The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

The Russian Air Force has caught the so called “Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham” (ISIS) off-guard in east Hama, striking their main supply route from the Al-Raqqa Governorate to the ancient city of Palmyra (Tadmur) on a number of occasions today. However, the latest airstrike by the Russian Air Force has proven to be the most lethal, destroying an entire ISIS convoy of reinforcements that were tasked to back-up their exhausted fighters at the Palmyra front in the eastern countryside of Homs. According to a military source, the Russian Air Force caught the ISIS convoy attempting to make their way from the large village of ‘Aqayrbat in east Homs to the city of Palmyra. Before the ISIS terrorists could leave the ‘Aqayrbat countryside, they were struck by the Russian Air Force, leaving several of their fighters dead and their vehicles destroyed. The total number ISIS terrorists killed by the Russian airstrike in ‘Aqayrbat is unknown; however, the terrorist group’s reinforcements did not arrive to Palmyra like they were supposed to.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/ru ... east-hama/ | Al-Masdar News
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

Al-Masdar News ‏@TheArabSource 19h19 hours ago
Russian Air Force pounds #ISIS in west Palmyra: 30+ airstrikes
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

Dr Partizan ‏@DrPartizan_ 17h17 hours ago
200 locals from Shaddadi have joined SDF to aid them in liberating areas south of the city, due to their knowledge of the area.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

- IS launched attack on the tishreen dam beachead from manbij side but were repelled. atleast one VBIED blown up safely.
- clashes in Afrin between YPG and turkish back jihadis supported by turk army shelling
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

not exactly the biggest secret...

Jack Shahine ‏@jackshahine Mar 10
Turkey's aim by (Central force) to clear area from Azaz to Jarablus out of #ISIL, replace them by #AhrarSham jihadis to stop #SDF expansion!
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

north korean manpad seen in north syria

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdTAUqqXEAIFTSr.jpg
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

dummy wooden humvee found near tharthar lake. use unknown since the usaf is not exactly swarming the area with airstrikes.

https://twitter.com/green_lemonnn/statu ... 8145368065
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by UlanBatori »

Pls read "Force 10 From Navarone". British Air Force bombed an entire cardboard and wood panzer division. Maybe that goes into the BONATO Weekly Effectiveness Score Card.
3 Wooden Humvees partially damaged - license plate came off on one, hubcap separated on another, mudguard ripped on the 3rd.
Precision air strike. The mudguard had a picture of a wedding party, which was read from 30,000 feet accurately.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

maybe some high ranking IS Emir's kid wanted his own humvee to go play at attacking infidels, so he had the workshop make one.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Shreeman »

UlanBatori wrote:Pls read "Force 10 From Navarone". British Air Force bombed an entire cardboard and wood panzer division. Maybe that goes into the BONATO Weekly Effectiveness Score Card.
3 Wooden Humvees partially damaged - license plate came off on one, hubcap separated on another, mudguard ripped on the 3rd.
Precision air strike. The mudguard had a picture of a wedding party, which was read from 30,000 feet accurately.
Dont U talk foul about my wedding party bijness. Thats what puts the butter on the bread on the table in the kitchen of the house in the town of the city from the country on the continent of the planet. Nothing in the ordinance surveyed said anything about leaving wooden humveees alone. What were you going to do with it, build and alohasnack bar in the abdulAndLetsBlowUpLand? Keep it on a lead, mark a red + or park it inside if you dont want it burn. We may not be able to find oil tankers, but there is nobody better at wedding parties. Or why else do you think is there so much demand? When did you last see an even remotely lavish wedding party that did not have a little bit of shooting in the air?
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by UlanBatori »

Syrian Air Force pilot killed after plane shot down. Near Hama.

Peto Lucem Retweeted
Ibrahim Joudeh ‏@Ibra_Joudeh 6h6 hours ago

new reports , the Pilot Musa Trekman of the fallen Jet died suffering from his injuries , he was hit by guns while parachute landing.

Meanwhile in Cuckooville:
Kyle W. Orton ‏@KyleWOrton 2h2 hours ago
As we tweet:
- U.S. allies :rotfl: in #Syria being attacked by al-Qaeda
- IS leaking hacked info on USG personnel
It's (another) one of those days.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by UlanBatori »

Nardeep Pujji ‏@AWAKEALERT Mar 9
USA murdering people in Middle East for oil
JFK’s Nephew Blows the Whistle on #Syria
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/kenned ... kWpaqYH.99
#BRICS
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Shreeman »

UlanBatori wrote:Syrian Air Force pilot killed after plane shot down. Near Hama.

Peto Lucem Retweeted
Ibrahim Joudeh ‏@Ibra_Joudeh 6h6 hours ago

new reports , the Pilot Musa Trekman of the fallen Jet died suffering from his injuries , he was hit by guns while parachute landing.

Meanwhile in Cuckooville:
Kyle W. Orton ‏@KyleWOrton 2h2 hours ago
As we tweet:
- U.S. allies :rotfl: in #Syria being attacked by al-Qaeda
- IS leaking hacked info on USG personnel
It's (another) one of those days.
Parachuted directly into a wedding party. Just sheer bad luck.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Suresh S »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... CJ8JqtGahQ

If some of you have not watched this video I urge you to watch it. This is the reason that anything that comes out of the mouths of western politicians truth is just the opposite. Judgment day will come for them one day soon and it ain,t going to be pretty. Absolute sob,s. At least saddam died like a man whatever else he was. After watching this speech you will have some respect for this guy as opposed to the scumbags in the western governments.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

As coincidence I had posted pic of noko manpad in Syria yday

Russi will carefully look into this for sure
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by TSJones »

snahata wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... CJ8JqtGahQ

If some of you have not watched this video I urge you to watch it. This is the reason that anything that comes out of the mouths of western politicians truth is just the opposite. Judgment day will come for them one day soon and it ain,t going to be pretty. Absolute sob,s. At least saddam died like a man whatever else he was. After watching this speech you will have some respect for this guy as opposed to the scumbags in the western governments.
strange sentiments for a dictator who invaded Kuwait sending 1,000's of Indians into homelessness and some cases, refugee camps for months.

just goes to show you that politics make for strange bedfellows........Saddam, what a man..... :D
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by UlanBatori »

1,80,000+ to be precise. 8)
Which is nothing compared to the tsunami coming in KSA-Quatar-Turkey.

Meanwhile:
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne ... d-passport

A Queensland teenager stranded in Syria after the Australian government cancelled his passport last month has said he feels betrayed, let down and that he has been “painted as a terrorist” by the authorities.
In an interview with Muslim radio station One Path Network, 19-year-old Oliver Bridgeman maintained that he was only in Syria to do humanitarian work and to deliver aid supplies to refugee camps and to children.

Bridgeman has been in Syria since at least May last year, and frequently posts public messages and photos to his Facebook page in which he claims to be distributing medical supplies, food and basic life essentials to rural locations near the Turkish border with Syria. He has also posted that he is not involved with any terrorist organisation.{ Ooo! I believe him! }
Bridgeman told the radio station that he had seen the assessment on why his passport was cancelled and described it as “absolutely ridiculous”.
“Basically, it had something to do with my aid work,” he said.
“When I looked at the claims it was kind of a big joke, I had to laugh at myself. I had no idea why they did this. They basically stated [it was] for humanitarian reasons and also at the end they included that they thought I was going to participate in political violence, which is obviously not true.
“I’ve been strictly doing humanitarian work.”
He also said the assessment cited his Facebook page.
Bridgeman said he believed the Australian government and security agencies had “double standards,” citing the case of Ashley Dyball, also from Queensland, who ignored federal government warnings and travelled to Syria in May to fight against Isis. Dyball returned to Australia in December and, after several hours of questioning by police, was released without charge.
“Obviously I felt betrayed because I felt it is double standards. Is it because I’m Muslim? They painted everyone who came to Syria with the same brush, that we’re all terrorists, but obviously that is not the case. Obviously I feel let down, I feel like this is not right, I feel I’ve been a victim.”
He said he had been prepared to return home and face questioning by police, and that he wanted to “cooperate fully” with the Australian authorities when that occurred.
“I had nothing to hide,” he said.
Earlier this month, Australian federal police obtained an arrest warrant for Bridgeman, delivering it to his parents home.
Bridgeman urged the Australian Muslim community to come together to spread awareness of his situation, and asked for funding through donations to Syrian charities.
On Sunday night the current affairs program, 60 Minutes, will air an interview with Bridgeman and his parents. Bridgeman said his parents also felt betrayed by his passport cancellation.
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has previously defended the government’s decision to cancel that passports of Australians travelling into conflict zones in the middle east. Last month, he told the ABC: “It puts our own military staff and personnel at risk, it can have devastating consequences on families”.
“People who go off into conflict zones — even if they’re well intentioned — ultimately can cause significant grief and stress for their own families,” he said.
“This is something people should contemplate before they go — not when they’re in the middle of a conflict zone.”
Asio report against Queensland teenager in Syria relies on social media and news reports
Read more
Bridgeman’s solicitor, Alex Jones, told Guardian Australia after the issuing of Bridgeman’s arrest warrant earlier this month that the government had “stranded him, and now he can’t legally get out of Syria because he doesn’t have a passport”.
“The government have already said they’re not going to help him and now they’ve issued an arrest warrant for him,” he said.
“If they had left him alone he’d be home already [to face AFP questioning].
“It’s just bizarre. It makes no sense.”
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

Jack Shahine ‏@jackshahine 4h4 hours ago
#JN besieging Maarat al-Numan #Idlib from 3 points, starts heavy shelling on division 13 HQs.
Long waited war had just begun ..
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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Dr Shahid ‏@DR_SHAHID 5h5 hours ago
Dr Shahid Retweeted Step News Agency
Nusra took over the town of Ghadfeh east of Maarat al-Nouman & arrested 9 FSA fighters of Division 13
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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ISIS rat captured in tishreen thinks he has died and hoors are running to please him.
the YPG gently break the news he is still here ... he moans and groans in disappointment

https://twitter.com/DrPartizan_/status/ ... 1311942656

Dr Partizan ‏@DrPartizan_ 12h12 hours ago
ISIS launched an offensive on Tishreen Dam. It was repelled completely with 7 SVBIEDs destroyed and 37 terrorists killed.

one VBIED was a bulldozer, using its huge front scoop as armour...the driver got nailed

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdXGm3eW0AAbc7I.jpg
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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The Hindu
French President Francois Hollande said on Saturday that the EU must not grant Turkey any concessions on human rights or visas in exchange for guarantees to stem the flow of migrants to Europe.

“There cannot be any concessions on the matter of human rights or the criteria for visa liberalisation,” Mr. Hollande told reporters ahead of the resumption next week of tough negotiations between Turkey and the EU in Brussels.

Under a controversial draft deal reached this week, Turkey would take back all migrants landing in Greece in a bid to reduce their incentive to pay people smugglers for dangerous crossings to the Greek islands in rickety boats.

In return for every Syrian sent back from Greece, the EU would resettle one Syrian refugee from camps in Turkey — which is hosting about 2.7 million people who have fled the conflict across the border.

Turkey is also demanding €6 billion in aid, visa-free access for its nationals within Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone and for swifter action to process its bid to join the EU.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by deejay »

A 70 year old truck driver from Mosul carrying explosives for Daesh. Come to think of it, 72 virgins are available irrespective of the age a Jihardi dies. :evil:
Haidar Sumeri ‏@IraqiSecurity now8 hours ago
#Iraq's army captured the driver of the truck carrying explosives to #Baghdad via #Karbala. In his 70s, from #Mosul.

Image
For more images with photos of the biiig truck, explosives for 100 terror attacks etc, check this link

https://twitter.com/IraqiSecurity/statu ... 0250251264
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Austin »

Perhaps Poverty and Hopelessness must have driven the old soul into desperate bargaining with Daesh .... I am not sure if people in Iraq and Syria in places where there is armed conflict can look forward to any thing except hope for lucky entry into EU as refugee and those who dont have enough money for this journey may just join the Daesh or pro-Military militia for day to day survival.

Pretty Sad State for a country that once prided for best benefit one can get in ME being its citizen
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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he may not even be aware of the contents. most truck drivers are not involved in the details of cargo and just carry the signed off inventory list for sale tax or other checkposts.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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Hassan Ridha ‏@sayed_ridha 2h2 hours ago
#SyAAF MiG 21 that was downed yesterday, was hit by a MANPAD according to @WarfareWW

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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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kurds have taken advantage of routing the IS attack at tishreen to chase them toward manbij
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

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http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/02 ... d-mostread

Start Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom
FEBRUARY 16, 2016 BY SARAH CHAYES ALEX DE WAAL

Saudi Arabia is no state at all. It's an unstable business so corrupt to resemble a criminal organization and the U.S. should get ready for the day after. Commentary / Middle East / Defense Department

For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust that U.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought. In a sea of chaos, goes the refrain, the kingdom is one state that’s stable.


Sarah Chayes is senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law and South Asia Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. She previously was special adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... Full Bio

Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at The Fletcher School. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarship and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and ... Full Bio

But is it?

In fact, Saudi Arabia is no state at all. There are two ways to describe it: as a political enterprise with a clever but ultimately unsustainable business model, or so corrupt as to resemble in its functioning a vertically and horizontally integrated criminal organization. Either way, it can’t last. It’s past time U.S. decision-makers began planning for the collapse of the Saudi kingdom.

In recent conversations with military and other government personnel, we were startled at how startled they seemed at this prospect. Here’s the analysis they should be working through.

Understood one way, the Saudi king is CEO of a family business that converts oil into payoffs that buy political loyalty. They take two forms: cash handouts or commercial concessions for the increasingly numerous scions of the royal clan, and a modicum of public goods and employment opportunities for commoners. The coercive “stick” is supplied by brutal internal security services lavishly equipped with American equipment.


The U.S. has long counted on the ruling family having bottomless coffers of cash with which to rent loyalty. Even accounting today’s low oil prices, and as Saudi officials step up arms purchases and military adventures in Yemen and elsewhere, Riyadh is hardly running out of funds.

Still, expanded oil production in the face of such low prices—until the Feb. 16 announcement of a Saudi-Russian freeze at very high January levels—may reflect an urgent need for revenue as well as other strategic imperatives. Talk of a Saudi Aramco IPO similarly suggests a need for hard currency.

A political market, moreover, functions according to demand as well as supply. What if the price of loyalty rises?

It appears that is just what’s happening. King Salman had to spend lavishly to secure the allegiance of the notables who were pledged to the late King Abdullah. Here’s what played out in two other countries when this kind of inflation hit. In South Sudan, an insatiable elite not only diverted the newly minted country’s oil money to private pockets but also kept up their outsized demands when the money ran out, sparking a descent into chaos. The Somali government enjoys generous donor support, but is priced out of a very competitive political market by a host of other buyers—with ideological, security or criminal agendas of their own.

Such comparisons may be offensive to Saudi leaders, but they are telling. If the loyalty price index keeps rising, the monarchy could face political insolvency.

The Saudi ruling elite is operating something like a sophisticated criminal enterprise.

Looked at another way, the Saudi ruling elite is operating something like a sophisticated criminal enterprise, when populations everywhere are making insistent demands for government accountability. With its political and business elites interwoven in a monopolistic network, quantities of unaccountable cash leaving the country for private investments and lavish purchases abroad, and state functions bent to serve these objectives, Saudi Arabia might be compared to such kleptocracies as Viktor Yanukovich’s Ukraine. :rotfl:

Increasingly, Saudi citizens are seeing themselves as just that: citizens, not subjects. In countries as diverse as Nigeria, Ukraine, Brazil, Moldova, and Malaysia, people are contesting criminalized government and impunity for public officials—sometimes violently. In more than half a dozen countries in 2015, populations took to the streets to protest corruption. In three of them, heads of state are either threatened or have had to resign. Elsewhere, the same grievances have contributed to the expansion of jihadi movements or criminal organizations posing as Robin Hoods. Russia and China’s external adventurism can at least partially be explained as an effort to re-channel their publics‘ dissatisfaction with the quality of governance.


For the moment, it is largely Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority that is voicing political demands. But the highly educated Sunni majority, with unprecedented exposure to the outside world, is unlikely to stay satisfied forever with a few favors doled out by geriatric rulers impervious to their input. And then there are the “guest workers.” Saudi officials, like those in other Gulf states, seem to think they can exploit an infinite supply of indigents grateful to work at whatever conditions. But citizens are now heavily outnumbered in their own countries by laborers who may soon begin claiming rights.

For decades, Riyadh has eased pressure by exporting its dissenters—like Osama bin Laden—fomenting extremism across the Muslim world. But that strategy can backfire: bin Laden’s critique of Saudi corruption has been taken up by others and resonates among many Arabs. And King Salman (who is 80, by the way) does not display the dexterity of his half-brother Abdullah. He’s reached for some of the familiar items in the autocrats’ toolbox: executing dissidents, embarking on foreign wars, and whipping up sectarian rivalries to discredit Saudi Shiite demands and boost nationalist fervor. Each of these has grave risks.

There are a few ways things could go, as Salman’s brittle grip on power begins cracking.

One is a factional struggle within the royal family, with the price of allegiance bid up beyond anyone’s ability to pay in cash. Another is foreign war. With Saudi Arabia and Iran already confronting each other by proxy in Yemen and Syria, escalation is too easy. U.S. decision-makers should bear that danger in mind as they keep pressing for regional solutions to regional problems. A third scenario is insurrection—either a non-violent uprising or a jihadi insurgency—a result all too predictable given episodes throughout the region in recent years.

An energetic red team should shoot holes in the automatic-pilot thinking that has guided Washington policy to date.
The U.S. keeps getting caught flat-footed when purportedly solid countries came apart. At the very least, and immediately, rigorous planning exercises should be executed, in which different scenarios and different potential U.S. actions to reduce the codependence and mitigate the risks can be tested. Most likely, and most dangerous, outcomes should be identified, and an energetic red team should shoot holes in the automatic-pilot thinking that has guided Washington policy to date.

“Hope is not a policy” is a hackneyed phrase. But choosing not to consider alternatives amounts to the same thing.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

Peto Lucem ‏@PetoLucem 27m27 minutes ago
Reports indicate #SAA has launched the anticipated offensive aimed at liberating #Palmyra from #ISIS. #Homs #Syria

Peto Lucem ‏@PetoLucem 3h3 hours ago
#Breaking: #Syria/n Army storms the #Palmyra Castle http://bit.ly/1Mfqqnh via @thearabsource @leithfadel
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

palmyra castle under attack...hope its easier than the dreaded monte cassino and kesslrings paras. fighting is ongoing in the archeological area just outside the inhabited city

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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by deejay »

More than Palmyra Castle, the taking of Qatari castle is important.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by deejay »

https://www.rt.com/usa/335329-vietnam-war-planes-isis/
Half-century old warplanes have been tested on Islamic State targets, as the military determines whether they should become a permanent addition to their arsenal for fighting insurgencies. Proponents say the Vietnam-era jets do more for less.
The OV-10 Bronco turbo-propeller plane, first flown in 1965, is one of the “light turbo-prop aircraft” being considered for counterinsurgency operations, a US Central Command representative told CNN.

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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Singha »

Qatari castle will surely be bombed to rubble. Nothing of history there.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by deejay »

The Iraqis last week launched a large scale offensive in the deserts near Samaara and probing runs at Mosul. All ops against ISIS. Interestingly, this is the time Western media plays up the possibilities of Mosul dam collapse and the fact that winning Mosul cannot be achieved by Iraqis in short term.

Well, the US did more than that in the last week. It actually cut down airstrikes in support if Iraqi forces in Samaara and Mosul.
Haidar Sumeri ‏@IraqiSecurity now10 minutes ago
#US-led coalition airstrikes in #Iraq (March 9th-12th). Dramatic drop in strikes in/near #Mosul. None near Samarra.

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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by deejay »

https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status ... 5999429633

David Graeber
‏@davidgraeber
well I spent two weeks trying to get some major US or UK newspaper to run an oped explaining war in SE Turkey but no one would take it
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Shreeman »

There seems to be a desperate attempt to save the project. Lebanon is obviously getting hot. Turkey has walked in dug itself and the coalition is shooting from jordan. A bit much to save ISIL this late but lets see how much warmer things get. Also, why is the teetar going quiet? edit -- also manpads are a thing now?
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Shanu »

Well, despite the Ottoman Sultan's nation saving efforts to cull opposition party activists, journalists and Kurds, yet another blast in Turkey. and in its Capital Ankara nevertheless.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35798517

27 KIA. The ordinary Turks should prepare to make the Aegean crossing now, alongside their Kurdish brothers. As Germany is waiting with visa-free invitations. Sweet to see, how the wheels of Karma turn.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by JE Menon »

The Kizlya district of Ankara where it happened is a major junction, site of important government buildings and stuff... Incredible that it happened there.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Lisa »

TSJ, a penny for your thoughts,

http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the- ... ervention/

Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil.
By ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR 2/23/16, 8:50 AM CET Updated 3/1/16, 12:18 PM CET

In part because my father was murdered by an Arab, I’ve made an effort to understand the impact of U.S. policy in the Mideast and particularly the factors that sometimes motivate bloodthirsty responses from the Islamic world against our country. As we focus on the rise of the Islamic State and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology. Instead we should examine the more complex rationales of history and oil — and how they often point the finger of blame back at our own shores.

America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria — little-known to the American people yet well-known to Syrians — sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIL. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely only to compound the crisis. Secretary of State John Kerry this week announced a “provisional” ceasefire in Syria. But since U.S. leverage and prestige within Syria is minimal — and the ceasefire doesn’t include key combatants such as Islamic State and al Nusra — it’s bound to be a shaky truce at best. Similarly President Obama’s stepped-up military intervention in Libya — U.S. airstrikes targeted an Islamic State training camp last week — is likely to strengthen rather than weaken the radicals. As the New York Times reported in a December 8, 2015, front-page story, Islamic State political leaders and strategic planners are working to provoke an American military intervention. They know from experience this will flood their ranks with volunteer fighters, drown the voices of moderation and unify the Islamic world against America.

To understand this dynamic, we need to look at history from the Syrians’ perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.

This did not happen without controversy at home. In July 1957, following a failed coup in Syria by the CIA, my uncle, Sen. John F. Kennedy, infuriated the Eisenhower White House, the leaders of both political parties and our European allies with a milestone speech endorsing the right of self-governance in the Arab world and an end to America’s imperialist meddling in Arab countries. Throughout my lifetime, and particularly during my frequent travels to the Mideast, countless Arabs have fondly recalled that speech to me as the clearest statement of the idealism they expected from the U.S. Kennedy’s speech was a call for recommitting America to the high values our country had championed in the Atlantic Charter; the formal pledge that all the former European colonies would have the right to self-determination following World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had strong-armed Winston Churchill and the other allied leaders to sign the Atlantic Charter in 1941 as a precondition for U.S. support in the European war against fascism.

But thanks in large part to Allen Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating the CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mideast. The so called “Bruce-Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials. The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.” The Bruce-Lovett Report pointed out that such interventions were antithetical to American values and had compromised America’s international leadership and moral authority without the knowledge of the American people. The report also said that the CIA never considered how we would treat such interventions if some foreign government were to engineer them in our country.

This is the bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists “hate us for our freedoms.” For the most part they don’t; instead they hate us for the way we betrayed those freedoms — our own ideals — within their borders.

For Americans to really understand what’s going on, it’s important to review some details about this sordid but little-remembered history. During the 1950s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers — CIA Director Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a neutral zone in the Cold War and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab nationalism — which Allen Dulles equated with communism — particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies that they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s director of plans, Frank Wisner, and John Foster Dulles, in September 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” according to a memo recorded by his staff secretary, Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster.

The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 — barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Quwatli, hesitated to approve the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes, CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation for Al-Quwatli’s lack of enthusiasm for the U.S. pipeline, the CIA engineered a coup replacing al-Quwatli with the CIA’s handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, four and a half months into his regime.

Following several counter-coups in the newly destabilized country, the Syrian people again tried democracy in 1955, re-electing al-Quwatli and his National Party. Al-Quwatli was still a Cold War neutralist, but, stung by American involvement in his ouster, he now leaned toward the Soviet camp. That posture caused CIA Director Dulles to declare that “Syria is ripe for a coup” and send his two coup wizards, Kim Roosevelt and Rocky Stone, to Damascus.

Two years earlier, Roosevelt and Stone had orchestrated a coup in Iran against the democratically elected President Mohammed Mosaddegh, after Mosaddegh tried to renegotiate the terms of Iran’s lopsided contracts with the British oil giant Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). Mosaddegh was the first elected leader in Iran’s 4,000-year history and a popular champion for democracy across the developing world. Mosaddegh expelled all British diplomats after uncovering a coup attempt by U.K. intelligence officers working in cahoots with BP. Mosaddegh, however, made the fatal mistake of resisting his advisers’ pleas to also expel the CIA, which, they correctly suspected, was complicit in the British plot. Mosaddegh idealized the U.S. as a role model for Iran’s new democracy and incapable of such perfidies. Despite Dulles’ needling, President Harry Truman had forbidden the CIA from actively joining the British caper to topple Mosaddegh. When Eisenhower took office in January 1953, he immediately unleashed Dulles. After ousting Mosaddegh in “Operation Ajax,” Stone and Roosevelt installed Shah Reza Pahlavi, who favored U.S. oil companies but whose two decades of CIA sponsored savagery toward his own people from the Peacock throne would finally ignite the 1979 Islamic revolution that has bedeviled our foreign policy for 35 years.

Mohammed Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951-1953, pictured left in 1951, the same year he was named TIME Person of the Year, right. His tenure was cut short by a United States-led coup in 1953, which installed Shah Reza Pahlavi
Mohammed Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951-1953, pictured left in 1951, the same year he was named TIME Person of the Year, right. His tenure was cut short by a United States-led coup in 1953, which installed Shah Reza Pahlavi
Flush from his Operation Ajax “success” in Iran, Stone arrived in Damascus in April 1957 with $3 million to arm and incite Islamic militants and to bribe Syrian military officers and politicians to overthrow al-Quwatli’s democratically elected secularist regime, according to Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, by John Prados. Working with the Muslim Brotherhood and millions of dollars, Rocky Stone schemed to assassinate Syria’s chief of intelligence, the chief of its General Staff and the chief of the Communist Party, and to engineer “national conspiracies and various strong arm” provocations in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan that could be blamed on the Syrian Ba’athists. Tim Weiner describes in Legacy of Ashes how the CIA’s plan was to destabilize the Syrian government and create a pretext for an invasion by Iraq and Jordan, whose governments were already under CIA control. Kim Roosevelt forecast that the CIA’s newly installed puppet government would “rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power,” according to declassified CIA documents reported in The Guardian newspaper.

But all that CIA money failed to corrupt the Syrian military officers. The soldiers reported the CIA’s bribery attempts to the Ba’athist regime. In response, the Syrian army invaded the American Embassy, taking Stone prisoner. After harsh interrogation, Stone made a televised confession of his roles in the Iranian coup and the CIA’s aborted attempt to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government. The Syrians ejected Stone and two U.S. Embassy staffers—the first time any American State Department diplomat was barred from an Arab country. The Eisenhower White House hollowly dismissed Stone’s confession as “fabrications” and “slanders,” a denial swallowed whole by the American press, led by the New York Times and believed by the American people, who shared Mosaddegh’s idealistic view of their government. Syria purged all politicians sympathetic to the U.S. and executed for treason all military officers associated with the coup. In retaliation, the U.S. moved the Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean, threatened war and goaded Turkey to invade Syria. The Turks assembled 50,000 troops on Syria’s borders and backed down only in the face of unified opposition from the Arab League whose leaders were furious at the U.S. intervention. Even after its expulsion, the CIA continued its secret efforts to topple Syria’s democratically elected Ba’athist government. The CIA plotted with Britain’s MI6 to form a “Free Syria Committee” and armed the Muslim Brotherhood to assassinate three Syrian government officials, who had helped expose “the American plot,” according to Matthew Jones in “The ‘Preferred Plan’: The Anglo-American Working Group Report on Covert Action in Syria, 1957.” The CIA’s mischief pushed Syria even further away from the U.S. and into prolonged alliances with Russia and Egypt.

Following the second Syrian coup attempt, anti-American riots rocked the Mideast from Lebanon to Algeria. Among the reverberations was the July 14, 1958 coup, led by the new wave of anti-American Army officers who overthrew Iraq’s pro-American monarch, Nuri al-Said. The coup leaders published secret government documents, exposing Nuri al-Said as a highly paid CIA puppet. In response to American treachery, the new Iraqi government invited Soviet diplomats and economic advisers to Iraq and turned its back on the West.

Having alienated Iraq and Syria, Kim Roosevelt fled the Mideast to work as an executive for the oil industry that he had served so well during his public service career at the CIA. Roosevelt’s replacement as CIA station chief, James Critchfield, attempted a failed assassination plot against the new Iraqi president using a toxic handkerchief, according to Weiner. Five years later, the CIA finally succeeded in deposing the Iraqi president and installing the Ba’ath Party in power in Iraq. A charismatic young murderer named Saddam Hussein was one of the distinguished leaders of the CIA’s Ba’athist team. The Ba’ath Party’s Secretary, Ali Saleh Sa’adi, who took office alongside Saddam Hussein, would later say, “We came to power on a CIA train,” according to A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, by Said Aburish, a journalist and author. Aburish recounted that the CIA supplied Saddam and his cronies a murder list of people who “had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success.” Tim Weiner writes that Critchfield later acknowledged that the CIA had, in essence, “created Saddam Hussein.” During the Reagan years, the CIA supplied Hussein with billions of dollars in training, Special Forces support, weapons and battlefield intelligence, knowing that he was using poisonous mustard and nerve gas and biological weapons — including anthrax obtained from the U.S. government — in his war against Iran. Reagan and his CIA director, Bill Casey, regarded Saddam as a potential friend to the U.S. oil industry and a sturdy barrier against the spread of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Their emissary, Donald Rumsfeld, presented Saddam with golden cowboy spurs and a menu of chemical/biological and conventional weapons on a 1983 trip to Baghdad. At the same time, the CIA was illegally supplying Saddam’s enemy, Iran, with thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to fight Iraq, a crime made famous during the Iran-Contra scandal. Jihadists from both sides later turned many of those CIA-supplied weapons against the American people.

Even as America contemplates yet another violent Mideast intervention, most Americans are unaware of the many ways that “blowback” from previous CIA blunders has helped craft the current crisis. The reverberations from decades of CIA shenanigans continue to echo across the Mideast today in national capitals and from mosques to madras schools over the wrecked landscape of democracy and moderate Islam that the CIA helped obliterate.

A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father, have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Arabs see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.

In their view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000, when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometer pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar shares with Iran the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo until recently prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad. Meanwhile, Qatar’s gas can reach European markets only if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs. The proposed pipeline would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey, which would pocket rich transit fees. The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would give the Sunni kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. Qatar hosts two massive American military bases and the U.S. Central Command’s Mideast headquarters.

The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline, which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin’s stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia’s second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni monarchy by giving it a foothold in Shia-dominated Syria. The Saudis’ geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the kingdom’s principal rival, Iran, a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S.-sponsored Shiite takeover in Iraq (and, more recently, the termination of the Iran trade embargo) as a demotion to its regional power status and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.

Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”

Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian-approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Middke East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline, which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. It is important to note that this was well before the Arab Spring-engendered uprising against Assad.
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by Lisa »

Also, apologies if already posted,

https://www.rt.com/news/335200-cizre-bu ... s-erdogan/

Burned to death, beheaded’: Cizre Kurds accuse Erdogan’s forces of civilian massacre Watch the video.

https://www.rt.com/news/335208-turkey-k ... vastation/

RT crew films destruction in Kurdish town Cizre after Turkish military crackdown
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Re: The Levant crisis.(Israel,SYRIA,Lebanon,etc) - II

Post by UlanBatori »

Terrific article: the young Kennedy has the powerful writing style and directness of his ancestors. Thanks for posting it. Succinct history of the hanky-panky that created ISIS and continues to protect it.
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