The Syrian Conflict Thread

[snoopdoggydog]

Waiting to see if any of these missiles hit any hospitals in Iran

 

[Segg]

They only missed by two countries

Seems like the bark is more severe than the bite

 

[AntiGanda]

A U.S. government source ....


How would they even know?

 

[stricken]

Let's believe everything Reuters tells us, it's the right thing to do

 

[stricken]

And this Assad "regime" pales in comparison to the human rights violations the US has unleashed for the last 2 decades. More like the US regime, and the Syrian government.

 

[HavocXphere]

And SA wants to purchase a bunch of nuclear reactors from these guys...

 

[The_Assimilator]

Let's believe everything Reuters tells us, it's the right thing to do

I guess Al Jazeera and Russia Today are more reliable sources, huh?

 

[The_Assimilator]

Syria crisis: Russian missiles 'fell on Iran'

Oops. I guess it's not a human rights outrage if the USA isn't responsible.

 

[Kenny]

Oops. I guess it's not a human rights outrage if the USA isn't responsible.

Pics or it didn't happen

 

[Nerfherder]

And this Assad "regime" pales in comparison to the human rights violations the US has unleashed for the last 2 decades. More like the US regime, and the Syrian government.

Where did the US mustard gas its own citizens and behead children ?

 

[stricken]

wowzee.... ya'll need jesus.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Snoopy, there is a Syria thread. Please keep it in there and stop making new threads for everything.

 

[Dave]

True, it was a technical point.

It's just that the wingnut narrative is all about the US 'creating' ISIS, which simply isn't true. It's much more accurate to say the stupid war created a power vacuum which the group exploited.

I agree 100%, the idiots with tinfoil going "ISIS is a US creation" are certifiable, as you say (and what I meant) is that the US mismanagement of Iraq and the ineptitude of the government that they left in Iraq allowed ISIS to grow and become as powerful as it has.

 

[Drifter]

Waiting to see if any of these missiles hit any hospitals in Iran

I'm pretty sure the missiles have reached their targets by now.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

I agree 100%, the idiots with tinfoil going "ISIS is a US creation" are certifiable, as you say (and what I meant) is that the US mismanagement of Iraq and the ineptitude of the government that they left in Iraq allowed ISIS to grow and become as powerful as it has.

We're on the same page then.

Found this interesting:

Russian missiles crash in Iran: what we know

Russia's high-tech military gear is just not that great

For all Russia's military might — its force, one of the largest in the world, has been modernizing in recent years — its higher-tech equipment such as cruise missiles has long lagged behind Western standards.

Cruise missiles are particularly difficult technology, flying many hundreds of miles at high speed, often automated. Early American cruise missiles also crashed often, requiring many years of testing and refining before they worked as well as they do now, and the Russian land-attack cruise missiles here are recently developed.

This is a helpful reminder of a fact that is often forgotten in Washington but is remembered all too well in Moscow: The Russian military is formidable, but it is a generation or more behind American forces. After a week of hyperventilating American coverage of Russia's Syria intervention, this should be a reality check.

The Washington Post's Andrew Roth and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a few days, had this quote in a story explaining why Russia's military is unlikely to turn the tide in Syria:

"We are basically novices in this type of war," said Ruslan Pukhov, a defense expert and director of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, in an interview. "And when you are a novice, you are doomed to commit some kinds of mistakes. Hopefully not deadly ones, but obviously there is a risk of casualties."

It is also a worrying indication that inaccurate Russian launches risk increasing already sky-high civilian casualties in Syria.

 

[Grant]

Russia will pay price for Syrian airstrikes, says US defence secretary

Moscow will soon start paying the price for its escalating military intervention in Syria in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties, the US defence secretary has warned, amid signs that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are preparing to counter the Russian move.

Ashton Carter was talking at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday during which the ministers agreed to increase a Nato response force intended to move quickly to flashpoints.

Saudi Arabia, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, was said by diplomats to be preparing to step up its support, having despaired of the US. Ministers from Qatar and Turkey, the Saudis’ partners in the fight against Assad, are holding talks on their next moves.
Riyadh’s anger over Vladimir Putin’s intervention was reflected in a statement by 55 leading clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.
“Russia has created a Frankenstein in the region which it will not be able to control,” warned a senior Qatari source. “With the call to jihad things will change. Everyone will go to fight. Even Muslims who sit in bars. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. Imagine what will happen if 1% of them join.”

Saudi Arabia continues to insist that Assad must go, and cannot be part of any political transition, as the US, Britain and other western countries have signalled. It is expected to boost its financial aid to rebel groups and deliver weapons via the border with Turkey. Officials said they were watching to see if King Salman cancels a planned visit to Moscow next week.

Overnight, the Russian defence ministry said its planes had carried out more bombing missions over Syria. “Russian warplanes conducted 22 sorties overnight. The crews of Sukhoi Su-34, Sukhoi Su-24M and Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft struck 27 terrorist targets on Syrian territory,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry claimed to have destroyed eight Islamic State (Isis) strongholds near populated areas in the Homs province, and hit 11 training camps affiliated with the jihadi group in the Hama and Raqqa provinces.
“As a result of the strikes, the infrastructure used for the training of terrorists has been destroyed,” the statement said.

The Russian air campaign increasingly appeared to be coordinated with a Syrian army advance in north-western Syria against non-Isis rebel groups. The Syrian regime army’s chief of staff, Gen Ali Abdullah Ayoub, announced “a vast offensive to defeat the terrorist groups” and restore control over opposition-held areas.

In his remarks, Carter said that the Russian military campaign, including airstrikes and ship-launched cruise missiles, were not targeting Isis but represented a Russian decision “to double down on a longstanding relationship with Assad”.
“They have initiated a joint ground offensive with the Syrian regime, shattering the facade that they are there to fight Isil [Isis],” he added. “This will have consequences for Russia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks. In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties.”

Carter said that Russian missiles had been fired without giving notice to other states in the region and came within a few miles of hitting a US drone over Syrian airspace.
“We’ve seen increasingly unprofessional behaviour from Russian forces. They violated Turkish airspace ... They shot cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea without warning,” the defence secretary said. But he restated a US refusal to coordinate its own air campaign against Isis with Russian forces because of Moscow’s emphasis on supporting the Syrian president. Aircraft bombing Islamist militants in Syria were re-routed at least once to avoid a close encounter with Russian planes.

Germany’s defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said Russia must recognise that if it targeted opposition groups in Syria that are fighting Isis, “Russia will strengthen Isis and this can be neither in the Russian interest, nor in our interest”.

Jaysh al-Fateh, a coalition of Islamist rebel factions, conquered most of Idlib in a spring offensive, forcing the regime to abandon the province. Russian airstrikes have repeatedly targeted the province over the past week, though there is no known Isis presence in the area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Russian planes also bombed targets on the outskirts of the historic city of Palmyra, which was seized by Isis in May, and the town of Qaryatain, which was also seized by the militants this summer and whose Christian residents have either been taken hostage or fled. Syrian state TV said airstrikes also hit Isis positions in northern Aleppo.

It is unclear if the Assad regime will be able to score major ground advances against the rebels following years of vicious warfare that has sapped his armed forces, and amid widespread dereliction of duty among its conscripts, while facing rebels who are united by their anger at the Russian intervention.

“Russia is primarily targeting opposition fighters, and this could end any future peace process in Syria and strengthen the role of Islamic State and the extreme factions that do not want peace, whether they support or oppose the regime,” said the SOHR’s director, Rami Abdul Rahman.

full story
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...airstrikes-ashton-carter-us-defence-secretary

 

[cybershark]

And so it begins, the third force in this story no one was talking about

Saudi Arabia, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, was said by diplomats to be preparing to step up its support, having despaired of the US. Ministers from Qatar and Turkey, the Saudis’ partners in the fight against Assad, are holding talks on their next moves.
Riyadh’s anger over Vladimir Putin’s intervention was reflected in a statement by 55 leading clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.

Russian tactics in Chechnya over the years show they learned nothing from Afghanistan.

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

Russia is burning all the cockroaches out of their hiding places. Good to see.

 

[Alan]

I agree 100%, the idiots with tinfoil going "ISIS is a US creation" are certifiable, as you say (and what I meant) is that the US mismanagement of Iraq and the ineptitude of the government that they left in Iraq allowed ISIS to grow and become as powerful as it has.

How Obama Abandoned Democracy in Iraq

General O had tried hard to support the leadership of Chris Hill, the new American ambassador who had taken up his post in April 2009. But Odierno had begun to despair. It was clear that Hill, though a career diplomat, lacked regional experience and was miscast in the role in Baghdad. In fact, he had not wanted the job, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had persuaded him to take it; she admitted as much to General O, he told me, when he met her in early 2010 in Washington to discuss the dysfunction at the embassy. General O complained that Hill did not engage with Iraqis or with others in the diplomatic community—his only focus appeared to be monitoring the activities of the U.S. military.

It was frightening how a person could so poison a place. Hill brought with him a small cabal who were new to Iraq and marginalized all those with experience in the country. The highly knowledgeable and well-regarded Arabist Robert Ford had cut short his tour as ambassador to Algeria to return to Iraq for a third tour and turned down another ambassadorship to stay on in Iraq and serve as Hill’s deputy. But Hill appeared not to want Ford’s advice on political issues and pressured him to depart the post early in 2010. In his staff meetings, Hill made clear how much he disliked Iraq and Iraqis. Instead, he was focused on making the embassy “normal” like other U.S. embassies. That apparently meant having grass within the embassy compound. The initial attempts to plant seed had failed when birds ate it all, but eventually, great rolls of lawn turf were brought in—I had no idea from where—and took root. By the end of his tenure, there was grass on which the ambassador could play lacrosse.

 

[Grant]

ISIL kills top Iranian commander in Syria

Iranian military commander Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani has been killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the northern outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo, Iran's army has said.

The rebels killed Hamedani overnight on Thursday, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) - the elite branch of the Iranian army - said in a statement carried by Sepah News on Friday.

The Brigadier General was providing military advice to the Syrian army in the country, Iran's Press TV reported.

IRGC said in its statement that Hamedani had been playing an "important role... reinforcing the front of Islamic resistance against the terrorists".

Iran is a staunch ally of President Bashar al-Assad, sending Revolutionary
Guard forces and military advisers to aid him against rebels seeking his
overthrow.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/isil-kills-top-iranian-commander-syria-151009074246576.html