Syria About to Reignite

Putin has been wanting Trump to come to the table. Recent reporting had a Russian spox saying Putin feels slighted they've yet to talk and ties are deteriorating.

IMHO, Putin is now flexing his muscle and making threats to force DT into direct communications.

Declaring a "no fly zone" is an impractical and empty threat, but potential for conflict skyrockets nonetheless. Its mere existence demands communication.

Tillerson is scheduled to go to Russia next week. If Russia was really pissed and prepared to claim all air space and defend it, why haven't they cancelled his trip?

There's no chance in hell they'll fire on an American target simply for operating in Syria without aggressive posturing towards them. :rolleyes1:
 
Brad Austin said:
Putin has been wanting Trump to come to the table. Recent reporting had a Russian spox saying Putin feels slighted they've yet to talk and ties are deteriorating.

IMHO, Putin is now flexing his muscle and making threats to force DT into direct communications.

Declaring a "no fly zone" is an impractical and empty threat, but potential for conflict skyrockets nonetheless. Its mere existence demands communication.

Tillerson is scheduled to go to Russia next week. If Russia was really pissed and prepared to claim all air space and defend it, why haven't they cancelled his trip?

There's no chance in hell they'll fire on an American target simply for operating in Syria without aggressive posturing towards them. :rolleyes1:
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Brad, read link when time permits. It's pretty close to where you are coming from. Most likely Russia will not directly attack US forces as Putin doesn't want an escalation. Russia is in Syria to A) prevent terrorism from spreading and B) to protect Russian interests. Although the Russians do not wish to see a partitioning of Syria, they can accomplish both goals even if a partition happens and/or Assad is no longer President.

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/04/06/how-the-neocons-are-tempting-trump-on-syria/
 
Brad Austin said:
...Declaring a "no fly zone" is an impractical and empty threat, but potential for conflict skyrockets nonetheless. Its mere existence demands communication.....
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Their are other jets there as well, including Turkish, who the Russians have already had an incident with
 
getting actively involved in middle eastern conflicts, be they civil wars or otherwise, is always a good idea because military actions always temper the acts of the involved parties, who are among the most cautious and reflective people in the world.

The President's action cannot have anything but a positive effect on all parties in the region. As in all other matters, I support him unconditionally.

Look for many good things to flow from our latest military action.
 
huisache said:
getting actively involved in middle eastern conflicts, be they civil wars or otherwise, is always a good idea because military actions always temper the acts of the involved parties, who are among the most cautious and reflective people in the world.

The President's action cannot have anything but a positive effect on all parties in the region. As in all other matters, I support him unconditionally.

Look for many good things to flow from our latest military action.
Click to expand...
 
I'd be highly skeptical, but we all know that train is never late. :smile1:

They're already claiming Russians knew about the chemical weapons since they operate from the airbase where they were stored.

Does that make them complicit in this attack? Not at all in my view. Russia wants to use Syria's airstrips to enact their own agenda.

They're not about to direct the host on how to run their own military actions. The verbal distancing from Assad proved they aren't in lockstep with his actions.

It's no different than how the U.S. stays at arms length from Turkey's military actions while we use their airstrips. We fight alongside the Kurds, Turkey has routinely bombed the Kurds, and we rarely expressed outrage.
 
Russia brokered and wrote part of the framework for the 2013 deal.
I am not certain what specific responsibilities they had under it, but even just this week, the Russians admitted they bore the largest burden along with Syria

This is "Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department Director Mikhail Ulyanov" on Wednesday --

"The main burden fell on Damascus and Russia. But the US also made its important contribution," he noted, highlighting the Russian-US cooperation on the issue as "quite successful as a whole."

​
I am pretty sure it was a US Navy ship hauled them away, did the actual destruction and then dumped the results into the Mediterranean. But on the initial accounting and collection in Syria, the Russians were there or the Syrians would have never agreed to it.
 
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Syria Latest Accounting:
- 6 MiG-23 aircraft destroyed
- Runway undamaged
- 2 civilians killed
- 8 wounded
- 23/59 missiles reached airfield
 
there ya go

Bannon argued against the strike — not because of its questionable constitutionality, but on the grounds that it doesn’t advance Trump’s America First doctrine. “Steve doesn’t think we belong there,” one Bannon ally told me. Bannon’s position lost out to those inside the White House, including Jared Kushner, who argued Trump needed to punish the Assad regime.​

 
I am not a fan of this strike, for the same reason Bannon is not, but, for DT to do something HRC said we should do so that the left MUST endorse it is worth the price, IMO.
 
I think "centrist financiers" might be code

C81MWoUXoAAYlsU.jpg
 
Idk if I'm buying the Kushner takeover and abnormal strife in the WH. Sounds like a MSM distortion and distraction like the others before.

There's always going to be conflicting opinions in the room and heated debates as advisers have different past experiences and areas of expertise which easily can conflict.

If the MSM supports you it's simply the strength of a productive team staffed with varied experience, expertise, and necessary voices.

With DT's cabinet it'll always be portrayed as troubling in-fighting and ill will because the MSM wants to delegitimize all the players.

What better way to polarize and erode DT's sturdy base than paint the narrative secret Dems are hijacking and drowning out the nationalist agenda they voted for?

Kushnergate would sound plausible if it wasn't the third major go of this in-fighting narrative involving assorted Trump WH characters.

Seems like every time the MSM starts losing bad (now getting hammered on Rice), one of two narratives explodes again...

1) "Sources" claim Trump associates MAY be in even deeper cahoots with Russia
2) Conflict within the WH and so-and-so is getting pushed out

Priebus was supposed to be gone a long time ago because of Bannon strife. :rolleyes1: I also saw MSM today report rumors Kelley Anne Conway was about to bow out.

So in the last few days Bannon has been overrun by Kushner and being escorted to the door. And Conway is likely following suit. Seems an awful lot like the MSM is creating a familiar controversy to drown out the unmasking scandal that keeps on giving.
 
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Well well, just as I was saying...WH officials say reports of in-fighting overblown.

"Trump has seen the distracting headlines and called on Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to “work this out” on Thursday, a source said.

On Friday night, Priebus held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Bannon to "smooth things over,” a senior administration official said.

The meeting-- first reported by Politico-- went well according to a White House aide who said the desired outcome was to stop the infighting. The two agreed to focus on policy and team unity.

Reports of widening tension and infighting among Trump’s senior staffers—including his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon—are overblown and inaccurate, at least five senior administration officials told Fox News.

The officials responded to reports that Trump is considering a major staff shakeup. Axios, among other reports, cited aides and advisers saying that the move could include the replacement of Priebus --and the exit of Bannon.

“I think stories like that do not help the president,” Kellyanne Conway, a high-ranking aide to Trump told Fox News. “And I think some stories are made to distract from the success that he’s had this week.”

One senior staffer flatly denied a report that Priebus may be ousted potentially for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., an early Trump supporter.

“He is staying,” the senior aide said.

Another senior aide told Fox News that the story was “B.S."

And another White House official said Trump was in an “amazing mood.”

“No staff shakeups here," the official added.

" Once again this is a completely false story driven by people who want to distract from the success taking place in this administration,’’ Principle Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News in a statement Friday.

"The only thing we are shaking up is the way Washington operates as we push the President's aggressive agenda forward," Huckabee Sanders said.
 
Brad Austin said:
....On Friday night, Priebus held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Bannon to "smooth things over,” a senior administration official said......
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Is it in our best interests to be smoothed out?

Jared is a life-long registered Democrat. He an Ivanka somewhat recently financially backed Corey Booker of all people. And a start-up Jared backs, Cadre, is partially funded by George Soros. (Mnuchin, ex of Goldman Sachs, also has long ties to Soros).

Robert Costa who covers politics for the WAPO calls the Jared-Ivanka team "ruthless" --
"No one wants to go against Jared or Ivanka. Now you have Ivanka Trump inside of the West Wing, she’s a federal employee, so there a constant presence in the Oval Office around the president..... They really operate quietly but with some ruthlessness around the administration, having their fingerprints on all aspects of foreign, diplomatic relations, domestic policy."​

Now Jared and Ivanka are filling up the WH with GoldmanSachs-NewYorkers. The most recent being Gary Cohn and Dina Powell. And together, they are grabbing power to the detriment of Steve Bannon. Like Jared, Cohn is a registered Democrat. Powell (UT grad btw) is buds with Valerie Jarrett (who was the architect of Obama's awful Iran deal). Powell's husband had Bill Clinton on the board of his company as well Huma Abedin as an employee.

Is this really who we want in control of the inner workings of the WH?
Is this what we voted for?

Need an example of what this might mean? The promised tax reform is presently changing darkly from what was promised in the campaign. To what? We are actually now considering a VAT tax as well as a carbon tax. Why? In an attempt to appeal to Democrats. Who is behind this shift? Cohn, the open liberal now running free in the White House.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-tax-reform-democrats-236725
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...t-trump-tax-code-overhaul-20170404-story.html
 
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Interesting analysis below. We'll have to see if it pans out this way.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/0...imes-nato-preps-to-fight-iran-and-russia.html

Syria - Truth Slips Through In The New York Times - NATO Preps to Fight Iran And Russia
May 26, 2017

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting piece about east Aleppo. Robert Worth visited it recently and talked to people there. The NYT editors/censors inserted many of their standard slander against the Syrian government, but the can not drown out the realities described therein.

Thus the piece is headline: Aleppo After the Fall but one of the key sentences in it says just the opposite:

Yasser said he was one of the first people to come back [to east-Aleppo], right after what he — like everyone else I met — called the liberation.
Jihadi propaganda claims of government bombing of random hospitals without reason "verified" by a Skype call to some al-Qaeda propagandist in Idleb- are mixed with reality based on-the-ground reporting:

On my second day in the city, I went to see the Aleppo Eye Hospital, a sprawling compound that the rebels had used as a military headquarters. As we walked through the burned and shattered building, my government minder and the soldiers guarding the place kept picking up markers of the rebels’ Islamist leanings. They weren’t hard to find. A fire-blackened car out front still had the Qaeda logo on its hood. ...
Unfortunately the piece also includes factual errors:

The reporter, an Aleppan named Rida al-Basha, described the neighborhoods where [looting] had taken place and named the militias, including the notorious Tiger Forces, whose leaders include well-known thugs.
I do not doubt that looting has taken place after the liberation of east-Aleppo. Those who supported the "rebel" invasion of their city will have lost everything. But looting by the Tiger Force "militia"? The Tiger Force are the Special Operations Division of the Syrian Arab Army, not a "militia". It is led by highly professional officers, not by "thugs". Its leader, General Suheil al-Hassan, has been in the army for over 26 years. The division is armed with Russian T-90 tanks and other heavy assault equipment. It is an offensive unit which has been very busy on various fronts. It is not a mopping up or occupation force for urban areas that would have time for organized looting in Aleppo. The quoted claim is inconsistent with those facts.

But still - the Magazine piece is filled with detailed story of real people who factually tell what the "rebels" have done to their city. How they looted every factory and house down to the copper electricity wire and sold everything off to Turkey. Wherever the story is based on real reporting it confirms the view and position of the anti-Islamist Syrian majority which supports its government. After years of claiming the opposite in its hundreds of anti-Syrian propaganda pieces one wonder how the NYT editors let this pass.

One anecdote even reveals who the Syrians will choose as their future leader:

My Syrian businessman friend told me that he twice gathered about a dozen people for dinner and offered them a hypothetical in strict confidence. It is up to you to name the next president of Syria, he said. Whom would you choose? The guests were all Syrians, and none supported the regime. To his surprise, almost all of them named Assad.
And that, dear reader, is why the U.S. and its proxies are against truly democratic elections in Syria. Their nemesis would easily win and prevent the planned neo-liberal looting of what is left of the Syrian state.

The Islamic proxy forces of the "west", al-Qaeda under its various disguises, Ahar al-Sham and even ISIS are mostly done. The latest especially is no longer a capable military force but is reverting to guerilla levels of operation. Its final defeat will take a long time but it must and will be achieved by local forces.

Despite that the U.S. pressed on NATO members to let the NATO organization join its "fight against ISIS". The single NATO members were already part of the U.S. coalition. But NATO as an organization brings large scale command and control capabilities as well as additional resources. (All under U.S. control.)

Make no mistake - "fighting ISIS" is not the real purpose of the move. The U.S. wants NATO support to invade Syria from the north in Idleb as well as from the south near Deraa and from the south-east starting at the al-Tanf border station to Iraq. Syria and its allies will now be fought under the disguise of "fighting ISIS" which factually can no longer be the purpose. Thus NATO, together with Wahhabi Gulf forces, will now be engaged in an expanded war not only against the Syria government but especially against its Russian and Iranian allies. Trump's endorsement of anti-Iranian rhetoric on his visit in Saudi Arabia served a similar purpose.

Syria and its allies will try to prevent a further invasion by cutting off al-Tanf and holding on to Deraa city - thereby blocking any wider military moves. But those measures will probably be in vain. Unless some sane voices intervene we are now at the beginning of a far wider and more dangerous war that can easily slip out of anyone's control.

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Joe Fan said:
Politifact has now "retracted" this 2014 fact-check...
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There are posters in here who think Politifact are independent, straight forward and honest, possessing no political bias

Yet their largest contributor also happened to bankroll the Clinton Global Initiative.

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