"Russian Air Strikes Unleash Never Seen Before Mass Devastation in Syrian"

newsmax.com ^ | Wednesday, 30 Sep 2015 03:16 PM | Thomson/Reuters

[Trumpinator]

Syrians living in rebel-held areas of Homs province have seen a lot of destruction in four years of war, but say the Russian air force unleashed a whole new level of devastation in air strikes on their towns on Wednesday.

Jets flying at higher altitudes than the Syrian air force emitted no noise to alert the people below to raids reported to have killed at least 33 civilians, including children.

"We have been exposed to a wide range of weapons over the last five years, but what happened today was absolutely the most violent and ferocious, and the most comprehensive in the northern Homs countryside," said a doctor in the town of Rastan, speaking from one of the areas targeted by the jets.

"As I speak to you now the mosque minarets are warning of planes in the sky and warning that gatherings of people should disperse," he told Reuters, declining to be named out of fear for his safety.

He said the 11 people killed in the town, some 12 miles north of the city of Homs, included three children and their father who died along with two visitors when their home was hit. "It was as if the house never was," said the doctor, who helped treat casualties from the attack.

He and others on the ground had no way of knowing for sure the jets were Russian when they struck in the morning. But their altitude, the way they manoeuvred, and later reports that Russia had started air strikes, with Rastan among the targets, left them in little doubt.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Russia-air-strikes-syria/2015/09/30/id/694099/#ixzz3nFoqDbsO Urgent: Rate Obama on His Job Performance. Vote Here Now!

[VerySadAmerican]

Sounds like Russia doesn’t care if they hit mosques.

[redgolum]

You described Russia, not the old USSR.

The Soviets would come in and try to convert the people to their religion of socialism. Not to say they weren’t bloody, but there goal was conversion.

The Russians didn’t try that. They just would fight the other side till they stopped. Didn’t work all the time.

[DungeonMaster]

"We have been exposed to a wide range of weapons over the last five years, but what happened today was absolutely the most violent and ferocious, and the most comprehensive in the northern Homs countryside," said a doctor in the town of Rastan, speaking from one of the areas targeted by the jets.

Did Putin write this?

[knittnmom]

LOL! Love that song!

[ETL]

One part of me wants to cheer them on because it finally looks like something is being done. But then I remember that they utilize muslim miscreants at times.

It's not just their involvement with islamo-terrorists, they have a long history of arming and supporting most of America's foes, including (communist) Cuba, North Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, ChiComs/China, Saddam Hussein, etc...

[Trumpinator]

You must be having a coronary with all this news.

[ETL]

You must be having a coronary with all this news.

And you, Putin butt kisser that you are, must be having multiple orgasms watching your dreamboat Pooty Poo flexing his muscles this way.

[Trumpinator]

Sounds like you are crying for the Muslims in ISIS to me. Trump was right about people like you.

[ETL]

Sounds like you are crying for the Muslims in ISIS to me. Trump was right about people like you.

Russia, as you almost certainly know, is simply using this opportunity as an excuse for moving in and taking over the Middle East with their invaluable resources, natural or otherwise. With the wealth they will plunder there, they will grow even more powerful and no doubt step-up their efforts to retake Eastern Europe. That, and whatever they are planning to do together with the ChiComs, who they have been conducting annual joint war games with since 2005, plus building a major seaport together.

Actually, it's no secret what they and the ChiComs are up to. They're obviously preparing for war with the US and her NATO allies. And YOU, phony S.B. sack that you are, will be cheering them on all the way. If this were my site, I would have booted your and your Putin-worshiping comrade butts to the moon by now.

[ETL]

Sounds like you are crying for the Muslims in ISIS to me. Trump was right about people like you.

Have they even attacked ISIS yet? Last I heard they were bombing enemies of ISIS.

Russia says it’s bombing ISIS in Syria. It’s actually bombing their [ISIS's] enemies

by Zack Beauchamp
September 30, 2015

Russia began bombing targets in Syria on Wednesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has framed his military intervention there as targeting terrorist groups, especially ISIS. And Russia said its strikes today were launched against ISIS.

Don’t believe it. The strikes reported this morning aren’t happening anywhere near ISIS territory and aren’t actually hitting ISIS positions, as a look at the following map from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) should make clear. In fact, Russia is bombing ISIS’s enemies in the Syrian opposition — which makes a lot more sense if you understand what Russia is really trying to accomplish.

According to ISW researcher Genevieve Casagrande, a Russian airstrike this morning appears to have hit Talbiseh, a town in the tan rebel-held swatch just north of Homs, in Syria’s west.

You’ll note that this is nowhere near ISIS territory, marked in gray:

MBkMdvD

“Talbiseh is home to Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, hardline Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, and a number of other local rebel groups,” Casagrande explains. These organizations are generally hostile to ISIS. “The airstrike,” she concludes, “did not hit ISIS militants.”

Michael Horowitz, a senior intelligence analyst at the Levantine Group, says that Russia bombed another town near Homs (Zaafarana) and one (Ltamenah) near the city of Hama, north of Homs. Again, as you can see on the map, none of these are near ISIS territory. According to Horowitz, all of the towns are held by non-ISIS groups.

“Russia targeted only groups that are not ISIS and it may have targeted groups backed by the US,” Horowitz told BuzzFeed’s Borzou Daragahi. “It’s really clear that the airstrikes were not meant to target ISIS.”

This shouldn’t be surprising. Russia is in Syria to prop up Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s ally. The main threat to Assad is not ISIS, which the Syrian leader has often tolerated, but rather Syria’s non-ISIS rebels — including al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise as well as more moderate rebel groups. These rebel groups (along with the Kurds in Syria’s north) are also ISIS’s main enemies in Syria. ...”

More at link:
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/30/9423229/russia-bombing-isis-syria

[ETL]

Sounds like you are crying for the Muslims in ISIS to me. Trump was right about people like you.

Anyway, Russia needs ISIS around in order to justify their self-serving, expansionist actions in the Middle East.

[Ohioan]

Anyway, Russia needs ISIS around in order to justify their self-serving, expansionist actions in the Middle East.

That is a foolish rationalization. While I do not pretend to be able to read Putin's mind, your interpretation is counter-analytic. Putin stands to gain an enormous advantage among world powers if he can morph an air war against Isis--perhaps to save the next Christian community in their path--into unleashing Russian armor to totally crush them. This wins him heroic status with the Saudis, Egyptians & Jordanians. It sets him up for heroic status in a Europe being flooded by refugees and others from the region.

The idea that a man with his historic perspective, and efforts to return aspects of Romanov culture to Russia, would not see this opportunity, is preposterous. Will he seize it? Again, I do not pretend to read his mind. But you can be sure that he sees it.

One other point. Historically the Russians have been far less effective fighting outside of Russia, than in Russia for the motherland. Putin might blink for that reason. It will be interesting to watch it play out, and no American lives need be put at risk!!

[ETL]

The idea that a man with his historic perspective, and efforts to return aspects of Romanov culture to Russia, would not see this opportunity, is preposterous.

His (KGB/FSB Putin's) historic perspective??

"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...

"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."

"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.

If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
______________________________________

“The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century',” Putin said in 2005.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
______________________________________

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor "

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
______________________________________

"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts — in Russia and the West — have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..." (continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[ETL]

From 2014

Yushchenko, hero of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution warns Europe that Putin won’t stop at Crimea

by Matthew Schofield - McClatchy Foreign Staff
March 27, 2014

Many Ukrainians believe you need look no further than the face of Viktor Yushchenko to understand Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Once smooth and ruggedly handsome, it still bears the scars from an assassination attempt when someone slipped dioxin into Yushchenko’s food. ...”

Read more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24765781.html#storylink=cpy
______________________________________________

______________________________________________

From 2007

Yushchenko: Russia blocking poisoning probe
by Bonnie Malkin and agencies, September 12, 2007

"Mr Yushchenko, a pro-European politician who wanted to bring his country [The Ukraine] out of Russia's shadow, fell seriously ill on September 6, 2004 as he was competing in presidential elections against a pro-Moscow candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, now [2007] prime minister.

After months of tests in an Austrian clinic, it was determined that he had ingested a massive amount of the poison dioxin.

Although he survived, his face was left bloated and pockmarked, and he has had to undergo regular treatment to rid his body of the toxin.

In an interview with Le Figaro he said he believed the dioxin used to disfigure him was made in a Russian lab.

Mr Yushchenko did not directly accuse the Russian government of being behind his poisoning, but he did say he had 'practically put all the pieces together' and the attempt against him 'was not a private action'. ..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1562838/Yushchenko-Russia-blocking-poisoning-probe.html

[ETL]

Russia Is Building A Massive Military Base On Ukrainian Border

The Daily Caller ^ | September 10, 2015 | Reuters

Russia is building a military base along the Ukrainian border, signaling its preparing for long-term support of the pro-Russian separatists fighting for Ukraine. The massive base - scheduled for completion in April - will house ammunition depots and barracks for several thousand soldiers, and will be used to train soldiers, reported Reuters. The Reuters reporter investigating the new base was temporarily detained and accused of being a Ukrainian spy. Russian officials didn't respond to Reuters questions about the purpose of the base and whether it's connected to the fight for Ukraine. ..."

*******************************************************************

Russia Plans Second Big Military Base Near Ukrainian Border
Reuters, via freebeacon.com ^ | September 23, 2015 | Anton Zverev

BOGUCHAR, Russia (Reuters) – Russia is planning a second major military base near the border with Ukraine, where NATO accuses Russian troops of helping pro-Moscow separatists fight Kiev’s forces.

The new base will house 5,000 soldiers and heavy weaponry, according to public documents and people working at the site.

It is further east than one under construction in Belgorod region reported by Reuters earlier this month but still close to the border with separatist-held parts of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, where there has been heavy fighting.

The bases are part of a Russian military buildup along a new line of confrontation with the West, running from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltic in the north, which carries echoes of the Cold War-era “Iron Curtain”.

Russia has also increased its military presence in Syria.

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...

[Ohioan]

Nothing in my post, to which you are responding, makes anything in your retort relevant to my points.

Putin has managed a reasonable approach to getting almost all ethnic Russians on board for his perceived over-all mission. That requires his not ignoring the fact that some Russians still have leanings towards very incongruous, and clearly culturally conflicting periods in their recent past (1900 to the present).

But absolutely nothing in what you see as compromising his ethical credibility, from your perspective, argues in the slightest against the historic opportunity he has in Syria.

[jda]

BUT, But, but ... I thought our administration told us they were doomed to failure???

[ETL]

absolutely nothing in what you see as compromising his ethical credibility, from your perspective, argues in the slightest against the historic opportunity he has in Syria.

He does indeed have an "historic opportunity" here. The Middle East has never been entirely under Russia's control before.

What I posted above provided credibility to my 'claims' that his aims there are only to expand Russia's power and influence, part of their overall expansionist agenda. Thanks in part to dopes like you cheering him on, they may very well soon be in control of the Middle East AND, once again, Eastern Europe.

This is in addition to whatever it is they're doing together with the ChiComs, conducting annual joint war games since 2005, building a major seaport together, etc, etc. Actually, it's pretty obvious what they and the ChiComs are up to: they're preparing for war with us and our NATO allies when they begin to make moves in that part of the world.

[Ohioan]

"Dopes like" me are not cheering anybody on overseas. As I stated, I cannot read Putin's mind. But I believe he realizes his opportunity, if he crushes a terrorist State that is totally destabilizing much of the Near East, as well as Europe itself.

Also, while Putin is not a saint, this "dope" also understands that the KGB personnel, were not the ideological promoters of an idiotic Egalitarian/collectivist theory; rather they were highly functional operatives of a counter-intelligence operation. I also believe that Putin's effort to revive the Church in Russia is sincere, and would suggest that he is no longer just another amoral functionary. But, again, I do not pretend to be able to read his mind.