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  • Well THAT was embarrassing:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKBN1HO12N

    False alarm caused Syrian air defenses to intercept a bunch of imaginary missiles.

    Apparently the Syrians atm are in a state of 草木皆兵 , or as we know in the US, scared shitless, shooting at phantoms.
    Last edited by citanon; 18 Apr 18,, 02:32.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by citanon View Post
      Well THAT was embarrassing:

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKBN1HO12N

      False alarm caused Syrian air defenses to intercept a bunch of imaginary missiles.

      Apparently the Syrians atm are in a state of 草木皆兵 , or as we know in the US, scared shitless, shooting at phantoms.
      Well maybe not phantoms but MALD's...ADM-160 is a nifty thing to have.

      Comment


      • It doesn't sound like those were even involved. The idiots were shooting at nothing.

        Comment


        • Apparently Israel and the US "hacked" their Air Defense systems. Would then make one wonder why the hacking wouldn't happened before the operation that had Syrians shoot down virtually all the missiles fired.
          ��������
          "They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

          Protester

          Comment


          • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
            To this day, YOU HAVE NOT SHOWN ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT TRUMP IS COMPROMISED! JUST GIVE US ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE! Not third party rumours. Not your gut feeling. Not your wet dreams. Just GIVE US ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE! You have none.
            Exactly, its all speculation

            The biggest one i've heard to date is, Russian money is keeping Trump's business above water.

            Hence Trump is soft on Russia cos he's compromised.

            Start with that premise and there are any number of lines you can offer to explain his actions or lack thereof towards Russia

            Mueller will somehow uncover all of this and Trump will be impeached.

            Evil vanquished, everybody lives happily ever after

            If Trump fires Mueller, wait for it, then he is guilty as sin

            You just have to BELIEVE : D

            Last edited by Double Edge; 18 Apr 18,, 11:54.

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            • Meanwhile next door to Syria, to the south...

              https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/o...an-israel.html

              SYRIA-ISRAEL BORDER, Golan Heights — Ever since the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and Israel have been fighting each other in the shadows — through proxies, assassination squads and cyber-virus attacks, but never as rival armies meeting on the field of battle. That may be about to change, and if it does, it will have vast implications for Syria, Lebanon and the whole Middle East.

              I’m sure neither side really wants a war. It could be devastating for Israel’s flourishing high-tech economy and for Iran’s already collapsing currency. But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force seems determined to try to turn Syria into a base from which to pressure Israel, and Israel seems determined to prevent that. And in the past few weeks — for the first time ever — Israel and Iran have begun quietly trading blows directly, not through proxies, in Syria.

              They have already gone through two rounds, and Round 3, now pending, could blow Syria sky-high.

              Round 1 occurred on Feb. 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base, in central Syria, was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated northern Israel airspace.

              Initial reports were that the drone was purely on a reconnaissance mission. But the Israeli Army’s spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said Friday that the flight path and Israel’s analysis of the drone indicated that “the aircraft was carrying explosives” and that its mission was “an act of sabotage in Israeli territory.”

              If true, that suggests that the Quds Force — commanded by Iran’s military mastermind Qassem Suleimani — was trying to launch an actual military strike on Israel.

              “This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel — not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.”

              It certainly did, because in Round 2, on April 9, Israeli jets launched a missile strike on T4, the drone’s home base — directly targeting, for the first time, an Iranian facility and personnel in Syria. Seven Quds Force members were killed, including Col. Mehdi Dehghan, who led the drone unit.

              While the Israeli Army spokesman refused to confirm or deny the Israeli raid, Iran’s government unusually highlighted it — and Iran’s casualties — and vowed to take revenge.

              “The Zionist entity will sooner or later receive the necessary response and will regret its misdeeds,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, said Monday.

              So now the whole neighborhood is holding its breath: Will there be a Round 3? Israeli defense officials let it be known that if the Iranians strike back, Israel may use the opportunity to mount a massive counterstrike on Iran’s entire military infrastructure in Syria, where Iran is attempting to establish forward air bases and factories for GPS-guided missiles that could hit targets inside Israel with much greater accuracy — inside a 50-meter radius. Iran also plans to provide the missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

              These Israeli defense officials say there is zero chance Israel will make the same mistake it made in Lebanon — letting Hezbollah establish a large missile threat there — by letting Iran do so in Syria.

              On Tuesday, to drive home that point, the Israeli government reportedly distributed maps to Israeli news organizations showing five Iranian-controlled bases in Syria. All that was missing on them were bull’s-eyes of exactly where Israel will drop its bombs if the Iranians carry out their threats. The message from Israel to the Quds Force was hard to miss: “Beware. We know exactly where to find you.”

              As Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, put it to a gathering of Israeli soldiers on Monday: “We are facing a new reality — the Lebanese Army, in cooperation with Hezbollah, the Syrian Army, the Shiite militias in Syria and above them Iran — are all becoming a single front against the state of Israel.”

              Iran has legitimate security concerns in the gulf; it faces a number of hostile, pro-American Sunni Arab powers trying to contain its influence and undermine its Islamic regime. From Iran’s perspective, these are a threat. I get that.

              But what is Iran doing in Syria?

              Tehran’s building of bases and missile factories in Syria, after having helped President Bashar al-Assad largely crush the uprising against him, appears to be a move by the Quds Force’s Suleimani to extend Iran’s grip on key parts of the Sunni Arab world and advance his position at home in his struggle for power with Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president. The Quds Force now more or less controls — through proxies — four Arab capitals: Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and Sana.

              Indeed, Iran has become the biggest “occupying power” in the Arab world today. But Suleimani may be overplaying his hand.

              Even before the recent clashes with Israel, many average Iranians were publicly asking: What is Iran doing spending billions of dollars — which were supposed to go to Iranians as a result of the lifting of sanctions from the Iran nuclear deal — fighting wars in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen?

              That concern is surely one reason Iran, for all its fist-shaking — has not retaliated — yet. The Israeli airstrike on T4, along with the U.S.-British-French airstrike on the Syrian regime’s suspected chemical weapons facilities, have actually exposed the strategic vulnerabilities of both Russia and Iran in Syria. Their forces are very powerful versus the rebels there, but not so powerful versus the Western forces and Israel. Iran, which has to depend largely on Syria’s air defense system, is particularly exposed to Israel’s Air Force.

              “Russia’s appearance of omnipotence in the Syrian arena has been shattered,” military writer Anshel Pfeffer noted in Haaretz on Monday. “Appearances of power count for a lot in this region.” Russia’s “forces there are insufficient to take on any of the other nations who have operated, and may operate again, in Syria. … The United States, Britain and France, as well as Israel and Turkey, can all deploy larger and more capable forces to the region much faster than Russia can.”

              Suleimani could opt to strike back at Israel through proxies, either in the Middle East or against Israeli targets globally. But he now has to think twice about that, both because his forces in Syria are exposed — and for another reason: Iran is exposed financially. Iran’s currency is collapsing back home. The Iranian rial has lost one-third of its value just this year, which a wider confrontation with Israel would only exacerbate.

              It would seem, in other words, that Suleimani is at odds with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President Rouhani. Putin and Rouhani share an interest in Syria quieting down now, and not becoming a financial drain or a military quagmire — by Suleimani turning it into an arena for a direct war with Israel.

              But economic restraints have never stopped Suleimani and his Quds Force before and may not now. Their ambitions are big — to create a base to pressure Israel directly, to dominate the Arab states around them and to maintain the fervor of the Islamic Revolution. Everyone is basically awaiting Suleimani’s next move. Does he back down, lose a little face, and wait until he is stronger? Does Israel let him?

              These are momentous days for both countries. One thing I know for sure. The status quo is not sustainable.

              Comment


              • OPCW still can't get access to the sites of the chemical attack. You'd think they'd expedite their entry if this attack was a western fabrication

                U.N. team fired upon in Syria while visiting suspected chemical sites | Reuters | Apr 18 2018

                APRIL 18, 2018 / 12:51 PM / UPDATED A DAY AGO

                Anthony Deutsch, Tom Perry

                THE HAGUE/BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.N. security team came under fire in Syria while doing reconnaissance for inspectors to visit sites of a suspected chemical weapons attack, and officials said it was no longer clear when the inspectors would be able to go in.

                The inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are in Syria to investigate an April 7 incident in which Western countries and rescue workers say scores of civilians were gassed to death by government forces.

                OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü said the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) had decided to carry out reconnaissance at two sites in the town of Douma before the inspectors would visit them.

                “On arrival at site one, a large crowd gathered and the advice provided by the UNDSS was that the reconnaissance team should withdraw,” he told a meeting at the watchdog’s headquarters in remarks it later released. “At site two, the team came under small arms fire and an explosive was detonated. The reconnaissance team returned to Damascus.”

                U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis blamed the Syrian government for delays in inspectors reaching the sites and said it has a history of trying to “clean up the evidence before the investigation team gets in.”

                “We are very much aware of the delay that the regime imposed on that delegation but we are also very much aware of how they have operated in the past and seal what they have done using chemical weapons,” Mattis said before the start of a meeting with his counterpart from Qatar.

                The United States, Britain and France fired missiles at Syrian targets on Saturday in retaliation for the suspected chemical use. They say the arrival of the inspectors is being held up by Syrian authorities who now control the area, and that evidence of the chemical attack may be being destroyed.

                Damascus and its ally Moscow deny that any gas attack took place, that they are holding up the inspections or that they have tampered with evidence at the site. Britain’s ambassador to the OPCW Peter Wilson said it was now unclear when the inspectors would be able to reach it.

                The rebel group based in Douma announced its surrender hours after the suspected chemical attack, and the last rebels left a week later, hours after the Western retaliation strikes.

                The U.S.-led intervention has threatened to escalate confrontation between the West and Assad’s backer Russia, although it has had no impact on the fighting on the ground, in which pro-government forces have pressed on with a campaign to crush the rebellion.

                Assad is now in his strongest position since the early months of a seven-year-old civil war that has killed more than 500,000 people and driven more than half of Syrians from their homes.

                DELAY CAUSES DISPUTE

                The OPCW team will seek evidence from soil samples, interviews with witnesses, blood, urine or tissue samples from victims and weapon parts. But, more than a week after the suspected attack, hard evidence might be hard to trace.

                An official close to the Syrian government said the U.N. security team had been met by protesters demonstrating against the U.S.-led strikes.

                “It was a message from the people,” said the official. The mission “will continue its work”, the official said.

                Douma was the last town to hold out in the besieged eastern Ghouta enclave, the last big rebel bastion near the capital Damascus. Eastern Ghouta was captured by a government advance over the past two months.

                Syria’s U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.

                The Syrian “White Helmets” rescue organization, which operates in rebel-held areas, has pinpointed for the OPCW team the places where victims of the suspected attack are buried, its head Raed Saleh said on Wednesday.

                Douma hospital workers who stayed in the town after the army recaptured it have said that none of the people injured on the night of the attack were exposed to chemical weapons.

                Medical charities operating in opposition-held parts of Syria have dismissed those statements as propaganda, given under duress now that government forces control the town.

                Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Toby Sterling in The Hague, Laila Bassam, Tom Perry, Dahlia Nehme and Ellen Francis in Beirut and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Ellen Francis/Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Peter Graff and James Dalgleish

                Comment



                • As Islamic State Fades in Syria, Another Militant Group Takes Root
                  Idlib extremists vow to conquer Damascus and impose Shariah as U.S. weighs quick pullout
                  By Sune Engel Rasmussen
                  April 18, 2018 11:07 a.m. ET
                  https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-islamic ... 1524064045
                  A new and dangerous extremist group spawned from al Qaeda is consolidating power in northwestern Syria, while the U.S. has focused on fighting remnants of Islamic State elsewhere in the country and striking the Assad regime’s chemical-weapons facilities.

                  Since surfacing as the country’s most potent militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has battled Western-backed rebel groups to extend its control across Idlib province, enforcing its version of Shariah and raising funds by taxing flows of people and goods.

                  The group’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a former al Qaeda fighter, has vowed to conquer Damascus and impose Islamic rule across Syria. in a January speech, he exhorted followers to engage in “a war of ideas, a war of minds, a war of wills, a war of perseverance,” according to the SITE Intel Group.

                  Thousands of fighters with the group—an offshoot of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate—have dug in around Idlib, analysts say, as the U.S. concentrates on Syria’s other battles and moves toward what President Donald Trump has said would be a quick exit from Syria.

                  “The area seems to be out of focus for Western powers,” said Hassan Hassan, a Washington-based analyst with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a think tank. “The jihadis are having a honeymoon there.”

                  The group has also fought fiercely against adversaries. In February, after four months of fighting, it announced the surrender of Islamic State cells it defeated in Idlib. In March, it claimed the capture of about 25 villages in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, capturing tanks and armored vehicles.

                  This month, the group has been fighting Syrian government forces with artillery and snipers in Homs, Hama and Aleppo.

                  In areas under its control, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has set up a religious police force similar to that of Islamic State, residents say. It initially rewarded children with sweets for memorizing the Quran, but soon moved to breaking hookah pipes as part of a smoking ban and ordering clothes shops to cover heads of mannequins. Beauty salons were told to ditch makeup, Idlib residents say.

                  In its propaganda, the group likens Syria to a frail ship that can be kept afloat only by Islamic rule of law. Shariah ensures that “the ship doesn’t sink,” goes a slogan of the group. Griping of shortages under its rule, residents retort: “There is no water, so the ship can’t sink.”

                  The group has jailed men and women who socialize without being related, residents say, and closed a university in the town of al-Dana late last year because it held mixed-gender classes. In the town of Saraqeb, where residents last year faced down threats from extremists and held the first direct elections in Syria since 1953, the group has seized control of the local council.

                  “Yes, we are a conservative society, but these actions are very extreme,” one young resident of Idlib said.

                  Compounding the anarchy in Idlib has been the recent arrival of nearly 50,000 people, including rebels, from Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus, the scene of a brutal crackdown by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

                  The new arrivals have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in Idlib, already home to about a million internally displaced Syrians. The poor conditions and lack of jobs has proved fertile ground for the recruiting efforts of extremist groups, which promise to pay anyone willing to fight for a living wage.

                  For now, the Syrian regime has been fixated on crushing smaller pockets of fighters, including with the suspected use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta on April 7, an attack that killed dozens of civilians. But Damascus is now expected to eventually turn its attention to the high concentration of militants in Idlib in what could be as bloody a fight as the battle for Aleppo, which fell in 2016.

                  A week after the apparent chemical-weapons strike, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered military strikes on several regime targets alongside British and French allies. The attack hit facilities connected with Syria’s chemical-weapons program and was unlikely to diminish the regime’s conventional capabilities.

                  Mr. Trump had days before vowed a drawdown of U.S. troops, with Islamic State on the verge of defeat. After the weekend’s strikes his administration stepped up efforts to replace the U.S. military’s 2,000-strong contingent in Syria with troops from allied Middle Eastern countries.

                  Meanwhile, some U.S. officials have expressed worries over the resilience of other extremist groups now supplanting Islamic State. Brett McGurk, presidential envoy to the international coalition fighting Islamic State, has called Idlib “the largest al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”

                  U.S. troops in Syria are mostly focused on eastern Syria, joining Kurdish and other fighters battling the shrinking pockets of Islamic State militants. Turkey has been fixated on preventing a Kurdish militia that it considers terrorists from expanding on its southern border.

                  As a result, a hodgepodge of armed groups, many with extremist agendas, have thrived in Idlib, to the detriment of other forces opposing the Assad regime. “The space for moderate opposition continues to close in the northwest,” said a senior Western official who tracks Syria closely.

                  Hayat Tahrir al-Sham now seeks to control important administrative sectors across Idlib through a body it calls the Salvation Government, which generates revenue by charging residents for electricity and water. HTS also controls the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.

                  Members of HTS couldn’t be reached for comment.

                  “The Salvation Government tries to win people’s hearts by providing services,” one 27-year-old man in Idlib said. “At the same time, they try to dominate people.”

                  Some have pushed back cautiously. University students attend classes in the open. Hospitals have threatened to close if the group interferes in their work. Among its many critics, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is privately known as “Hitish,” an echo of the pejorative acronym “Daesh” that people disdainfully use for Islamic State.
                  ....
                  To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                  Comment


                  • http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/...NT-JASSMs.aspx

                    F-22s were in the air ready to pounce had Russian air defenses attempted to shoot at allied assets.

                    Russian defenses were "energized" but did not engage.

                    USS Donald Cook was protected by F-15Cs flying overwatch out of Europe.

                    http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/...-Disperse.aspx

                    Also, apparently the large number of cruise missiles used may have been aiming to burn up chemical precursors to prevent dispersal.
                    Last edited by citanon; 20 Apr 18,, 10:58.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                      OPCW still can't get access to the sites of the chemical attack. You'd think they'd expedite their entry if this attack was a western fabrication

                      U.N. team fired upon in Syria while visiting suspected chemical sites | Reuters | Apr 18 2018
                      The rebel group based in Douma announced its surrender hours after the suspected chemical attack, and the last rebels left a week later, hours after the Western retaliation strikes.

                      The U.S.-led intervention has threatened to escalate confrontation between the West and Assad’s backer Russia, although it has had no impact on the fighting on the ground, in which pro-government forces have pressed on with a campaign to crush the rebellion.

                      Assad is now in his strongest position since the early months of a seven-year-old civil war that has killed more than 500,000 people and driven more than half of Syrians from their homes.
                      So let me get this straight, Assad is winning the war against the rebels. They had been steadily pushed out of areas they occupied in Douma. He's even allowing them to leave unharmed if they surrender. There is one pocket of rebels left. So Assad decides to do the one thing almost guaranteed to bring on a US missile strike (or maybe more), kill his soldiers and make his life difficult. Yes that makes perfect sense. For some reason I'm getting reminded of a gulf in southeast asia with a name starting with a T...

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Firestorm View Post
                        So let me get this straight, Assad is winning the war against the rebels. They had been steadily pushed out of areas they occupied in Douma. He's even allowing them to leave unharmed if they surrender. There is one pocket of rebels left. So Assad decides to do the one thing almost guaranteed to bring on a US missile strike (or maybe more), kill his soldiers and make his life difficult. Yes that makes perfect sense. For some reason I'm getting reminded of a gulf in southeast asia with a name starting with a T...
                        No, chems means quick surrender. Utimate terror weapon. The modern day equivalent of going Mongol. Less infrastructure damage than barrel bombs. Less house to house fighting. They just surrender. How many times has he used chems so far. We only hear in the news this or that incident.

                        You will get no support from the Indian media about this, they are pretty much towing the Russian line. Example
                        Last edited by Double Edge; 20 Apr 18,, 21:47.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Firestorm View Post
                          So let me get this straight, Assad is winning the war against the rebels. They had been steadily pushed out of areas they occupied in Douma. He's even allowing them to leave unharmed if they surrender. There is one pocket of rebels left. So Assad decides to do the one thing almost guaranteed to bring on a US missile strike (or maybe more), kill his soldiers and make his life difficult. Yes that makes perfect sense. For some reason I'm getting reminded of a gulf in southeast asia with a name starting with a T...
                          Conspiracy theorism is a pretty big thing everywhere, but especially so in places like Syria. Assad says he didn't do it, it was a false flag, and portrays himself and the Syrian people as innocent victims of what he portrays as the tyrannical, sneaky, underhanded Americans. Which delivers him a propaganda coup among his base of support.

                          It wouldn't surprise me in the least if ISIL and groups like JTS/HTS got their hands on some chemical weapons, but that being said, I have a high degree of confidence in the ability of our intelligence agencies to discern with a high degree of confidence whether it was the Assad regime or the Wahabbist/Salafist jihadist organizations who used them.
                          "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                            It wouldn't surprise me in the least if ISIL and groups like JTS/HTS got their hands on some chemical weapons, but that being said, I have a high degree of confidence in the ability of our intelligence agencies to discern with a high degree of confidence whether it was the Assad regime or the Wahabbist/Salafist jihadist organizations who used them.
                            No group that got its hands on chems would be allowed to live for long. The feeding frenzy that ensues would ensure it. Only a state has the resources and that means Assad.

                            I bet IS would dearly have loved to own chems and make videos of what they do to their enemies in full colour
                            Last edited by Double Edge; 20 Apr 18,, 22:50.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                              No group that got its hands on chems would be allowed to live for long. The feeding frenzy that ensues would ensure it. Only a state has the resources and that means Assad.

                              I bet IS would dearly have loved to own chems and make videos of what they do to their enemies in full colour
                              I'll bet there's some low-level, small ball amount of stuff in jihadist organizations' hands. You're right though to imply that the most recent attack and other attacks like it means that there's a state-level actor involved, in this case, Assad.
                              Last edited by Ironduke; 20 Apr 18,, 23:40.
                              "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Firestorm View Post
                                For some reason I'm getting reminded of a gulf in southeast asia with a name starting with a T...
                                Just as an aside, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was not a "false flag" operation by the United States.

                                A damn flimsy excuse to intervene in the Vietnamese civil war, definitely. But not some bullshit conspiracy theory either.
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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