on the ground as if dead.

An orange barricade blocked off the building's entrances, and dozens of police officers stood guard. A police boat idled in the nearby Chicago River.

Occupy Chicago contends tax breaks for the aircraft manufacturer have deprived the state of millions of dollars. The group also objects to Boeing's role in producing military hardware for the U.S. and its NATO allies.

Illinois leaders see such tax incentives as a way to attract large companies that bring thousands of jobs.

Targeting Boeing Co.'s Chicago office makes symbolic sense: The company is a major defense contractor that makes fighter jets, bombs and missiles.

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Meanwhile, many office buildings in the usually bustling city were closed after workers were warned to stay home because of heightened security, snarled transportation and the possibility of unruly protests.

National Nurses United officials have said they expect about 2,000 nurses to attend Friday's rally, where they will call for a "Robin Hood" tax on financial institutions' transactions to offset cuts in social services, education and health care. City officials expect the rally to draw more than 5,000 because of a performance by former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, an activist who has played at many Occupy events.

In a sign of the building tension, lawyers for protesters said Chicago police, with their guns drawn, raided an apartment building where activists were staying and arrested nine people on Wednesday night. The Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild said officers broke down doors in the building in the South Side Bridgeport neighborhood and produced no warrants.

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THE PLAYERS

An alliance formed in 1949 to deter Soviet aggression. The central principle is that an attack in Europe or North America against any member is an attack against all. The alliance has grown to 28 member nations, ranging from the United States, Britain, France and Germany to former Soviet bloc countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Albania and Croatia are the newest members

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AFGHANISTAN

The summit will affirm the shift in NATO's military mission in Afghanistan from a combat role to an advisory role next year, and on plans to help underwrite the Afghan military after the NATO-led military mission ends two years from now. NATO is pledging to maintain a multinational combat force in Afghanistan until sometime in 2014, with a firm deadline to end the mission by 2015. NATO nations, along with others such as Australia that participate in the NATO-led mission, have planned a gradual withdrawal of combat forces ahead of that deadline.

The election of Socialist President Francois Hollande in France complicates that agenda. Hollande campaigned on a promise to pull French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this year — two years early.

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