Al-Qaida in Syria Seizes Large Parts of Northern City

Australian Broadcasting Commission ^ | 28 March 2015 | anon

[BlackVeil]

Syrian opposition activists say al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, has seized large parts of the northwestern city of Idlib from government forces. ...

[BlackVeil]

This is very bad news, if true. There has been heavy fighting around Idlib for days, and around Aleppo, also.

[BlackVeil]

An update from Syria.

[BobL]

I got worried when Assad said he’s willing to negotiate earlier this week. Maybe Iran, which I think is the only country helping him, at this point, pulled back a bit while they got the US president by the gonads on this nuke-deal. Hopefully Assad gets past this - he may not be an angel, but there are still millions of Christians whose lives depend on him.

[BlackVeil]

Thanks for the reply, and I agree entirely. These types that are trying to seize Idlib are the worst of the worst - no Christian would be left with life or property.

[Viennacon]

So Obama ‘halted ISIS’ and Al Qaeda pops up in their place. I’d say we had a JB president, but really he’s just a Kenyan Marxoid

[cookcounty]

"The Nusra Front is leading a group of ultra-conservative rebels in a major offensive that began earlier this week to take Idlib, near the border with Turkey. If the city falls, it would be the second provincial capital and major urban center lost by President Bashar Assad's forces."

If al-Nusra is "Ulta-conservative," does this mean Assad is a liberal? Or ultra-liberal? How about if the press would at least call him an "ultra-leftist?" Which is EXACTLY what this socialist pro-Soviet ogre is.

[tanuki]

IMO, more likely, the Iranians are finding it hard and expensive to maintain two theaters at once.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BlackVeil. Just who is this Al Nusra guy?

Just to get this straight --

• the Iranians put 19,000 troops into Syria almost four years ago, to prop up the monstrously violent hereditary dictatorship of Assad Junior
• the Soetero administration failed to do much of anything in Syria, giving lip service at best to supporting the indigenous revolution under way
• the Turks stepped in to support the FSA, which got its ass handed to it by al Qaeda affiliates; meanwhile...
• Iran, sometimes using its proxy Qatar:
  • funded al Qaeda in Iraq
  • funded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
  • funded Boko Haram in western Africa
  • funded the overthrow of Ghaddafy in Libya, and the subsequent murders of US embassy personnel
  • funded the Shiite jihadists in Yemen and allied itself with the longterm dictator of Yemen after his ouster
  • funded Hamas
  • funded Hizbollah
  • funded other thugs around the world
• the Iranians got the Russians to help them with their nuclear weapons program
• the Iranians got the Russians and North Koreans to help them with their missile program
• the Russians also backed Assad Junior in Syria
• the Gulf Cooperation Council supported the Egyptian majority and Morsi was overthrown
  • Assad Junior strutted and clucked his satisfaction about Morsi's overthrow
  • Israel expressed quiet approval
  • Iran screamed about his overthrow
  • Erdogan in Turkey scolded and bitched about Morsi's overthrow
  • Soetero and his gang of criminals, who'd backed Morsi to the hilt, threatened to pull US aid to Egypt
  • Rand Paul also opposed the overthrow of Morsi
• ISIS went from being a storefront to being a far-flung success, from the Middle East in the middle to southern Asia in the east to Africa in the west
• ISIS overran a big chunk of Iraq, almost without opposition
• Iran let their Iraq puppet regime oust one puppet, install a weaker one, while turning the various Shiite jihadists in Iraq into a more or less unified force under Iranian command
• ISIS became a threat to al Qaeda in Syria, as well as the Kurds
• the Turks did nothing to resist or obstruct ISIS, instead undermining the Kurds
• the Iranians [ditto]
• Soetero helped out with some airstrikes
• the US convinced the UAE and Jordan to help the Kurds
• Jordan lost a pilot to ISIS executioners, and responded by executing some ISIS criminals in their custody
• Saudi Arabia hires Pakistani troops for national defense
• Yemen disintegrated, Iran's proxies ran wild all over it, practically no coverage of the events
• Soetero drags the US through another humiliating retreat in Yemen
• Iran attacked ISIS at Tikrit
• the Iranian propaganda stream had victory in the grasp of the Iranians and their proxies
• the propaganda was wrong of course
• Soetero helped out with some airstrikes, presumably part of his ass-kissing to try to get a fake nuclear deal with the mullahs
• Yemen's gov't collapses and flees
• the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, and former Iranian-ally-of-convenience Sudan, and Jordan, move against the Iranian proxies in Yemen, by air, land, and sea
• Soetero rushes toward the fake nuclear deal, while partisan media shills examine the final text long before anyone is supposed to know what it is, and prepare their talking point memorizations
• While Iran's attention is focused on what will prove to be a long bloody fight in Iraq, the threat of ISIS to al Qaeda and al Nusra is removed, and Assad's regime is again under attack
• FINOs ignore all of the above, and complain about John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, (private citizen) Mitt Romney...

[BeauBo]

Apparently, this al Queda affiliate made good use of American TOW missiles, supplied to the "moderate" opposition.

[BeauBo]

This may also have been part of the very bad week that Iran had.

The Americans shunted aside their militias in Tikrit and took over the battle.

The Saudis launched against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, with a pack of other countries, including Egypt firing warning shots at Iranian vessels.

On the Turkish front, the Iranian-backed Assad Regime got torn a new one.

Maybe its that spry new Saudi King hitting the ground running.