Posted on 02/15/2018 1:11:53 PM PST by BeauBo
The articles describing the SU-25 being driven off by F-22s who were then driven off by a SU-35S appeared Dec 14, 2017. The latest incident occurred on or about Feb 9, 2019; there was no Russian air cover by every account I’ve seen. In fact, one Russian report laments the lack of same.
“what kind of our bombs do that?
“He said many of the injured had shrapnel in their bodies that was not showing up on X-rays”
I would guess some submunitions, either from Artillery rockets like MLRS or HIMARS, or from an aerial cluster bomb.
They are often internally wrapped with a notched wire, which spreads out a relatively evenly distributed spray of small wire segments - effective against fine electronics and personnel.
>With the sometime exception of the Russians, just about everyone else he lists can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. They’re good only at killing civilians.
actually they’re probably good enough fighters-if they have a fair amount of Russian support backing them up.
“we don’t know if there were other companies (besides Blackwater) that didn’t get anybody arrested so they didn’t become part of the general consciousness.”
Lots and Lots of people know. You are just fantasizing here. Baselessly. Blackwater did not conduct large combined arms combat operations like Wagner just tried. We had plenty of Marines and Mechanized Infantry units for any such mission - and there were damn few such missions after the initial invasion (Fallujah is the most notable exception).
They (Wagner) have an office in Hong Kong, like ships are flagged in the Bahamas - a legal convenience. Maybe its a post office box and cute little local receptionist. Maybe its the same office Snowden checked into for his flight to Moscow.
Their people are overwhelmingly Russian military, their training base is in Russia, and their equipment (including such dime store items as Main Battle Tanks, with their full logistics tail and ammunition) are Russian.
One would have to be willfully blind to not see that they exist only at the pleasure (and with the support) of the Russian State. No countries are fooled by their shallow pretext, and quite clearly, the United States will not let them play it both ways.
Russia has to rethink that deniable surrogate strategy - their bluff has been called.
“The only thing that fits is Putin was testing Trump... Putin gambled with his merc’s.”
I agree. He gambled and lost. If he had captured the oil fields, any future Kurdish region would be considerably poorer and weaker, and Assad’s regime would be significantly enriched and strengthened.
The Iranians recently engineered the capture of the much larger oil fields around Kirkuk from the Iraqi Kurds, shifting the strategic calculus there significantly. In Iraq however, the Iranians exploited rivalries among the Kurds, to engineer a relatively uncontested handover of positions from PUK Peshmerga to Iranian-supported Hashd al Shaabi militias, with the support of the Government in Baghdad. I suspect that they may have covertly murdered Jalal Talabani (former PUK leader), because they could cut that deal with his son shortly afterward.
The Russians however, tried to shoot in and grab the al Omar fields, apparently hoping that they could do it before Americans reacted (or that the Americans might not have the balls to engage them on that scale). Bad gamble.
I am guessing that once things went South, none of the regular Russian military command would take personal responsibility for blowing the deniability cover story, so they left their boys exposed in the open desert for hours getting shot up, like fish in a barrel, rather than admit to the Americans that they were theirs.
Thanks for link to Buchanan article. The takeaway from it and on the entire situation is:
“What this signals is that, though ISIS has been all but evicted from Syria, the U.S. intends to retain that fourth of Syria as a bargaining chip in negotiations.”
“” “” They have guards around Putin campaign billboards now, no way is he a popular leader at this time, check the news.”” “”
You don’t have to be unpopular to have your billboard vandalized. A few ‘activists’ might do it without much popular support.
Maybe so, but what a colossal mistake to go up against a battle hardened, well equipped and supported US military.
The US military do NOT play fair. They will take you out ten times over, regardless of who you are and your strength.
But those Marines and mechanized unit didn’t allow us to hide the number of casualties. We know for a fact that we supplemented troops for offensives, the “Surge” was supplemented with locals that became the core of ISIS when we stopped giving them things to do. So if somebody is fantasizing here it’s you. Your confidence goes 100% counter to known facts.
We had different reputations under different administrations.
Thank God Trump is in power.
Moscow not happy.
Believe what you want to. When you say something like “We know for a fact” and then state an off the wall ISIS conspiracy theory, I lose faith in the objectivity of your analysis.
It reminds me of Mark Twain’s quip that, it’s not so much what we don’t know that’s the problem, as it is what we do know, that just ain’t so.
The core that became ISIS was alQueda in Iraq. And to a lesser degree, the Ba’ath Party. We were steadily hunting and killing them, every night.
Good gawd..
You Putin Russkie Useful Idiots are working this RT crap full time.
ECHOROPE
It wasn’t a conspiracy, it was a $#%& up. We recruited fighters, used them, then were stupid enough to be shocked when they turned against us. Known facts.
http://theweek.com/articles/589924/brief-history-isis
Fast forward to the U.S. “surge” in 2007: The U.S.-installed, Shiite government in Baghdad began reaching out to Sunni tribes, encouraging them to reject AQI. By this point, AQI was basically defeated and it looked like peace was coming to the Middle East (kinda).
The article that you linked says nothing about the US recruiting AQI. I think that you may be confusing Syria during the Obama Administration (when the US did covertly support a variety of jihadis) with earlier times in Iraq. AQI existed in Iraq as a guest of Saddam’s government for at least a decade.
You think the Iraqi government was recruiting allies without our involvement?!
Face it, we use puppet armies just like the Russians. Sorry you have a polyanish view but out here in reality the American government is dishonest and sleazy.
I was there for the Sahara (Awakening) movement, where the US Government led the Shi’ite Government into outreach/reconciliation with the Sunni Tribes. Yes, they were brought into the Government’s Security forces with salary and small arms, but never to the degree that Shia militias are today, with tanks and APCs. When al Queda conquered those areas, Sahara leaders were swiftly rounded up and executed, using careful led researched lists.
They were brought in. That’s my point. Brought in and used in combat to lower our body counts. Just like Blackwater and the other mercenary outfits, just like Putin is doing. It’s an old trick, we did it in Viet Nam. If the people aren’t behind your war, and are paying attention to the body count, spread the bodies to areas where they don’t count.
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