Posted on 10/12/2015 9:09:00 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Obama’s express desire to avoid one.
The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended.
So successful have they been in driving rebel gains in northwestern Syria that rebels call the missile the “Assad Tamer,” a play on the word Assad, which means lion. And in recent days they have been used with great success to slow the Russian-backed offensive aimed at recapturing ground from the rebels.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
https://youtu.be/QwQmO1YoR1M
I dont believe there is one “moderate” rebel in the whole country.
If any of those groups take over, we lose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3NjFgdGkg
“I dont believe there is one “moderate” rebel in the whole country.
If any of those groups take over, we lose.”
That doesn’t stop the NWO ObamaCons from playing the ein reich, ein volk, ein fuhrer card. It is a powerful card, but mingling the mania of NeoCons with the depraved objectives of the Obama administration is a difficult sell.
This is all looking ever so much like the Carter years except that Russia/USSR did not then get into control of chokepoints like the Dardanelles and Suez which they effectively have now even as the Chicoms have taken control of the South China Sea through which 40 or so % of cargo passes. And Carter did not manage to do the level of damage to the military that has been accomplished by the Sultan. Carter thought he would be re-elected. The Sultan knows he will not be.
Assad created the FSA. He, like Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian President and also a pal of Putin’s criminal enterprize, Assad fired on civil protesters merely exercising their displeasure with the Assad criminal socialist dynasty. Assad, again, created the FSA. ISIS filled the void after the failure of the FSA when Putin supplied enough weapons that Assad would not fall quickly. ISIS is rarely attacked by Assad or Putin’s force. They’re more interested in eliminating those who are not Islamists than those who are. That should tell you something.
Putin told Obama years ago to stay out of it. It is not our fight and we have no business being in Syria. We don’t even have diplomatic ties with Syria and we closed their embassy in DC in June 2014.
Who is the “non-islamist” opposition?
“We are not foreigners who can easily leave,” he added, contrasting his unit to the Nusra Front and the Islamic State, which have attracted foreign fighters. “We belong here, and our families and land are here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-russia-airstrikes.html?_r=0
MSM=Blame America first.
Well, how and why is it Putin’s fight? It’s Putin’s fight so that he can maintain his anti-American alliance with Iran and Assad, you Putinista. That’s why Putin’s building a nuclear capability for Iran and providing it with sophisticated air defense weapons. It’s why Putin attacks the Free Syrian Army made up of former Syrian soldiers and leaves ISIS alone, as does Assad. Putin is the problem in Ukraine and in the Middle East, and no anti-American is going to be able to change that by cheering him on.
I don’t see a thing here about non-islamists.
Nice try but no sale. Peddle your mis-information campaign somewhere else.
Nobody over there is non-islamist or innocent.
This is a Sunni - Shite conflict and tribal warfare just like it has been for the last 1,400 years.
Go fight your own battles and leave the rest of us out of it.
And now Iraq has asked also for Putin's help.
Russia has always been active in the Middle East.
I would love to be wrong and believe there is some moderate Muslim group fighting in Syria that wants a democracy or at least a livable society with peace for Christians. I just don’t know if it exists
I think it is simpler than that. The man is a Sunni mohammedan, paynim, saracen, mussulman, the head of the American branch of the Moslem Brotherhood, and is doing what any Moslem who finds himself in charge of the affairs of the nation that is the primary obstacle to the rapid expansion of the umma would do. Everything he has done that seems so incompetent or insane in the context of American history and constitution is quite rational and methodical for a Sunni Moslem. That even explains his nuclear arming and protection of Shia Iran. He is promoting an Iranian nuclear attack on Iran and on America itself to thereby take out Sunni Islam’s three greatest enemies all at once. Russia is complicating that strategy at this moment.
Exaclty, russia has been in Syria for ages and in egypt before that.
The only reason we have been dominant in Saudi is we had a better deal, more money and the Saudis thought more power.
I’m surprised we got as far as we did having been in an even stronger alliance with Pahlavi in Iraq. I don’t know if he was a Shite or another “neutral” mooslim like Assad.
The guy you responded to claims to have left Iraq in ‘05. I don’t know what he did there or learned there.
Simpler? My eyes are rolling backward! lol.
Here is simpler: Step back and let them sort it out and kill as many of each other as possible. Check back and throw in more weapons. Repeat until all are dead.
We need to find our own energy somewhere else. ME oil is too expensive. Almost always has been.
Hussein has set us up for a proxy war with the ex Communist-bloc. He wanted to get the American military out of the ME after he had pretty much wiped out the anti Islamic regimes in favor of the jihadists and chaos. Now the Russians complicate things and he may have to fight them to keep the islamicization of everything viable and on track.
There is no such thing, and you know it.
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