Bharat Rakshak

UlanBatori wrote:So ISIS sells its oil to Turkey, and exactly how is that oil delivered? They vaporize it in Aleppo and put it in a magic carpet that then materializes in Ankara? Oil worth $50M/day at $15 /barrel means, by my madarssa math, at least 3.3 MILLION barrels a day - how many tanker trucks or rail cars is that? And the poor, poor USAF with all its satellites and its drones and its SR-71s is unable to see these conveys, right?

UlanBatori wrote: How now do you rebut the reality - that the United States of America is behind the worst genocidal monsters of the 21st century?

TSJones wrote:Yeah, yeah, please notify me when Boss Putin bombs Assad's ISIS controlled oil fields. And I mean the oil wells, not the primitive oil collection system I've seen videos of them using (which can be easily replaced by ISIS). And if and when Putin does bomb the oil wells? Rest assured the US is not going to pay to restore them.

And now, a generation later, US is adopting the same method and means of Islamic jihadis.

UlanBatori wrote:

TSJones wrote:Yeah, yeah, please notify me when Boss Putin bombs Assad's ISIS controlled oil fields. And I mean the oil wells, not the primitive oil collection system I've seen videos of them using (which can be easily replaced by ISIS). And if and when Putin does bomb the oil wells? Rest assured the US is not going to pay to restore them.

Understandable. Why enable competition when the spot market is this low? And particularly since the US is not paying to rebuild the hospitals, water supplies, dams and power plants and kindergartens that NATO/USAF has bravely bombed - OIL FIELDS? Naw, one can always send US companies to 'discover' them later, when prices are up again.

Maybe Putin is bombing the terrorists, not the food, water, fuel sources and hospitals of the people? I know, this sounds like a silly military strategy - actually attack the combatants, not the civilians! What (now Obama-trained, Obama-equipped, Obama-protected) ISIS rapist/ murderer would accept that strategy?

Iraqi security officials have told MEE that US-led coalition strikes, which follow a stringent protocol, have been too slow, ineffective.

The Iraqi government authorised Russia to target Islamic State group convoys coming from Syria, a senior Iraqi official said.

The authorisation for Russia to target IS inside Iraq comes amid security coordination between Iraq, Russia, Iran and Syria.

Hakem al-Zamli, chief of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee, told Anadolu Agency on Friday that the measure contributed to weakening IS by cutting off its supply routes.

Earlier this month, Iraqi security officials told MEE that Russia would likely be invited to bomb IS within their country because the US-led coalition air strikes have proved slow and ineffective, largely because stringent protocols were followed.

"They [the US-led coalition] refuse to strike private cars, mosques, bridges, schools despite the fact Daesh militants are mainly using these places as headquarters," a senior military officer, who declined to be named, told MEE, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS.

The US-led rules, which enforces verification of targets, regularly give IS militants time to save their supplies, equipment and fighters, they said.

"This is an exceptional war and our enemy has no rules," one of the officers said. "How [can] you ask me to stick to the rules while my enemy is brutally killing my people every day, enslaving my sisters and destroy my towns and cities?

"Russians have no red lines, no complicated and restricted rules, so it would be easy for us to deal with them," he said.

Russia, an ally of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, began carrying out air strikes in Syria on 30 September. According to the Kremlin, the strikes are aimed at weakening the IS militant group, an avowed enemy of the regime.

Turkey and several Western countries, however, accuse Russia of targeting rebel groups in Syria opposed to Assad, many of which enjoy the support of Ankara and Washington.

Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since June 2014, when IS stormed the northern city of Mosul and declared a self-styled caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.

Austin wrote:^^ Looks like PR type news fed by West , If Russia was ready to bomb School Mosque etc then they would have done that in Syria , we have seen videos of ISIL moving its asset near mosque which Russians havent bombed

I do not know why RT.COM is seen as an honesty ridden source of information. The very first thing to refute from the utter propaganda is that the US supports ISIS, or that the US does not kill ISIS goons.

A female US soldier who came to personify the US invasion of Iraq yesterday appeared before a Congressional hearing to reject the Pentagon's portrayal of her as "Rambo from West Virginia", shot down in a blaze of glory.

Appearing as a witness at the Congressional committee investigating military misinformation from the battlefield, Jessica Lynch said: "Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent's home in Wirt county [West Virginia] was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true."

Ms Lynch was a 19-year-old private captured by Iraqis in an ambush at Nassiriya in the opening days of the war and subsequently rescued by US forces.

She told the committee: "I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspire our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good.

"However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." She said the US people did not need to be told "elaborate tales". She concluded: "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it always more heroic than the hype."

When she was captured at Nassiriya, the US military told the media she had been wounded but carried on firing until the end.

She had in fact been riding in a truck and had not been firing a weapon. The US military also presented her escape as a heroic feat, ignoring the role of friendly Iraqi medical staff in the rescue.

Ms Lynch said she was not politically motivated and supported the troops in Iraq. But she added: "I believe this is not a time for finger pointing. It is time for the truth, the whole truth, versus misinformation and hype."

The House committee on oversight and government reform, chaired by the energetic Democrat Henry Waxman, is focusing on two incidents, Ms Lynch's capture and rescue, and the death of an army corporal, Pat Tillman, a former football star, in Afghanistan in 2004. Corporal Tillman's death attracted media attention because he had turned down a $9m (£4.5m) football contract to volunteer for service.

Mr Waxman accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Cpl Tillman and Ms Lynch.

Although the US defence department reported Cpl Tillman had been killed by enemy combatants while leading an attempt to rescue US troops, five weeks later it finally emerged he was killed by friendly fire.

His younger brother, Kevin, also giving evidence yesterday, accused the US military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying his death as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," he said. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide [friendly fire]."

Kevin, who had been in a convoy behind his brother, said the heroic account was to distract attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and other setbacks in Iraq. "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed."

He said the military attempted to give the killing "a patriotic glow", awarding his brother a Silver Star and concocting a story that was complete fiction.

In Iraq yesterday, the US military said that nine paratroopers had been killed in a suicide attack on army outpost at Diyala, north of Baghdad, one of the most lethal attacks on US personnel since the invasion.

By Louisa Loveluck
25 Oct 2015

The United States and Saudi Arabia have dramatically responded to Russian air-strikes in support of the Assad regime by agreeing to boost their own military and diplomatic support for the Syrian rebels.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, the King Salman of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh for talks over the weekend. Despite Russian leaders saying they had extracted promises of fresh elections from President Bashar al-Assad, Mr Kerry and the Saudi ruler presented a common front in agreeing to hit the regime harder.

“They pledged to continue and intensify support to the moderate Syrian opposition while the political track is being pursued," the State Department later said in a statement.

• Syria's doctors 'utterly abandoned' after Russian air strikes hit hospitals

The statement was the first public acknowledgement of a surge in the number of anti-tank missiles that have been passed to specially-vetted rebel groups from the Free Syrian Army since Russian jets joined Syria's skies at the end of September.

The rebels' usage of American-made TOW missiles has increased over 800 per cent, slowing regime offensives across the country.

Such a statement would fit previous interventions by the Obama administration, in which commitments to increase supplies to the rebels follow several weeks after the supplies have started to arrive. However, the statement also represents a new determination to take on not only the regime but President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

• 'First Russia casualties' killed fighting alongside government forces in Syria

American and Saudi joint support for rebels, including Islamists, in Afghanistan three decades ago forced Russian troops out and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, insisted after the meeting that Mr Assad should have no role in Syria's future, adding there had been some progress in international talks on resolving the conflict.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Saudi Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Nayef (R) in Diriyah Farm on the outskirts of the capital Riyadh

Yet there are few signs that the armed opposition and most of its international backers are ready to come to the negotiating table, a place they have been before without success.

Most of the country has fallen from regime hands during four years of war. More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed, and more than four million have fled abroad, hundreds of thousands now arriving by the boatload on the shores of Europe.

On Sunday, militants fighting near Damascus said they had killed 173 regime soldiers in the space of three weeks. They also claimed to have destroyed a panoply of military hardware, including tanks, bulldozers and drones.

The fighting has been most intense around Aleppo, a city shattered by the war that engulfs it. In its southern countryside, regime troops have made important gains against non-Isil rebels, backed by Russian jets, Iranian ground troops and Shia militia from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and several other groups recruited abroad.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves at the top of the stairs as he boards his plane to head back to the United States, following his visit in Saudi's capital Riyadh
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves at the top of the stairs as he boards his plane to head back to the United States, following his visit in Saudi's capital Riyadh Photo: REUTERS

Mr Putin has justified Moscow’s intervention as a strike against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), but analysts say that jihadist groups are now benefiting from its presence.

Isil has flourished on Aleppo’s northern and southern fringes, seizing a key regime supply route into the city and making gains north of the city around Marea, a town that has already endured one of the extremists’ chemical weapons attacks.

Another beneficiary is Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. As Isil pushes on through the Aleppo countryside, their jihadist rivals have assumed control of local non-Isil strategic operations, raising the spectre of a confrontation between the two groups.

“This is the first sign that Jabhat al-Nusra might be moving towards taking over parts of Aleppo, whether by accident or design,” said Hassan Hassan, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

On Friday, the group released a video boasting of a surge in membership in recent weeks and depicting Moscow's arrival as an Afghanistan-type invasion.

“The Russian intervention is benefiting these groups at the expense of the other rebels, both now and in the long term,” said Mr Hassan.

deejay wrote:This is good TFTA propaganda kind of video - you might have seen it already but if not, have a look - Oh! NSFW use your discretion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqj4WzgnxDc

"Over the past three days, the warplanes of the Russian air group have carried out 164 sorties, hitting 285 targets,” Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said Monday.

In the past 24 hours, 59 sorties were carried out, targeting 94 terrorist sites in the provinces of Hama, Idlib, Latakia, Damascus, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor.

Konashenkov said a large ammunition dump belonging to the Jabhat al-Nusra terror group has been destroyed in Syria’s Damascus province. The two metallic hangars were razed to the ground as munitions inside them detonated following a direct hit by a Russian bomber.

Y I Patel wrote:Way too many senior Iranian military officers are getting killed - are they being selectively targeted by ISIS assassination squads? If so, that probably indicates that the Iranians are not as good at this kind of warfare as they would have everyone believe, or that ISIS retains a good intel operation. Or both. Either way, war might not be going as well for the Russian alliance as advertised.

According to Iran's military rules, those missed or killed in operation are promoted to a higher rank and that's why in a few Persian-language sources, Colonel Hasounizadeh has been referred to as a General.