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

[Satya_anveshi]

How in the world, after all democrazy and freedom wars, are the US policy makers reconciling with supporting terrorists and violating their own principles, constitution, and mandates of organizations such as UN that serve largely their own purpose.

Perhaps it is time to have United Nations Global Terrorist Organization within the mandate of UN to serve US's interests?

[UlanBatori]

We need a name like GOAT (Global Offensive Against Terror) to describe Obama's Islamic Terrorist Resupply Air-Drop Operation. Note the part about Fighter Cover For C-17s. In full view of dem Russkies. Soooo maccho.

But how long did the cover last I wonder, and didn't the Russians see where Barack Obama's Moderate Islamic Terrorists (BOMITs) with the 50 tons went. How long did it take to call up the sorties?

[UlanBatori]

NYT: ISIS' ammo supplied from US

GOTUS buying millions of rounds of Russian ammunition

Ex-Syria ambassador: Obama policy not 'working,' 400k more may die

Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said he resigned his post because of the Obama administration's failed Syria policy and he predicted that another 300,000 to 400,000 Syrians will die if nothing is done to stop the bloodshed.

Asked by Sharyl Attkisson on "Full Measure" Sunday why he had resigned, Ford said: "The reason is, I could no longer defend the administration's policy on Syria."

He then repeated three times that he knew the policy "wasn't working."

He resigned just after administration officials announced that Obama had approved a plan to provide training and equipment to moderate Syrian rebels. The $500 million program was ended this week after it came under fire for training only a handful of rebels in the fight against the Islamic State. Many of the weapons the U.S. sent to the moderates quickly passed to al Qaeda in Syria and other jihadist groups.

Ford spent his career in the foreign service. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Algeria from 2006-2008 and ambassador to Syria from 2010-2014.

Considered "one of the best Arabists" during his tenure at the State Department, Ford hasn't been shy criticizing Obama's Syria policy in the past. In an interview with CNN shortly after his resignation, Ford said he could not "defend the American policy" because it had been "unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground" or the "growing extremism threat" from the Islamic State.

And Al Jazeera explains:

The Pentagon was forced to scrap plans to train thousands of Syrian rebels in Turkey and Jordan after many failed to pass the screening process and one group of graduates gave some of their ammunitions and other gear to an Al-Qaeda affiliate.

[TSJones]

GOTUS buying millions of rounds of Russian ammunition

Those Russkis make some good ammo and easily affordable!

I can buy a 1000 rounds of 7.62 x 39mm hollow point ammo for $225.00 for my mini-30.

[ramana]

So who gets fired for that $0.5 Billion fiasco?

[ramana]

UB by buying up Russian ammo there will be artificial shortage.
Maybe gun control by backdoor.
No ammo, no shootee.

[Karan M]

[Vayutuvan]

Mosul has a huge dam I think and its storage controls wate for farming down south. It's been claimed if they blow the dam Baghdad will get washed away

If the dam is at Mosul then it is too far to wash away Baghdad. The floods can cause real damage though. Most of the water would simply spread wide into low lying lands much before the bulk of the volume reaches Baghdad. Is the river run from Mosul to Baghdad a continuous unbroken ravine?

[ramana]

Any one keeping tally of the ISIS/Anti-Assad forces strikes by Russians?

[UlanBatori]

Roughly 60 sorties per day, reporting average of 55 targets pest-e-sha'eeded. I assume maybe 4 per target? That's only about 220 pests sha'eeded per day. One week - ~1500 pests eliminated. Hopefully ground war by Syrian Army is doing better than that, once the ammo dumps and supply lines and C^3 are kaput. Attack helicopter sorties may achieve 10 or 15 per sortie maybe.

Not nearly as massive a pest-e-sha'eed as GOAT Phase 1, where there like 100+ sorties each day. One way to estimate is to say 2000 kg payload per mission, and I would say that is divided into maybe 16 weapons. If you assume that each is a guided weapon, hopefully each takes out an average of 4 if hitting big concentrations of pests. But I don't think Syria is like that, except where ISIS is massing for attacks, or caught in the open in convoys.

[UlanBatori]

UB by buying up Russian ammo there will be artificial shortage.
Maybe gun control by backdoor. No ammo, no shootee.

Tough way to impose gun control. There are other reports, that ppl were rushing to buy up AK-47 ammo like ppl cleaning out grocery store shelves b4 a hurricane. Anticipating import bans due to sanctions.

This is like the Cheese-Buying enterprise back in the late 1970s, to support dairy prices. My landlady gave me these huge loaves of cheese, courtesy of the United State Govt handing them out to old folks. Good cheese too! So next thing u know, Uncle Sam will be giving out AK-47 ammo. Apparently in Texas now every college student needs those, because everyone in colleges is supposed to "carry" - and they don't mean babies.

Let's ask the horses' (never mind):

At the hearing, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chairs one of the House oversight subcommittees, noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army. “It is entirely … inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition,” said Chaffetz...
Chaffetz noted that DHS bought more than 103 million rounds in 2012 and used 116 million that same year for about 70,000 public employees. Chaffetz said the DHS is shooting up between 1,300 and 1,600 rounds per person, while the U.S. Army goes through only about 350 rounds annually per soldier. These numbers led some gun bloggers to cry conspiracy; though, many others noted that 350 rounds per soldier is a pretty stingy way to train people to shoot automatic weapons.

Also, the DHS buys ammo for its own police force, for Customs and Border Protection, for the Federal Emergency Management Administration, for Immigration & Customs Enforcement, for the U.S. Secret Service, for the Transportation Security Administration and for other federal entities. Meanwhile, U.S. Army personnel train for a long list of job responsibilities, many of which have little to do with small arms.

Nevertheless, Nick Nayak, chief procurement officer for the DHS, didn’t push back against Chaffetz’s numbers. Nayak said that DHS, on average, buys roughly 100 million rounds per year. He said claims that DHS is stockpiling ammo are “simply not true.” DHS buys in bulk to save money, but overall its purchases are actually slightly down. In fact, a letter from DHS explained that in 2010 the DHS purchased 148,314,825 rounds. In 2011 the DHS bought 108,664,054 rounds. And in 2012 the DHS purchased 103,178,200 rounds of ammo.

Federal Premium Ammunition, an American ammo manufacturer founded in 1992 that now has 1,400 employees in Anoka, Minn., published a statement saying the rumor that the DHS is “buying excessive quantities of ammunition thereby restricting availability to the commercial market” is a “false and baseless claim.” They say, “The Department of Homeland Security contract makes up a very small percentage of our total ammunition output. This contract is not taking ammunition away from civilians. The current increase in demand is attributed to the civilian market. Our production volumes on government contracts have been stable since the mid-2000s.”

So if this shortage of ammo isn’t a sinister government plot, what’s going on? For answers I interviewed manufacturers, gun-store owners, members of gun-rights organizations and more. Here’s what they have to say and what’s to come.

American Ammo Makers Are Expanding

The increased demand has prompted ammunition makers in the U.S. to expand facilities, add new shifts and streamline production. Federal Premium says, “Our facilities operate 24-hours a day. We are continually making process improvements to increase our efficiency and investing in capital and personnel where we have sustained demand. We are bringing additional capacity online again this year.”

As they work to catch up with demand, Federal posted a statement on its website saying, “We are currently experiencing high demand for our products. We appreciate your patience and support and remain committed to serving all of our customers, from hunters and sport shooters to those who protect our country and our streets.”

[UlanBatori]

More on TOW-gate:

Look at the video. And remember the earlier "18 tanks destroyed" videos. You will realize that the scenery is the same in several of the videos, though the shooters are very different!!

[habal]

Putinism:

A statement allegedly by Russian President Vladimir Putin made about U.S. President Obama has gone viral on the World Wide Web. The statement was, “Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game.

[Y. Kanan]

Quoting Y.I. Kanan:

Your tone implies that I'm somehow rooting for the rebels. If that's what you're getting at, quit pussyfooting around and just say it. If you'd ever read any of my previous posts you'd realize what an idiot you are for even suggesting such a thing. What I am is a realist, something which at times seems to be in short supply on this forum.

I asked a simple question and posted myself the proof when I found it. 2 days ago. By the way, the new article is simply a re-hash which says the writer also read the same lies and watched the same Langley training videos, professionally edited with variable zoom etc.

The really hilarious part was where the Goebbles types eventually realized how bogus the U-Tube videos looked. So they also claimed that it was a part of the sales agreement that every TOW attack must be videotaped in color. Great arrangement for an urban guerrllla combat theater, sure, sure!

Here come the tanks, straight at us! GET THE BETACAM, Haider! Set up the satellite dish, Hussein! Log into FaceBook, Mukhtar! Found the power supply, Jemal? Got the storyline laid out on Adobe Moviemaker, Faisal? Got the zoom properly framed? Shout when you are ready: Act 14, Scene 1!! Start recording? Get the TOW, Abdul! Here we go, load the mijjile, Shakil! Set the fuse. Connect the wire to the spool. Aim the weapon. Allaho**** ! HEY, SHAKIL! COME BACK HIYAR!

Oh, yes! That's the way combat is done these days.

BUT hey, that would take some thinking to figure out, no need to worry yourself about such things. Today's news shows that TOW or no TOW, the 'rebels' are on the run in Hama and everywhere else. or getting blown to bits.

Thanks for the Revelation about yourself. I am adding you to my DO not READ list.

I finally figured out who you remind me of...

[Y. Kanan]

Y.Kanan you are needlessly taking it personal.

No need for that.
UB asked for links about the tank losses of the Syrian Army.


lets avoid blue-on blue fratricide.

I couldn't agree more. But does that mean we only welcome good news here? Inconvenient truths are to be treated as propaganda and we blame the messenger when he delivers unwelcome news?

I'm all for optimism, but not when it crosses over into delusional thinking.

[Singha]

it seems the kurds with usaf support took back the mosul dam last year after some hard fighting
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 77923.html

destroying it would kill 500K people downstream per some estimate. => ISIS would do it in a heartbeat if they were on the verge of being beaten out of north iraq.....lives taken are just numbers for them, higher the better.

[Singha]

U.S. delivers 50 tons of ammunition to Syria rebel groups

U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration's urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups.

Syrians probably will be careful in using any of this if found as easy win.

allegedly this is the new coalition the US has cooked up to make up the numbers for a assault on Raqqa because the YPG who are more trustworthy do not in themselves have the numbers to take on around 15-20K "elite" ISIS fighters who would rally to the defence of their capital Qila-e-Islam.

they will need a lot of air support and some amount of anti armour weapons to get it done though. the 20 airstrikes/day of the GOAT coalition today wont hack it. B52/B1 have to be placed in orbit , which means some need to be ready on ground in diego and elsewhere while others are in transit and few are in orbit. it takes some 3 days apparently to full load up a B1 or B52 with small conventional bombs such is their huge payload. carrier air wings have to be fully fueled up and armed, and land based F-15E squadrons need to move into the gulf and Incirlik turkey......depending on the GCC for this isnt really feasible - they have the ac but probably not the political will or JDAM headcount to kill their own baby

suicide attacks using heavily armoured tanks, trucks will be routine....this has already been routine in tikrit and deir el azzor multiple times. so preferably tanks are needed to lay down precision fire from 1km away and kill these inbounds. air support cannot be always so timely. the kurds do have some tanks.

[Satya_anveshi]

Another *must read* article from Counterpunch. No highlight,no bold. Go thru it in full.
US Caught Faking It in Syria - Oct12, 2015

The great danger of faking your ability to do something in the public square is that someone with an actual desire to the job you are pretending to do might come along and show you up.

This is what has just happened to the US in Syria with the entrance of Russia into the fight against ISIL.

And as is generally the case with posers caught with their pants down, the US policy elites are not happy about it.

You see, the US strategic goal in Syria is not as your faithful mainstream media servants (led by that redoubtable channeler of Neo-Con smokescreens at the NYT Michael Gordon) might have you believe to save the Syrian people from the ravages of the long-standing Assad dictatorship, but rather to heighten the level of internecine conflict in that country to the point where it will not be able to serve as a bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony for at least another generation.

How do we know? Because important protagonists in the Israelo-American policy planning elite have advertised the fact with a surprising degree of clarity in documents and public statements issued over the last several decades.

The key here is learning to listen to what our cultural training has not prepared us to hear.

In 1982, as the Likud Party (which is to say, the institutional incarnation of the Revisionist Zionist belief, first articulated by Jabotinsky in the ”Iron Wall” that the only way to deal with “the Arabs” in and around Israel was through unrelenting force and the inducement of cultural fragmentation) was consolidating its hold on the foreign policy establishment of Israel, a journalist named Oded Yinon, who had formerly worked at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published an article in which he outlined the strategic approach his country needed to take in the coming years.

What follows are some excerpts from Israel Shahak’s English translation of that text:

“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon….”

“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.”

“If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan, or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt.

“There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel’s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority.”

Yinon’s vision reappeared in the now infamous “Clean Break” document from 1996, authored by a consortium of US and Israeli “strategic thinkers” that included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David and Meyrav Wurmser, which was meant to serve as a foreign policy blueprint for the first administration of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The text is nothing if not obsessive regarding the need to seriously debilitate Syria’s ability to act in any way is a pole of regional influence in the in the area .

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”

“Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.”

And as Dan Sanchez has recently shown, David Wurmser went into even greater detail about the need to balkanize Israel’s northeastern neighbor in articles published in approximately the same time period, talking quite openly in one essay about “expediting the chaotic collapse“ of Baathist Syria.

Then there is Wesley Clark’s famous interview, given in 2007, in which he revealed the true strategic aims of those running US foreign policy in the wake of the September 11th attacks. In it, he tells of a conversation he had at that time with a Pentagon official who admitted that the real plan was “to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years”.

Those countries, according to Clark, were: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq{ The last one is Iran}. In the same speech, he explicitly ties the hatching of the plan to Richard Perle, head of the cadre of people who wrote in the “Clean Break” document of the paramount importance of putting Israel in position to “shape its strategic environment”.

On September 5th, 2013, Alon Pinkas, the former Israeli Consul General in New York and well-connected member of Tel Aviv’s conservative policy elite described the Syrian conflict in the following terms in the New York Times:

“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win – we’ll settle for a tie,….Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”

I don’t think it can get much clearer than that. The US-Israeli plan in Syria has never been about helping anyone in that country, but rather insuring its effective dismemberment so as to further the perceived “strategic interests” of the Jewish state.

As Tomás Alcoverro, the longtime Mideast correspondent of Barcelona’s La Vanguardia newspaper wrote on 9 October 2015, in reference to the combined Russian and Syrian government attacks carried out during the previous week: “If this joint offensive is successful, the US plan for continuing the war of attrition until both sides are exhausted will lie in ruins”.

Yes, the US and Israelis, have been “faking it” in Syria for a good long time now. And Putin has come along and called their bluff.

And they are not happy about it. Which is why the ongoing campaign of demonization against the Russian leader is being ratcheted up – if that’s possible – to still higher levels of intelligence-insulting hyperbole.

[Satya_anveshi]

Here is the transcript of Gen. Wesley Clark's interview:
Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: "I Think About It Every Day"

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, we’ll hear General Wesley Clark in his own words on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed General Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: http://Www.stopiranwar.com.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.
I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you’re too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don’t know." He said, "I guess they don’t know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military, and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it’s worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the secretary of defense’s office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don’t show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!"
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry. What did you say his name was?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name.
AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran. So when you look at Iran, you say, "Is it a replay?" It’s not exactly a replay. But here’s the truth: that Iran, from the beginning, has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat — a blessing, because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. They couldn’t handle them. We took care of it for them. But also a threat, because they knew that they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq, and they’ve got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein.
But they’re building up their own network of influence, and to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice, either directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the militias. And in that sense, it’s not exactly parallel, because there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they’re offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical attention. That’s not an offense that you can go to war over, perhaps. But it is an effort to gain influence.
And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception, in part because they don’t want to pay the price with their domestic — our U.S. domestic political base, the right-wing base, but also because they don’t want to legitimate a government that they’ve been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change, and we’ve asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq — Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way: We’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.
My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys — they’re not — but that you shouldn’t use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it’s a bad one.

[Satya_anveshi]

There appears to be re-evaluation of the situation and change in tactic from US.

Up until about 3 days ago when it looked like everyone has bought the line that US is exposed and cornered, US wanted to underplay its role and brought out the narrative along:
- there were only 5-6 terrorists trained but we lost money
- Obama did not agree to repeated proposals from everyone including CIA cheif, SoS, SoD, and all kinds of SOBs but only later on, some 12 months ago, relented to funding terrorists
- US did a U-turn and stopped all funding
- US abandoned all terrorists
- and finally, ISIS leadership itself was taken out

But now they may have read something about Putin/Russian strategy and the game is still on. So, they are giving a different narrative:
- Nothing has changed and oh btw we exactly knew what putin is going to do.
- We still support 'moderate' terrorists
- They are channeling the funds into another program
- US provided anti-tanks are causing heavy damage to Syrian tanks
- US has dropped 50 tons of ammunition
- everything same same...just go about killing more people

All the later propaganda items are counter to the prior ones and seeks to restore confidence among jihadis that US has not abandoned them.

[UlanBatori]

SatyaA:
From a link I saw (I thought I posted it but evidently not), the comments under the Al Jazeera article explained that the "50 tons" etc were delivered to the Kurds, who were the "rebels" claimed by US. Apparently the Kurds have **NOT** rebeled against Assad/Damascus regime, but are only interested in saving their land and people from ISIS (and Turkey). IOW this arms transfer had Putin blessing. But it had to be done, as Putin described, in Pigeon-Chessboard fashion, pakistaning/strutting etc to salvage H&D. Makes sense, for once. I sense that matters are in dire straits inside Pentagon/Foggy Bottom, with entire armed forces and diplomatic corps seeing that US H&D has taken a whupping and entire Middle East Policy is getting flushed down the tubes. Probably a time to keep head down and not :rotfl too much. Lots of teeth-gnashing and dog-kicking in progress, no doubt.

50-ton delivery IOW may indicate exact opposite of what is being portrayed - it may be the guys with common sense actually winning a point and getting ammo to the Kurds.

[habal]

YPG is the same force which watched on in kobane when US was air dropping weapons and supplies in broad daylight into ISIS lines when entire YPG and world was looking on with their cameras. USA did this repeatedly just in case there was any confusion on which side they were on. YPG will take all air dropped weapons with a smile but that's just about the limit to which they are going to side with USA. They have trusted the USA and have been betrayed way too often.

[Satya_anveshi]

UB ji, I am skeptical of that story (though I also posted it as news item here) - the timing, the context, and the source of that news makes me read that item in the context that I mentioned above.
Main target of that news as it came about was domestic audience to reassure that it is not a *defeat* and Al J for local dissemination to jihadis. Nothing in Turkish, Russian, Iranian, Iraqi newspaper.

I will continue to check if there are other reports including any ground reports of the recipients of the consignment. There will be some endorsements from Russians if it were true.

[UlanBatori]

If Turkey explodes as I think it will, YPG may become the most coherent and powerful nation in the Middle East after Israel and Iran. KSA's days of coherence may be coming to an end. Why do I think Turkey is headed for explosion? Ppl with sympathies in ISIS camp constitute the voting majority, but the more "secular" minority is probably terrified and getting desperate. ISIS defeat in Syria and Iraq means a very large number of Turkish youth are not coming back home - like what happened to Pakis who drove up into Afghanistan to kill Americans - and stood waiting on the Shomali Plain. So this will lead to govt becoming more shaky, but Islamists, having tasted power in Turkey, won't allow any more free elections, instead will terrorize the 'secularists'. What I can't see is how the cracks will first appear in KSA.

[UlanBatori]

SatyAji: Can't say, I only read the comments under the article. News item itself is an outrage: when Russians are risking their lives to smash Islamic terror, US military is dropping weapons and ammo to the enemy? I don't think that plays too well in the US either. People are not interested in bissing contest with Russia - most agree with Russia on, say, Chechnya policies. So why did BO send that very aggressive mission - and why did Putin not immediately strafe the convoys? They must have seen precisely who picked up the pallets, and pallets dropped from C-17s are not likely to be light. So they needed materials handling equipment to move it. Weren't there Russian drones in the area to take photos? So it only makes sense if the comments were right - deliveries went to Russian-approved recipients.

[Satya_anveshi]

NATO chief urges Turkey to be 'proportionate' in response to attacks

[Satya_anveshi]

Russia says U.S.-led coalition not ready for cooperation on anti-ISIS campaign in Syria - Syrian Newspaper - Oct13, 2015

“We are interested in establishing coordination between the coalition, led by the United States and the countries of the Arab world, including the countries of the Persian Gulf, and our military, so that it’s not only establishing rules to avoid incidents, but so that we could coordinate joint actions. Our colleagues from the coalition are not ready for this yet,” Lavrov said.

[Austin]

from Putins interview he mentioned the trajectory of cruise missile
http://vpk.name/news/142115_vladimir_pu ... brami.html

The trajectory of rockets ran over the territory of the two states on the route they made 147 rotations at a height of 80 to 1,300 meters. "It's not secret information, all of our partners, in any case, at the expert level, aware of the fact that Russia has such weapons "- said the head of state.

[Satya_anveshi]

UN Official: Partition of Syria Possible if No Improvement

Code: Select all

http://www.voanews.com/content/un-says-partition-of-syria-possible-if-no-improvement/3002858.html

GENEVA—
A senior United Nations official warns the partition of Syria is possible if the situation in the conflict-ridden country continues to deteriorate or is left in its current chaotic state.

Staffan de Mistura said he considers the possible partition of Syria as one of the worst-case scenarios, and he said the major powers and Syria's warring factions do not want this scenario to occur.

De Mistura, the secretary-general's special envoy for Syria, however, said he has noted a de facto partitioning already occurring.

“At the same time, the situation could move into a toxic type of cocktail and of a combination of a creeping Afghanistan with shades of Libya and Somalia," he said. "Hence the need of an urgent political process to start now.”

So, Lavrov is in hurry to meet the above mentioned guy.

[Philip]

If there were barely a handful of anti-Assad "rebels",then where did all the billions go,and to whom? This reminds me of that great Iraq scam where Ahmed Chalabi "conned the neocons".
The other gent was the agent "curveball",the most notorious spy who fooled the world was the Iraqi defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.
His fabrications and lies were a crucial part of the intelligence used to justify one of the most divisive wars in recent history. And they contributed to one of the biggest intelligence failures in living memory.
He became known as Curveball, the codename given to him by US intelligence that turned out to be all too appropriate.

But to imagine that the West was actually conned tales a lot of salt to swallow.What about the planeload of billions of $$$ supposedly to buy off Saddam's insurgents in Iraq? A fraction went to the insurgents,the rest disappeared into US pockets,which could only be of those at the highest level. This sham of arming anti-dictator "rebels" is a blatant fraud upon the world and the US taxpayer in particular.It is a sordid story of absolute brigandry where power and pelf are the sole goal of the
Yanqui establishment.

[Y. Kanan]

If there were barely a handful of anti-Assad "rebels",then where did all the billions go,and to whom? This reminds me of that great Iraq scam where Ahmed Chalabi "conned the neocons".
The other gent was the agent "curveball",the most notorious spy who fooled the world was the Iraqi defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.
His fabrications and lies were a crucial part of the intelligence used to justify one of the most divisive wars in recent history. And they contributed to one of the biggest intelligence failures in living memory.

Not intelligence failure, intelligence fraud.

The biggest lie of the Iraq War, still swallowed by many in the west, is that the decision to invade was based on "bad intel". The correct term would be "lies". And the culprit wasn't 'curveball' or some other convenient scapegoat. It was the GW Bush administration ordering the US intelligence community to manufacture evidence and tell bald-faced lies to the American public and the world. The whole administration was in on it and the so-called free press never questioned a thing.

Intelligence failure my ***.

[Philip]

Fraud it was! Thou art right. Tony B.Liar and the Bush brigade were determined to go to war with Saddam even before Dubya Bush was elected. B.Liar is collecting his tainted "commissions" ,now wealth est. to be over $100M thanks to his intense activity on the world's talking circuit and directorships were he doesn't even have to make an appearance at meetings!

[deejay]

The Kurds want to establish a large Kurdish country straddling mostly Iraq, some Turkey and possibly some of Iran. This makes them unpopular with all three establishments of Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

They have their main military arm - Peshmerga. Peshmerga has in the past received military assistance from the US. It was after the Iraq war when the initial no fly zone was made in norther Iraq to protect the Kurds by the Americans. Peshmerga helped US effort in 2003 Gulf war and in capture of Saddam Hussein and as per wiki even assisted in the OBL chase.

However, what to me appears as a reactionary evolution among the Kurds being surrounded by strong Islamic forces, a popular ideology among them is "Socialism" fronted by the PKK. PKK however, has run into major trouble with the Turks and hence all NATO states. They are officially listed as terrorist by NATO. YPG and YPJ are armed citizen initiatives under PKK and its overt political arm. Incidentally, India does not treat or list PKK as a terrorist organisation.

So, this air drop of ammo to the Kurds is not for YPJ / YPG but for the Peshmerga (or officially). On the ground it does not matter. Kurds of different banners are fighting together. They have even taken the fleeing Yezidis under their umbrella and have helped train and deploy a Yezidi militia to fight the ISIS.

Given that Turkey is not allowing ground supply of weapons to Kurds, the US has taken to air drop of weapons.

Mosul is Kurdistan. Isis is sitting on the most important Kurdish city. I expect with fresh arms, the Kurds will relaunch an attack on Mosul. This is interesting because with Raqqa under attack, the ISIS idiots were falling back in to Mosul (Iraq). They might have considered Iraq safer because the Russians are active only in Syria. Now, if the Kurds turn on the heat at Mosul, ISIS will really get tested with no major safe zones.

JMT.

[Singha]

one gets the feeling parts of the US deep state are not under POTUS control and are running their own middle east policy, doing something first and then letting the president deal with any adverse fallout.

same might be case of kunduz airlift where the pentagon probably wanted to bury the jihadis but deep state elements convinced the POTUS to let them go much to disgust of ground level forces.

deep state guangxi networks are probably loathe to let a 5-10 yr outsider like POTUS impose his will on everything unless he is one of their own, which I guess current POTUS is not.

[chetak]

one gets the feeling parts of the US deep state are not under POTUS control and are running their own middle east policy, doing something first and then letting the president deal with any adverse fallout.

same might be case of kunduz airlift where the pentagon probably wanted to bury the jihadis but deep state elements convinced the POTUS to let them go much to disgust of ground level forces.

deep state guangxi networks are probably loathe to let a 5-10 yr outsider like POTUS impose his will on everything unless he is one of their own, which I guess current POTUS is not.

this was always the case. there was a CT that 9/11 would not have been possible if not for this

[habal]

these russians do not seem to be afraid of any TOW show, are they using jammers ?

[Sathish_A]

Russian Smerch in action? It says MRLS

[Singha]

rebels must be really close to damascus if they can simply lob a few rockets like this!!
TOI

DAMASCUS: Two rockets struck the Russian embassy in Damascus on Tuesday sparking panic as several hundred people gathered to express their support for Moscow's air war in Syria, an AFP photographer said.

According to the photographer at the scene, some 300 people had begun to gather for a demonstration thanking Russia for its recent intervention in Syria when the rockets crashed into the embassy in the Mazraa neighbourhood of the capital.

There was widespread panic, but it was not immediately clear if anyone had been wounded or killed.

Opposition fighters in the suburbs of the capital have targeted the embassy in the past but it was not clear if Tuesday's attack targeted the rally.

Russia began launching airstrikes against insurgents in Syria on September 30.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the rockets were fired from the eastern edges of the capital, where Islamist rebels are entrenched.

The Russian embassy has been the target of rocket attacks before.

On September 21, just nine days before it began its air war in Syria, Moscow demanded "concrete action" after a shell hit the embassy's compound in Damascus.

In May, one person was killed by mortar rounds that landed nearby. Three were hurt when mortar rounds landed inside the compound in April.

[Singha]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 335024.cms

Al Nusra leader calls for jihad against Russia in caucasus.

[Austin]

rebels must be really close to damascus if they can simply lob a few rockets like this!!
TOI

Rockets have struck many times in the past near the Russian Embassy