Obama’s Syria Plan Teams Up American and Russian Forces

Obama’s Syria Plan Teams Up American and Russian Forces by Josh Rogin, Washington Post

The Obama administration’s new proposal to Russia on Syria is more extensive than previously known. It would open the way for deep cooperation between U.S. and Russian military and intelligence agencies and coordinated air attacks by American and Russian planes on Syrian rebels deemed to be terrorists, according to the text of the proposal I obtained.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to discuss the plan with top Russian officials in a visit to Moscow on Thursday. As I first reported last month, the administration is proposing joining with Russia in a ramped-up bombing campaign against Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which is also known as the Nusrah Front. What hasn’t been previously reported is that the United States is suggesting a new military command-and-control headquarters to coordinate the air campaign that would house U.S. and Russian military officers, intelligence officials and subject-matter experts.

Overall, the proposal would dramatically shift the United States’ Syria policy by directing more American military power against Jabhat al-Nusra, which unlike the Islamic State is focused on fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While this would expand the U.S. counterterrorism mission in Syria, it would also be a boon for the Assad regime, which could see the forces it is fighting dramatically weakened. The plan also represents a big change in U.S.-Russia policy. It would give Russian President Vladimir Putin something he has long wanted: closer military relations with the United States and a thawing of his international isolation. That’s why the Pentagon was initially opposed to the plan…

Read on.

Comments

We have seen the killing fields of Cambodia, the killing fields in Africa, the killing fields in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia...AND we have repeatedly stated "we will never again allow it to happen"....

BUT under a US President who supposedly has won a Nobel Peace Prize for what I am not sure...he has led the US down a path of so called "ethnical FP" that has in fact turned the world upside down as Obama has tried to implement his FP vision in a world that did not have yet the right structures in place to accommodate the US changes.....

AND worse of all the Obama FP quietly ever so quietly negated 70 years of US FP in the ME BY fully supporting and titling to Iran and Russia opening a can of worms that will haunt the US for tens of years to come....

ANOTHER day in the Obama WH being TOTALLY complicit in genocide the same "killing fields" the US once sworn "would never again be allowed to happen"......BUT this time is it happening WITH US support.....

We are now seeing genocide being practiced right in front of our faces AND the Obama WH remains totally silent.....

JUST FROM TODAY.....and Obama and Kerry called themselves humanitarians and diplomats....really??? Some in the ME are now formally posting via social media they are killers as much as Assad and Putin are...

AND the genocidal deliberate killing of civilians continues in our face up close and personal...YET the entire West led by the non action of the US ABSOLUTELY says not a single word....

THIS is just how bad the Obama so called Syrian strategy has gotten the West....leaderless.....in all aspects of FP.....

9 killed, 70 injured in fresh Russian cluster munition strikes targeted Bustan al-Qasr district #Aleppo

Actually when one thinks about it JaN (AQ) now rebranded as JFS HAs in fact never killed as many civilians as Assad and Putin together, has never even uttered a single threat against the Us and has never attacked the US....NOW is seen inside Syria as a TRUE "white knight in shining armor"....

AND the US is being seen as being just as complicit in killing Syrian Sunni's as Assad and Putin.....

Aleppo today: Victims of airstrikes under rubble with no one to dig them out
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/24092016#…

Syria 130 people in #Aleppo killed yesterday by airstrikes, this morning 35 dead #genocide

All #Aleppo SCD teams and volunteers active across the city, hundreds trapped under rubble from indiscriminate air strikes Hospitals overwhelmed

I have said over and over on this thread and on the Syrian thread that this Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH thing of "doing nothing stupid" is creating problems that will haunt the US literally for the next ten or so years...

As the genocide and war crimes increase and as the photos.....many I posted yesterday trying to reflect the true horror involved in "not doing anything stupid" starts to impact the global Sunni community...we will wonder in the coming years WHY it was non US actions in Syria that drove jihadism to increase and why IS and AQ will not be beaten in the short and mid term....

WHO would have ever thought that Obama would actually be supporting now IS and AQ....????

I am not the only one that has seen this coming a mile off and I do not sit in DC or work for a think tank......

Kyle W. Orton ‏@KyleWOrton
New:

Letting al-Qaeda be the only option for civilian protection in #Syria is creating a major threat to the West:

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/abandoning-syria-to-assa…

Abandoning Syria to Assad Helps Al-Qaeda
1 Reply
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 23, 2016

The deeply problematic attempted Syrian ceasefire agreement between the United States and Russia last week never really took hold and was finally torn asunder on Monday by Russia and the regime of Bashar al-Assad blitzing an aid convoy and launching massive, indiscriminate aerial attacks on rebel-held areas in Aleppo. Last night, the pro-Assad coalition commenced a renewed assault on Aleppo actually as the parties met to discuss putting the ceasefire back online.

It had been surreal that it was the U.S. insisting that “The ceasefire is not dead”. What it exposed was the lack of Western will to restrain the Assad regime, which al-Qaeda, especially, is exploiting, offering its services in the fight against Assad, and building a sustainable presence in Syria that will threaten the West for many years to come.

A Misconceived Ceasefire

The agreement between the U.S. and Russia, and its attendant political process, were inherently misconceived, strengthening Assad, whose murderous policies have—quite deliberately—provided the ideal context for the growth of extremist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The ceasefire had been intended to last seven days, during which regime jets would cease murdering civilians and attacking mainstream armed opposition groups, and there would be free access for humanitarian supplies.
After this “sustained” period of calm the U.S. and Russia would launch joint airstrikes against al-Qaeda in Syria, the recently rebranded Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS).

The proposal—if it worked to the letter—would have eliminated an important part of the insurgency. Since the agreement contained no provision for bolstering mainstream rebels and no mechanism to prevent or punish the regime for anything, there was nothing to stop the pro-regime coalition from continuing to commit atrocities as JFS was degraded, nor making military gains against a weakened insurgency once JFS was gone.

While JFS’s destruction would have neutralized the insurrection as a strategic threat to the regime, it would not have brought peace. It would have removed all incentive for the regime to negotiate a political settlement, yet the regime’s chronic capacity problems would have left it unable to pacify the whole country. In these conditions, the most radical insurgent forces, who would be the ones prepared to fight on, would have been strengthened, condemning Syria to a permanent war in which terrorists could find haven.

The eradicate-JFS-without-replacing-its-capabilities part of the plan was understandably rejected by the Syrian opposition, which officially accepted the ceasefire element of the U.S.-Russia deal. Unfortunately even the ceasefire provisions never came to pass. Around 150 people were killed by the pro-Assad coalition during the ceasefire and not a single aid delivery was permitted to any of the regime-besieged areas.

On Monday, an aid convoy of eighteen trucks finally did move over the Turkish border into Aleppo, loaded with aid for 78,000 people. It was obliterated by Russian jets, who had been tracking it for at least two hours, its contents destroyed, and thirty-one civilians and staff killed. Indiscriminate bombing of rebel-held areas all over Aleppo also recommenced, bringing the ceasefire in any real world sense to an end.

Russia Directs the Political Process

By the time the political process began in December 2015, the Russian intervention had altered the balance of power so the regime was ascendant, and enabled the Russians to subvert the whole process, transforming it from one about the terms of Assad’s departure to the terms of his continuation in power. The U.S. was pushing for a unity government between the regime, with Assad still at the helm, and the rebels that turned its guns on the Islamic State. For the rebels this was surrender by another name.

The attempted ceasefire in February was preceded by a lessening of support for the rebellion as the U.S. and allies lived up to their obligation to de-escalate. The pro-regime coalition used this as cover to advance against Aleppo City, cutting off its supply lines to Turkey. The pro-regime then ostensibly accepted the ceasefire, using the rebels’ restraint to consolidate their gains, while continuing to prepare further offensives and to brazenly continue assaults in key strategic zones. The ceasefire irretrievably collapsed in May when al-Qaeda led a full-scale counter-offensive in Aleppo, but in reality the ceasefire had been over in all-but-name for many weeks because of the pro-regime coalition’s continued attacks.

This time around the ceasefire was once again on de facto Russian terms and the regime faced no threat of enforceable sanction for violations of the agreement. It has also been evident for several weeks that the regime was building up for an offensive in Aleppo and the only question in Moscow about the ceasefire was whether the pro-regime coalition needed the fiction of one to allow preparations to be completed, or had no further need of this smokescreen and were able to conduct the offensive. The answer is now in.

From around midday yesterday, in Aleppo, the pro-Assad coalition commenced its heaviest wave of airstrikes for months. One resident said it was “as if the [Russian and Assad regime] planes are trying to compensate for all the days they didn’t drop bombs”. Last night the Assad regime announced a full-scale offensive as Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with his Russian counterpart. Kerry is said to have found out about this from one of the wire services. Since then the gates of hell have opened.
The ground offensive is spearheaded, as usual, by Iraqi Shi’a jihadists who were imported by, and are under the command of, the Iranian theocracy. More than one-hundred airstrikes have been launched, and a similar number of civilians massacred. Two centres for the White Helmets have also been hit. There isn’t even time for interviews between the airstrikes.

Al-Qaeda Gains

Since al-Qaeda argued, from the beginning, that the political process was a conspiracy against the revolution, which would cajole the rebels into joining an interim government that served Western counter-terrorism priorities but had no care for the people and would leave them under Assad’s heel, they have come out of this period with a lot of credibility.
Al-Qaeda has adopted a strategy of embedding itself into the rebellion, making itself militarily necessary for the opposition and thereby shielding its jihadist agenda behind revolutionary actors whose only intention is to topple a regime that threatens them and their families.

The Western refusal to empower the mainstream rebellion allowed al-Qaeda the space to do this and to make decoupling its own fate from the rebellion more difficult. The attempted ceasefires have made this worse by providing cover for regime advances that consciously weaken the moderate rebels, increasing the dependency, in an effort to make the conflict binary between the regime and the jihadists.

With the rebranding—the supposed “split” from al-Qaeda—being baptised by breaking the siege of Aleppo, which the U.S. said it was powerless to do, and modifications in behaviour on the ground, al-Qaeda is even winning over former sceptics.

It’s a sad fact that Western policy has failed to defend a single Syrian inside Syria from murder by its outlaw government and its foreign life-support system, nor shown any willingness to work toward the only viable solution for security and peace: the removal of the Assad regime. A peace settlement from here is only viable if the West is willing to confront the Assad regime, to forcefully limit its ability to commit mass-murder and to change battlefield dynamics against it. The continued Western fiction that the ceasefire remains or can be revived or is the “only show in town,” as

Boris Johnson put it, is a clear statement that the West has no such will, and has taken the decision to continue on a path whose results are now known.

Allowing Assad free rein, as current policy does, protracts the war. The regime and its supporters have no intention of abiding by conditions that limit their capacity to subdue the insurgency, but they are unable to complete that task. What the pro-regime coalition can do is continue with their chosen tactics in the attempt, collective punishment and mass-displacement, which leave a desperate population amenable to appeals from anybody who can help. Al-Qaeda will continue to fill this void for as long as it is allowed to.

By fostering a vanguardist co-dependency, taking on the population’s concerns as its own and working toward them, al-Qaeda is able to use that population to protect itself and to push its ideology among them, working toward socializing people into its vision of an Islamic state and co-opting the rebellion.

Leaving al-Qaeda as the only viable actor for protecting civilians from the Assad regime and its allies is creating a dangerously durable future base for Islamist terrorism.

Russian propaganda works on six Ds.......distract, distort, dismay, deflect ALL designed to create doubt......and distrust

So which one is the Russian FM Lavrov using here.....

Also, at press conference, Lavrov compared bombing of Aleppo convoy to downing of MH17. Says there should be investigation - not US version

Russia shot down MH17 so is the Russian FM admitting to the Russian air strike on the aid convoy.....the dog that has been biting the Russian leg on their shoot down of MH17 @bellingcat has been pointing the finger directly again at them for the aid convoy air strike....

Girl, 5, dragged alive from rubble of building after airstrike killed her family in Aleppo
http://dailym.ai/2cINro4

The @POTUS admin's use of political process to help Assad & Putin codify the siege on #Aleppo will echo through time

Hezbollah could storm east Aleppo and US officials would still be talking about how they're eroding the ceasefire. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/09/262319.htm#…

As I said before, @JohnKerry & @POTUS will negotiate into mandated failure to sustain 'political process.'

#Assad regime: "This was just the beginning. We will bomb Eastern #Aleppo for days. Then our troops will move in." #Genocide

NOW Kerry knows exactly the stated Russian/Assad goal SO he is going to do what...talk and talk and talk as GENOCIDE is being committed right in front of his face......

Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Charles Lister ‏@Charles_Lister
No underplaying how destructive & deadly today the last 24hrs have been in #Aleppo.

Truly *huge* #Assad regime & #Russia bombing.

Charles Lister ‏@Charles_Lister
Watch this & tell me we couldn’t be doing more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZicIQpLKXI#…

#Assad & #Russia senselessly destroying #Aleppo & we watch on...

UPDATE: U.S. Secretary of State Kerry says 'a little bit of progress' on Syria talks with Russia's Lavrov today

EVER notice the Kerry hypocrisy in his statements....he seemingly enjoys talking and talking and talking as hundreds are killed and wounded...all to avoid actually having to take any action as he is limited in anything since the Iran Deal....

WHAT he has not seemed to realize is...the Russians want him to keep talking...in the time he talks they just keep on killing civilians....

Putin killed so many children in #Aleppo today, he will have a good sleep.
All others in NY should have nightmares.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CKg_waIRWg#…

More graphic footage from the massacres in #Rastan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOquvnYFAKA#…

Also in the western #Aleppo suburbs, dozens died including many children in the RUS raids.
Couldn't be more graphic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ3cxzOc71w#…

So much death, blood & devastation in #Aleppo today one doesn't know what to say anymore, Putin knows no limits, young or old all the same

To much death and destruction today even for me and I am use to it...out for the rest of the day after this posting....

Silence from the Obama WH is telling.....as it has basically "sold out American values" in it's full tilt to Iran and Russia.......

Maybe one of the saddest pictures from Aleppo today ...

A mother trying to save her children by using a blanket......and we in the US think we have it bad with our current unrest and our craving for weapons....try protecting your family from Russian/Assad air strikes with a "blanket".....

Here is a large question for all SWJ readers/commenters.....if you are a Syrian and this is your daily life and no one from the West, not a single leader, not a single MSM stands up and defends you....AND a former AQ group now rebranded spends their days trying their best to defend you as do the other anti Assad opposition forces under FSA.....WOULD you not at some point "become a flaming radical" just to survive??? THAT is a very valid question....

Due to the Obama reluctance to take any form of action and his basic ignoring of the Syrian genocide ARE we not potentially creating a far deeper jihadist resentment against the US that will haunt us for years to come....ARE we the US going to be in the future ever trusted by the Sunni global community which numbers in the billions after allowing genocide of Arab Sunni's in Syria and Iraq?

IF the US keeps this up there will never be an end to jihadists whatever their brand and flavor of the month is.....

Attached Image is posted on the Syrian thread....AND it is GRAPHIC...but sometimes GRAPHIC is the only way to get one's attention these days....

DOES anyone actually know who Obama/Rhodes/Kerry work for these days?????...ONE could actually get the feeling they are employed largely to defend Assad, Putin and Iran.........

Obama delays bills sanctioning Assad, Ki Moon delays reports accusing Assad of CW attacks

As Putin and Assad continue their deliberate killing of civilians called normally "genocide" the Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH keeps on saying.......

"there is no military solution"....BUT WAIT then they urgently need to answer WHY is it that Assad and Putin have a military solution and they are executing it......

SO is the Obama WH basically "spinning" everyone AND actually allows the genocide to continue in the name of doing "absolutely nothing stupid"....

The killing just keeps on as the entire West and the entire western MSM remains as quiet as a mouse out of fear they must at some point do and or say something....appears that the western values of humanity, humility and compassion truly no longer exist......

Aleppo: #Syria|n mother tried to cover her child with her body, but both were killed by #Assad & #Russia|n airstrikes today

GRAPHIC...but necessary to show the brutality of today's Russian and Assad air strikes on defenseless civilians....

GRAPHIC photo is posted on the Syrian thread .....

Putin is definitely "winning the war of values"...as the West especially the Obama WH has lost theirs....

Also in Rastan city, endless air strikes on civilians continued throughout the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAR1mgVjsKg#

Appears that the entire Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH has become literally "speechless" after their latest round of failures in Syria.......

Sources in besieged E #Aleppo confirm *at least* 81 people killed in overnight bombing by #Assad regime & #Russia

150+ airstrikes reported.

Cannot say they had any ideas anyway other than supporting Iran and Russia against the Syrian opposition.....so they should be happy with these actions by Russia/Assad today.

They are succeeding in retaining Assad in his leadership position, they are destroying the anti Assad opposition, assisting successfully in establishing Iran as the regional hegemon and participating in genocide and war crimes against Sunni's...AND establishing massive Russian presence in the entire ME and basically abandoning all US allies in the ME in the name of the "ethnical FP strategy" called "doing nothing stupid".....

Pity the next incoming US President.....

Aleppo: 81 #Syria|n civilians confirmed killed by #Assad & #Russia|n airstrikes in #Aleppo City today

High number of women and children among the dead.....

Terrible footage ...
Every hour senseless talks with #Russia in New York kill one child or more in #Aleppo ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLjwt7s87MA#
…
Footage
Another #RUSSIAN AIR FORCE - not #Assad! - Su-24 on its way to slaughter civilians in #Aleppo today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AYOyaj-LtA#
…
Footage
Brutal #Russian regime air strikes turned many neighborhoods in #Aleppo into mass graves today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b4cCHIPe9A#
…

WONDER what great verbal statements will come out of the fully titled Iran/Russian WH this morning when they awake to the new Russian Aleppo bombing campaign.....????

BTW...as a little assistance for Kerry currently ALL bombing strikes on Aleppo ARE being carried out by the Russians NOT Assad.....

BUT WAIT....WAS not the world and the UNGA told by Putin he was going to attack and destroy IS.....BUT WAIT IS and JFS are not physically located in eastern Aleppo.....AND Kerry knows this as well....

ESPECIALLY After Kerry praised the SCD yesterday....BUT WAIT it just was for a legacy photo op

Khaled Khatib @995Khaled
Al Assad forces deliberately targeted 3 @SyriaCivilDef centres in Aleppo city just this morning. 2 of them are put out of service.

Photos of the Russian air strike damage on SCD rescue facilities are posted on the Syrian thread....

BY THE WAY THIS RUSSIAN AIR STRIKE DESTROYED THE REMAINING SCD AMBULANCES LEFT IN ALEPPO....WONDER WHAT OBAMA/KERRY WILL SAY NOW....

WHY did the DoD and the Obama WH "apologize so quickly" for an "alleged" FF incident when there are some serious questions about WHAT did actually happen....is the Obama WH trying to cosy up to Putin in order to maintain their full tilt to Iran and Russia......WAS there in fact a Russian SF team hiding from IS when Is overran the mountain ...

REMEMBER DoD fully states the target coordinates were given to the Russian, literally NINE hours before the strike BUT silence was the response from the Russians THUS no one was in that location....BUT then IS launched a massive attack on the regime and "suddenly" someone is in that exact location THAT was not there NINE hours before....

There are some serious questions that need answering about this strike...LIKE was this incident ACTUALLY a Russian AF friendly fire incident and the Russians blamed the US....AND Obama "caved"??????

WHAT is totally not being mentioned in US MSM is that actually even Islamic State admits they were being hit at that exact time by the US.....SO why the sudden "apology"....and WHY so quick......???

Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
CrowBat.....I keep going back to the two comments that came out shortly after the strike alluding to seven killed Russian Spetsnaz including a senior Spetsnaz Commander....

That would explain why the entire MoD, and Lavrov totally flipped out even for Russian standards......

After compiling most of the flowing comments starting at the first one just minutes after the alleged attack the first comment came on the Spetsnaz repeated ten minutes later and then silence since then.

What is critical and it is strange but actually IS claimed just a little after that the Spetsnaz comment that it was themselves that had been hit by the US...now whatever we think of IS they tend to not fudge on their posted comments from that area

Then followed by a comment from the Palestinian militia that they had lost troops..then they announced the names and since then totally quiet....one would have anticipated al least those names showing up for US payments.....

This whole incident smells of a Russia self inflicted friendly fire and there have been plenty on the Russia side since they arrived.....
IMHO & AFAIK: there is absolutely no point in even considering any of claims that the 'USA have hit regime troops inside the Dayr az-Zawr pocket.

Reason: that would amount to 'USA attempting to provide CAS to Assad's troops'.

No doubt, the Pentagon is plain dumb in regards of Syria, but not that dumb. They are bombing the Daesh all over the Dayr az-Zawr Governorate since months, that's sure (and can be easily tracked with help of summaries posted daily on airwars.org. BUT, they are all the time bombing local supply lines of the Daesh: they never bombed anything inside the regime-held pocket, or close to its frontlines. There's no reason for this to change now.

As next, it turned out that instead of '2 USAF A-10s, 2 F-16s & an UAV', there were Danish F-16s supported by a RAAF E-7 around. Let's add a CIA or USAF UAV to that: one can never be sure, except that these are 'always around' in such cases.

Danish contingent deployed 'in the Middle East' has two lawyers 'embedded', plus special software showing 'predicted schrapnel impact zone' to their pilots integrated into their LANTRIN etc. They can only be described as 'overcautious' in their operations: nothing is released there without 10-fold confirmation and re-confirmation.

So, why would they and now and all of a sudden come to the idea to go bombing Daesh frontlines around the Dayr az-Zawr pocket, please?

And: how could two F-16s armed with a total of 8 SDBs or GBU-32s cause such a massive loss of life for Assadists... i.e. PFLP-GC's militias and Hezbollah...as claimed by Russians and Assadist regime (renowned foremost for lying all the time: in this case they cannot even provide lists of their supposed KIA)?

Even if we add the French - who were active over the Dayr az-Zawr Governorate in the last few days too - things are changing only minimally. Each of their Mirage 2000s is carrying only two PGMs.

The only logical answer is that there's absolutely no point in doing that.

Who was there - and then a lot - though, were Russians: the VKS flew a number of air strikes against the Daesh on Dayr az-Zawr frontlines during that quasi-cease-fire in Aleppo, the last week. And Russians have not only hit Assadists repeatedly (usually causing massive losses, like in northern Homs, back in November last year, or in as-Safira, in February this year), but foremost: if Russians are bombing anything in that part of Syria, then either with Su-34s or Tu-22s, both of which are applying de-facto carpet-bombing with dumb bombs (usually different variants of FAB-250s).

That US/Russian ceasefire deal in full, via @AP -just as US/Russia meet in an attempt to revive it.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f5428d60326c4394a1c95efcefad8d77/ap-excl…

Russia now blames U.S for leak of Syrian deal, though they was bluffing to publish it for a week
https://twitter.com/lummideast/statu...4972949950464#
…

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...he-exacerbated

Obama Lectures on Syria, a Crisis He Exacerbated

Sep 22, 2016 6:00 AM EDT
By Eli Lake

Quote:
When future historians debate why the U.S. did so little to stop the tragedy in Syria, they should dig up the speech President Barack Obama just gave at a U.N. summit on refugees.

While Democrats signaled their collective virtue by denouncing a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. that compared Syrian refugees to Skittles, Obama lectured foreign ministers and heads of state this week on the same topic. "And just as failure to act in the past, for example, by turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, is a stain on our collective conscience," Obama said, "I believe history will judge us harshly if we do not rise to this moment."

Obama went on to state something obvious: "We must recognize that refugees are a symptom of larger failures -- be it war, ethnic tensions, or persecution." But then he said something bizarre: "If we truly want to address the crisis, wars like the savagery in Syria must be brought to an end, and it will be brought to an end through political settlement and diplomacy, and not simply by bombing."# #

This of course is a straw man. No one who has argued for more U.S. involvement in Syria has said more bombing alone will solve these problems. What's more, the U.S. is doing a lot of bombing in Syria today against the Islamic State.

But there is also something sinister about Obama's formulation. The U.S. is not just another country when it comes to the collective security of the Middle East. Through its alliances and interventions, it has been the region's reluctant sheriff since the end of World War II. In this sense, it's rich of Obama to pose as a Jeremiah when he has acted more like a Nero.

His administration's pursuit of diplomacy and publicly stated policy to not attack Syrian forces gave Russia a green light to establish its forward air bases in Syria a year ago. As Secretary of State John Kerry pursued Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to restart peace negotiations, the Russians deployed bombers and jets to Syria and struck a pact with Iran to regain territory for the dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

This toothless diplomacy has further immiserated the Syrian people. The U.S. government confirmed Tuesday that it was Russian aircraft that destroyed an aid convoy this week, halting the delivery of food and medicine to the besieged citizens of Aleppo, and killing 20 aid workers.

It's worse than this though. This atrocity was committed during what was supposed to be a cessation of hostilities negotiated by Kerry and Lavrov this month in Geneva. The second phase of that agreement would have established a center in Jordan where Russian and U.S. military officers would share intelligence to target the Islamic State and other jihadis in Syria.

Think about that for a minute. Kerry negotiated a deal to collaborate with an air force that just bombed an aid convoy and has bombed hospitals and civilians now for a year. It's true that over the weekend, the U.S. bombed Syrian soldiers. It apologized for that mistake. The Russians at the time demanded the UN censure the U.S. This week Lavrov ridiculously has urged the UN to gather all the facts about the bombing of the aid convoy.

Kerry has mustered outrage at all of this. On Wednesday he told a UN meeting on Syria: "The primary question is no longer:# What do we know?# The primary question is:# Collectively, what are we going to do about it?# In other words, this is a moment of truth. It’s a moment of truth for President Putin and Russia; it’s a moment of truth also for the opposition; and it’s a moment of truth for the people who support the opposition."

Let me add that this also a moment of truth for Obama and the Democrats who support him. Kerry is reduced to chasing his Russian counterpart around the world to beg for cease-fires and negotiations because Obama never tried to deter Russia's intervention a year ago. As a result, there is no real chance to establish the no-fly zone that people like Kerry lobbied for in 2014 and 2015 behind the scenes, and that Hillary Clinton calls for publicly today.

That's a policy that would have saved lives and pressured Assad to negotiate an end to the war.

The tragedy in Syria is primarily the fault of Assad. But Obama's failure to challenge Assad and his Russian and Iranian supporters has extended the war that has forced so many Syrians to flee their country. It's easy to tweet the truism that these refugees are people, not Skittles. It's much harder to come to terms with the role Obama's inaction has played in upending those people's lives.

For those that do not believe the Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH has not fully tilted to Iran and Russia and this explains very clearly just why the WH has never responded to the ongoing genocide, starvation, and war crimes in Syria AND why event after event of Russian war crimes the US has simply looked the other way....and remained totally silent ..even I have often wondered why and posted that question at least 100 times over the last two years....

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/213851/obamas-syria-p…

Obama’s Syria Policy Striptease
Why hasn’t the administration done anything about Syria, and won’t? Because the Iran Deal.

By Tony Badran

America’s settled policy of standing by while half a million Syrians have been killed, millions have become refugees, and large swaths of their country have been reduced to rubble is not a simple “mistake,” as critics like Nicholas D. Kristof and Roger Cohen have lately claimed. Nor is it the product of any deeper-seated American impotence or of Vladimir Putin’s more recent aggressions. Rather, it is a byproduct of America’s overriding desire to clinch a nuclear deal with Iran, which was meant to allow America to permanently remove itself from a war footing with that country and to shed its old allies and entanglements in the Middle East, which might also draw us into war. By allowing Iran and its allies to kill Syrians with impunity, America could demonstrate the corresponding firmness of its resolve to let Iran protect what President Barack Obama called its “equities” in Syria, which are every bit as important to Iran as pallets of cash.

And just like it sold its Iran policy through a public “echo chamber” of paid “experts” from organizations like Ploughshares and quote-seeking journalists and bloggers, some of whom also cashed White House-friendly nonprofit checks, the White House deliberately constructed an “echo chamber” to forward its Syria policy. The difference between the two “echo chambers” is that, absent any wider debate or the need for congressional approval, the Syria version was much more narrowly targeted at policy wonks and foreign-affairs writers, and the arguments it echoed were entirely deceptive in their larger thrust—the point of the Iran Deal was, in fact, to do a deal with Iran—rather than simply incomplete or false in their specifics.

America’s Syria policy can, therefore, be best understood not in the terms most familiar to Mideast analysts, such as “getting Assad to step aside” or “supporting the moderate opposition” or “paving the way to a peaceful transition and elections.” Rather, it is a strategic-communications campaign tightly run from the White House, whose purpose was and is to serve as a smokescreen for an entirely coherent and purposeful policy that comes directly from the president himself, but which he and his aides did not wish to publicly own. The goal of the president and his closest aides is to convince the Iranians that we would meet our commitments to them while confusing and obscuring the real reasons behind the president’s set decision of nonintervention in Syria from American legislators and the public alike.

Recently, portions of the strategic-communications façade erected by the administration have started to crumble, allowing interested analysts and members of the public to see the administration’s actual policy more clearly. In a recent interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon revealed that in 2013, Iran told President Obama that if he were to strike the regime of Bashar Assad following the latter’s chemical-weapons attack, the Iranians would collapse the talks over their nuclear program. Obama canceled the strike, of course, and later reassured Iran that the United States would not touch Assad. Solomon’s reporting confirms a critical fact about Obama’s Iran and Syria policies: They are one and the same. Or, stated differently, Syria is part of the price for the president’s deal with Iran.

The White House reaction to Solomon’s assertion was a predictably swift denial. After all, the Obama administration would not want to associate the president’s signature foreign-policy initiative with the indiscriminate slaughter of half a million people and the worst refugee crisis of the new century. In doing so, it followed a well-worn playbook: At key junctures over the previous five years, the administration put out various talking points in the press, often sourced to anonymous officials, whose lines were then validated by allies and surrogates, including officials who had left government and resumed their positions in the think-tank world. As previously, the president’s objective was to manage domestic and allied pressure to intervene when his unmovable position was to avoid such an engagement at all costs, and always with an eye on the prize he sought in Tehran.

To be fair, Obama showed his cards on Syria literally from day one of the uprising against Assad. Unlike his nonnegotiable demand that longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former president, step down immediately—not today, but “yesterday”—Obama very visibly and deliberately refused to call for Assad’s removal from power. In the White House, this call was contemptuously dubbed the “magic words,” and the belief was that saying those words would raise expectations of an active U.S. policy to see it through. This view—espoused by officials such as Steven Simon, then-National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and Africa—one of the linchpins of the White House communications strategy both from inside and then outside the White House, was put out in the media through favored surrogates, like George Washington University’s Marc Lynch, who reiterated the White House’s case and derided critics of the president’s refusal to utter the “magic words.”

If Obama purposefully took the Iranian regime’s side during the 2009 protests so as not to upset the prospect of rapprochement, he similarly wasn’t about to commit the United States against Iran’s longest-standing strategic ally, Assad. However, by 2012, criticism of the administration’s policy had grown more vocal, and calls rose to give military support to the Syrian opposition, a proposition the president was always opposed to. As this was a fixed position for Obama, the task before the White House was, therefore, one of public relations—to quiet the calls for supporting the opposition, outside and also within the administration, without doing anything that would actually upset Assad and his patrons in Iran.

Messaging, as always, was of paramount importance to the White House. As The Wall Street Journal reported in early 2013, “White House national security meetings on Syria [in 2012] focused on what participants called ‘strategic messaging,’ how administration policy should be presented to the public.” To that end, the administration started putting out targeted talking points. The administration laid down its now-infamous mantra: There is no military solution in Syria.

One of the initial go-to lines was that the administration wanted to avoid further “militarization” of the situation. “We do not believe that militarization, further militarization of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action,” said then-White House press secretary Jay Carney. “We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage.”

Again, White House surrogates faithfully disseminated its talking points and policy preferences. In an article in February of 2012, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius quoted an unnamed senior official who derided the rebel Free Syrian Army, then regurgitated the administration’s view that “shoveling weapons to this disorganized opposition now is likely only to increase civilian deaths.” Marc Lynch likewise repeated the administration’s position, often using its own stock lines verbatim, in several articles for Foreign Policy and in a paper for the Center for a New American Security.

Assad’s fall was inevitable, the administration contended. His days were numbered, and his departure, as Obama put it, was “not a question of if, it’s when.” As such, it wasn’t necessary to take military action against Assad. The White House cited intelligence indicating that Assad could be killed by his own people, “eliminating the need for riskier measures to support the rebel campaign.” “There are people around Assad who are beginning to hedge their bets,” asserted then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There might be a coup in Syria, she predicted. “We saw this happen in other settings last year; I think it is going to happen in Syria.” Obama’s close aide Denis McDonough instructed the administration committee charged with Syria policy instead to “focus mostly on post-Assad planning,” because the dictator’s fall was simply a matter of time.

In fact, by summer 2012, when the White House was already running its secret talks with Iran in Oman, the Syria “small group”—the study group led by Simon, which had called on Obama to review military contingencies—had been shut down.

To shore up the noninterventionist position it had already guaranteed the Iranians, the White House introduced the enduring fixture of its Syria policy: bringing in Russia as a principal partner. The move coincided with the creation of the Friends of Syria group—intended to bypass Russian obstructionism at the U.N. Security Council. Obama then undercut this group of U.S. allies by instead drawing closer to Russia.

Working to accelerate Assad’s fall, the White House messaged, “could undercut U.S. efforts to persuade Russia to halt military aid to the Syrian regime.” Marc Lynch echoed the line in his CNAS paper: “It would also be very difficult to stop Russia, Iran, or others from supplying fresh arms and aid to Assad once the opposition’s backers are openly doing so.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius seconded the administration’s move “to make Moscow part of the solution,” and give “Russian leader Vladimir Putin a role in brokering the transition.” If people wanted a solution to the Syrian problem, the White House argued, they should go and talk to the Russians. “So the question shouldn’t be how to turn up the heat on Assad,” Ignatius wrote. Rather, U.S. regional allies should do “the heavy-lifting,” and go to Moscow. Having established the principle of nonintervention and set the role of Russia as principal interlocutor for the region, the White House set the contours of America’s actual Syria policy, which endure unchanged to this day.

The partnership with Russia became a public fact in 2013. Following Assad’s chemical-weapons strikes, Obama reached a deal with Putin that allowed the U.S. president to continue his policy of nonintervention against Assad. At this point, White House messaging made a 180-degree shift. Obama’s decision, administration officials readily acknowledged, meant Assad—who, a year before, they said was about to fall at the hands of the people or as the result of a coup—now had “considerable staying power.” It was, therefore, too bad, other administration officials said, that “the window of opportunity for strengthening the moderate opposition may have closed.”

Instead, administration officials started telling reporters on background that no outside support would have mattered, anyway, as the gap between America and the Syrian regime and its allies was simply too big to ever have been bridged. The president himself would publicly voice this position, declaring the notion that supporting the rebels—“former doctors, farmers, and pharmacists,” as the president disparagingly referred to them—would have made a difference against a regime backed by Russia and Iran, has “always been a fantasy.” To suggest otherwise, the president said, was “horseshit.”

Like the assertions of 2012, these claims, presented as serious assessments of the situation on the ground in Syria, were simply part of a White House messaging campaign, whose purpose was to support a policy that was already set—but which the public was judged not to be ready for. That the arguments the administration was making were paradoxical and contradictory didn’t matter, so long as the point was the same: America wouldn’t and couldn’t intervene against Assad.

Naturally, surrogates like Lynch echoed the administration’s arguments, even when they changed, and also felt at home in the contradictions of their positions. “There’s no way to know for sure” whether U.S. support in 2012 would have made a difference, Lynch would later write. In fact, he asserted, things would’ve played out exactly as they have, with the only difference that the United States would’ve been in the middle of the fighting.

By the end of 2013, the White House began to mainstream its open disregard for even the pretense of removing Assad, thereby circling back to its initial position in 2011. Unnamed senior administration officials were cited as talking privately about Assad “staying for the foreseeable future” and “voic[ing] regret about the decision, in August 2011, to call for him to step aside.”

In early 2014, Frank Wisner of The Iran Project and Leslie Gelb, both veterans of the realist foreign-policy establishment, were chosen to carry this White House message to members of the Council on Foreign Relations and other thumb-sucking senior types. The president and officials at the White House, Wisner and Gelb wrote, realized “it was too quick off the mark and too absolute” in calling for Assad’s departure. “Perhaps now,” they added, “administration officials are prepared to entertain a transitional working arrangement with Assad.” The new focus for U.S. policy, the authors wrote, should be on combating Sunni terrorism and on providing humanitarian aid to Syrians. Amazingly, much like the expert advice not to intervene militarily in 2012, what Wisner and Gelb were “recommending” was the actual substance of White House policy, which the communications effort had formerly been designed to obscure.

The form of Wisner and Gelb’s article became the preferred genre for the White House’s Syria echo chamber: the striptease. Hand-picked experts offer fresh policy advice to the president. The authors demonstrate their independence by criticizing the supposed current policy and propose a new course of action. Within weeks, the new course of action is acknowledged as policy, thus flattering the importance of the experts. Only, what the experts suggested was already the policy—and what they were “criticizing”—was the fan that the messaging campaign had manufactured to obscure, for a time, what the White House was actually doing in Syria.

The success of this dance was great enough that many more proposals for “new” policy, all recycling the White House’s latest set of talking points, were floated, each with the aim of revealing another few inches of actual policy. Simon, who was now out of government, put forward a “new plan for Syria,” in which he called for “containing extremist violence” and “reducing the number of noncombatant deaths.” One month later, Lynch published another paper with CNAS, in which he reproduced all the key White House talking points used to describe its policy to this day, debuting terminology, like “de-escalation” and “protecting Iranian equities,” which was then promptly adopted by the White House.

Both Simon and Lynch floated the idea of promoting local cease-fires—now a mainstay of the White House’s declared policy—as the way to go in Syria. Again, they were not so much promoting views that were original to them but promoting a pre-existing conceit, whose actual sponsor, Robert Malley, was appointed in February 2014 as a senior director at the National Security Council, where he worked alongside Phillip Gordon, who came in the year before as coordinator for Middle East policy.

By following in Malley’s footprints, it is easy to see where specific ideas came from, and the corrupted nature of the policy debates that were used by the White House to promote its set agenda. For example, Malley met in Washington with journalist Nir Rosen, who has a close relationship with the Assad regime. Following his meeting with Malley, Rosen authored an unpublished pro-Assad report making the case for local cease-fires—which have been an instrument of warfare for the regime camp. Malley distributed Rosen’s report, which, naturally, was also leaked to David Ignatius. Simon’s and Lynch’s pieces floated the approach favored by Malley and the White House in much cleaner form and venues than the tarnished Rosen.

It was all very useful, and chummy, and everyone scratched everyone else’s back, until the ISIS crisis blew up and disrupted the Syria messaging campaign by making the administration, which decided it could dismiss the latest jihadi faction as “the JV squad,” look feckless. As it happened, ISIS would turn out to have its benefits as a messaging device. It, too, could be used as part of the fan-dance.

The emergence of ISIS presented an opportunity for the White House to advance the president’s vision of a regional realignment. Under the rubric of a new war on Sunni jihadism, the president elevated Russia and Iran to senior partners, and privileged their position, while shelving all discussion about Assad. What had been secret and a cause for strenuous denials was now palatable state policy, which the White House could therefore publicly own.

Hence, Simon, reflecting the direction of White House policy in the guise of fresh advice, proclaimed the United States should start discussing Syria with Iran in order to have “the best chance of long-term success.” Similarly, Marc Lynch proposed the White House adopt “an alternative Iran-centric approach, one built upon seeking a working accord with Iran rooted in common interests in … stabilizing Iraq and Syria, and fighting jihadist groups.” In addition, like Wisner, Gelb, and Simon had all written earlier, Lynch echoed the White House by calling for sacrificing the “goal of ‘near-term’ regime change” in Syria.

Following the White House’s standard operating procedure, anonymous administration officials had already been leaking all these talking points to the press during the course of 2014. For instance, in July of that year, it was reported that administration officials were proposing setting aside the removal of Assad from power. “Anyone calling for regime change in Syria is, frankly, blind to the past decade,” one unnamed senior official told The Daily Beast. Other officials were “suggesting that Iran could be a partner in a postwar Syria.” When Lynch spoke of “us[ing] the ISIS crisis to create a sustainable regional accord,” he was therefore merely putting his own name to statements that the White House had already publicly vetted.

Formalizing Tehran’s place at the table in Syria, as Obama had promised the regime, would have to wait for the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Once that was achieved, Russia understood the door was open to intervene directly in Syria. A couple of months after the deal was concluded, the Russians set up their military base in Syria.
Obama’s Syria policy once again came under criticism following the Kremlin’s move. The president looked weak in the face of Russian assertiveness on behalf of its ally. The White House’s initial messaging was therefore to paint the Russian intervention as an idiotic decision that would inevitably backfire on Moscow. Putin’s intervention reflected weakness, not strength, the president maintained. As such, the preferred White House talking point was that Russia was only getting itself trapped in a quagmire. “An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won’t work,” Obama said in early October.

These lines were quickly put out in friendly media outlets. The Brookings Institution’s Jeremy Shapiro, who had worked for Philip Gordon at the State Department before the latter moved to the White House, enthusiastically regurgitated the administration’s approved talking points in an interview with Vox also in early October. Shapiro repeated the claim that the Russian intervention was “incredibly stupid stuff,” a “serious mistake,” and, naturally, that it would get Moscow into a “quagmire.” The Russians, Shapiro declared, were “banking on this idea that they’re going to bring us around” on Syria. But, he asserted, “I don’t think they are.”

As the White House pushed these talking points about how dumb Putin was, it also continued to stress the president’s unshakable principle of nonintervention. “We’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia,” Obama made clear. “This is not some superpower chessboard contest.” Anyone suggesting military options, the president continued, was simply “offering up half-baked ideas” and “a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.”

Philip Gordon, now also out of government, was a notable conduit for the main talking points: de-escalation, cease-fires, humanitarian aid, and shelving the question of Assad. “The White House,” one senior administration official—the point man for Syria at the time, and now, is Robert Malley—told Bloomberg View in early October, “thinks we can de-escalate the conflict while keeping Assad in power.” Gordon, Malley’s recent colleague at the NSC, and now a freshly minted fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, then laid out this White House position in an essay and a paper for the CFR, which fall into the familiar genre of validating current policy in the guise of “rethinking” it. He also echoed the White House’s direction of bringing Iran formally to the Syria table as a major stakeholder. More aid to the rebels, he opined, would only add to the violence and would harm prospects of a deal with Russia. Escalating the war, Gordon wrote, wouldn’t succeed. In fact, it was counterproductive. However much we escalate, the Russians would only counter-escalate. When would the bloodshed ever cease?

Through Gordon, the White House laid out where it wanted to go, and where it is today: a bilateral process with the Russians, cutting out all those annoying U.S. allies pushing us to escalate and insisting on Assad’s departure. Hence, Steven Simon, now also a freshly-minted objective policy expert and not an NSC operative, would express “satisfaction” at the presence in Syria “of a powerful military player” like Russia, which he described as “really the only tacit partner” of the United States. The Russian presence, Simon wrote in a Foreign Affairs essay that October, makes it “no longer feasible for the United States to establish a safe haven or no-fly zone”—steps the administration had strongly opposed years before the Russians were anywhere near Syria. Critics of Obama’s policy who were calling for any consideration of military action, the message went, could take a hike.

None of this is conjecture. Partnership with Russia is what the White House has sought after since late 2015 and throughout 2016—with Malley as the point man, negotiating directly with the Kremlin’s special envoy. By early 2016, Shapiro, who had parroted the White House’s misguiding spin on the incredible stupidity of the Russians’ intervention, was now saying the Russians actually held all the cards in Syria, and the only option for the U.S. is to work with them, on their terms. What’s more, echoing Malley, Shapiro laid out the White House position on the need to finally take military action—against the group then known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and to push (meaning, to threaten) the opposition and its backers to stop all cooperation with it, if the killing was to stop in Aleppo. This was, in fact, the deal that Malley negotiated for the White House, and which Secretary of State John Kerry announced several days ago.

For five-and-a-half years, Obama has maintained an unwavering position against intervention on the side of Assad’s enemies in order to set the stage for a U.S. realignment in the Middle East. To shield this ambition from view, and therefore from criticism, the White House launched an elaborate spin campaign whose purpose was to deflect and manage domestic and allied criticism while the president pursued his objective. In partnership with Russia, Obama has directly shaped the course of the Syrian war while single-mindedly working to actualize his vision of a new American alliance with Russia and Iran that will allow America to take a permanent vacation from the Middle East.

While the end result of this effort may not be what Obama and his closest advisers hope, his actions are clear, and their consequences now appear to be locked in, no matter who comes after him in the White House.
***

I have been posting here and on the Syrian thread that the entire narrative from the Russians to the so called friendly fire strike on Assad troops simply smells of a Russian friendly fire incident pinned to the US....

Actually supported by comments from Islamic State....as well...

Originally Posted by CrowBat
And this despite all of their (or IRGC's and SSNP's) losses in northern Hama.

That said, I'm beyond being disappointed how poorly is the Pentagon running that affair.

Namely, except Australians (don't think so) and Danes (even less so, knowing how careful they are) did something on their own there, I doubt 'that' air strike was flown by any kind of CENTCOM-controlled aircraft. More likely: Russians screwed up, as so often.

Their air force was very active there, during that quasi-cease-fire in Aleppo area.

CrowBat.....I keep going back to the two comments that came out shortly after the strike alluding to seven killed Russian Spetsnaz including a senior Spetsnaz Commander....

That would explain why the entire MoD, and Lavrov totally flipped out even for Russian standards......

After compiling most of the flowing comments starting at the first one just minutes after the alleged attack the first comment came on the Spetsnaz was repeated in virtually the same wording ten minutes later and then silence since then.

This whole incident smells of a Russia self inflicted friendly fire and there have been plenty on the Russia side since they arrived.....

Iran leaders present Syria as existential sectarian war as they flood #Syria with militants to back Chemical Assad:
http://www.reuters.com/article/midea...idUSL8N1BX4W4#
…

There are two main reasons Iran needs to support Assad and maintain his regime .....

1. Khamenei needs to maintain the land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon to ensure the "Green Crescent"
2. there has been repeated statements by IRGC about wanting to provoke a ground war with KSA in order to repay them for their support of Saddam in the Iraq/Iran war

Lastly Khamenei still continues the battle with KSA for control of the global Muslim community as did Khomeini ......

Quote:
DUBAI/BEIRUT, Sept 21 Abandoning a long-standing reticence, Iranians are increasingly candid about their involvement in Syria's war, and informal recruiters are now openly calling for volunteers to defend the Islamic Republic and fellow Shi'ites against Sunni militants.
With public opinion swinging behind the cause, numbers of would-be fighters have soared far beyond what Tehran is prepared to deploy in Syria, according to former fighters who spoke to Reuters, and commanders quoted by Iranian media.

Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the five-year war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in the struggle against Sunni rebels backed by Gulf Arab states and Western powers.

Once Tehran described these forces as military "advisers" but with around 400 killed on the battlefield, this discretion has slipped and several thousand are now believed to be fighting Islamic State and other groups trying to topple Assad.

Many Iranians initially opposed involvement in the war, harbouring little sympathy for Assad. But now they are warming to the mission, believing that Islamic State is a threat to the existence of their country best fought outside Iran's borders.

"The first line for the security of Iran is Syria and Iraq," a would-be volunteer named Mojtaba told Reuters by email from Tehran. Mojtaba, who asked that he be identified by only his first name, said he had been trying in vain to get out to fight in Syria for the past two years.
While Islamic State still holds large areas of Syria and Iraq, it has so far failed to stage attacks in neighbouring Iran like it has in Turkey.
Nevertheless, Iranian media have reported the breaking up of cells linked to the jihadist group at home, and the large numbers of people such as Mojtaba willing to join the battle in Syria suggest Tehran has the stamina to pursue its involvement there for years if it wishes.

"DEFENDERS OF THE SHRINE"

Iran alludes to its fighters in Syria as "defenders of the shrine", a reference to the Sayeda Zeinab mosque near Damascus, which is where a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad is said to be buried, as well as other shrines revered by Shi'ites. It is casting its recruitment net wide. As well as Iranians, it has gathered Shi'ites from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to battle the Syrian opposition in what has become a sectarian conflict.

Brigadier General Mohsen Kazemeini, the Revolutionary Guard Corps commander for greater Tehran, said last month there were so many volunteers that "only a small number of them are sent to (Syria)", according to the Defa Press site. Fighters killed in Syria are praised as heroes on state television and given lavish funerals. Iranian wrestler Saeed Abdevali dedicated the bronze medal he won at the Rio Olympics to the families of "defenders of the shrine" who have been killed. Some volunteers, disappointed at the long waiting list, take a shortcut. They fly directly to Damascus and volunteer at the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, according to postings on Modafeon, a web site dedicated to news and pictures of the "defenders".

The potent message of protecting the shrines has drawn in Shi'ite Afghans, some of whom live in Iran and others in Afghanistan. These Afghans fighting in Syria under the supervision of the Revolutionary Guards are known as the Fatemiyoun.

SACRED BELIEFS

A 26-year old Afghan student living in Mashad in northeast Iran described how he was sent with other Fatemiyoun to fight in Damascus and Aleppo for about 45 days after limited training. "My motivation is the same as the Iranians," the student, who asked not to be identified because of security concerns, said. "We are both fighting in Syria, so it shows our cause is far beyond geographic borders. We are fighting to defend our sacred beliefs and Shi'ite ideology."

Asked if he thought Iranian society had grown more welcoming to those who fight in Syria, he said "One hundred percent. When I was deployed, people were saying that they were doubtful if our fight would change anything. But now they respect the fighters more, as they are more familiar with the threats the rebels in Syria and Iraq can cause to Iran."

He said that pay, or the promise of gaining Iranian citizenship upon their return from the battlefield, are also incentives for some Afghans to volunteer. The Afghan fighters get about $450 a month, according to a Fatemiyoun commander interviewed by the Tasnim news site.
Senior officials regularly discuss the role of the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian special forces in Syria in terms of confronting the existential threat that mostly Shi'ite Iran faces from Sunni militant groups such as Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said this appealed more to public opinion than support for Assad. "Fighting Shi'ite-hating bloodthirsty ISIS jihadists is easier to sell to Iranians than wasting billions on a ruthless dictator who gasses his population," he said. A video regularly featured on Iranian state television shows a group of children wearing fatigues and combat boots singing about a religious duty to fight in Syria.

"The red lines around the shrine are made of my blood," they sing. Children under 18 may go to Syria to serve in non-combat support roles as long as they are accompanied by a guardian, according to postings on the Modafeon web site.

LESSON FROM EUROPE

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has described the wars in Syria and Iraq, where Iranian-backed authorities are also fighting Sunni militants, as crucial to the survival of the Islamic Republic. If Iranians had not gone and died fighting there, "the enemy would enter the country", he said, This perception has won over many doubters. Sasan Sabermotlagh, a 34-year-old decorator in Tehran, said he was initially "100 percent" against the war, but he and many others he knows had changed their mind.

Despite Iran's often fraught relations with the West, Sabermotlagh cited attacks staged by Islamic State in Europe in recent months. "Now that people completely know (Islamic State) and after the incidents in France, Germany and elsewhere, you can say that 90 percent of the people who criticised the 'defenders of the shrine' don't anymore," he said. Sabermotlagh even considered joining the fight. "When I see the videos and the pictures it has a big effect on me," he said. "I think if (Islamic State) or a similar group find their way to Iran then we will suffer similar things."

The presumed glory of the war is such that some people invent military service records to gain others' admiration. In August, Iran arrested four men in Mashad "accused of trying to attract young people's attention by putting together fake stories about their presence on the frontline", a local judiciary official was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency

Appears the Assad regime cannot even provide the actual names of it's claimed 62 KIAs that were allegedly hit in a US FF incident......

As I have posted only one Palestinian militia group has claimed anyone killed with SEVEN names...AND allegedly there was a Assad General killed and a militia Commander killed....

BUT here is the strangeness of this so called FF incident....WHY were now at least these NINE names provided to the US for compensation.....

WHY did Assad provide the names of 12 soldiers KILLED ONE YEAR AGO......

CAN it possibly be that there were no Assad regime troops hit by the US FF incident...CAN it be that actually the US did in fact hit IS...WHICH has claimed did actually happen....

Assad regime want to collect compensation from US for 12 soldiers killed year ago claims killed in coalition airstrikes in DairEzzor.
https://twitter.com/AuraSalix/status...1334149963776#
…

IS it possible that this alleged FF incident was simply being used to cover up the simple fact that Assad regime troops got over run by Is when they lost a strategic hill near their air field?????

The alleged Russian Spetsnaz personnel were in fact killed as a number of rumors seem to indicate in the exact area where IS rolled over the Assad regime forces when they took the hill/mountain.....

SADLY it appears that IS is just about the only one telling the truth about this FF incident......

An article from one of the top Syrian SMEs who thoroughly understands the ground reality AND should have been the major advisor to Obama not Rhodes and or Kerry....

BUT alas he was not listened as were a lot of others not listened which in the end has now turned out were right all along....

Kerry and Obama have been working hard at protecting Assad and the Islamic State it appears especially with this least failure ceasefire....

Kyle W. Orton ‏@KyleWOrton
New from me:

Syria's flawed ceasefire comes crashing down
http://bit.ly/2cVZrlM# v @The_NewArab

Quote:
The United States and Russia reached an agreement over Syria on September 9 that was supposed to lead to a week of reduced violence - a ceasefire or "cessation of hostilities" (CoH).

During this time, there would be free distribution of humanitarian aid - followed by joint operations against the rebranded al-Qaeda branch in the country, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), formerly known as the Nusra Front.

This agreement was essentially ignored by Bashar al-Assad's regime, which Russia had pledged to restrain, and on Monday the agreement was torn up by the regime, returning Syria to all-out war.

What if it had worked?

The US-Russia agreement was deeply problematic even if it worked, representing the triumph of the counter-terrorism approach, narrowly conceived, in America.

Had Russia actually kept Assad regime jets from striking at civilians and mainstream armed opposition groups, and worked honestly with the Pentagon to eliminate JFS, it would have removed from the insurgency a powerful actor, without compensation -#crippling the rebellion as a strategic threat to the regime, and#destroying any incentive for good faith negotiations.

Since the regime - even buttressed by thousands of Iranian-controlled Shia jihadists - cannot control the whole country, it would have condemned Syria to permanent war, conditions in which terrorists thrive.

During the "ceasefire", the "non-jihadist" rebels were supposed to "de-marble" or untangle themselves from the JFS. Rebels were reluctant, in current circumstances, because if they leave an area solely to the administration of JFS, then JFS will be defeated by Coalition and Russian air power, and the regime will be free to move in and retake the territory from the opposition.

The Assad regime's forces were not required to de-marble from the Iranian Quds Force, Lebanese Hizballah, or the Iraqi Kataib Hizballah militia - all groups controlled from Tehran and designated as terrorists by the United States.

And while the rebels were told in no uncertain terms that they would be bombed along with JFS if they did not stand aside, there was no enforcement mechanism to stop the Assad regime carrying out atrocities.

The US, meanwhile, flew over the Iranian-controlled 'terrorist' organisations re-imposing the siege on Aleppo City, to strike at the JFS military commander credited with breaking the first Aleppo siege

These deep inequalities in the deal and its strategic effects - if it even worked - made it deeply unpopular among the Syrian opposition, and helpful to JFS, which is busy embedding and enmeshing itself in the rebellion. In this was it gains protection.

JFS claimed that the US-Russian deal was a deliberate effort to defeat the revolution; these terms can be read that way.

Such a reading was greatly assisted, in the days after the agreement had begun but before the CoH came into being, when the Assad regime was able to massacre 58 civilians at a market with impunity. The US, meanwhile,#flew over the Iranian-controlled "terrorist" organisations re-imposing the siege on Aleppo City, to strike at Usama Nammourah (aka Abu Umar al-Saraqib), the JFS military commander credited with breaking the first Aleppo siege and who was in the process of planning to break the second.

Respite?

For these and other reasons, the Syrian opposition's formal stance on the US-Russian deal was to accept the first part - seven days of relative calm and access to food, medicine, and other supplies for communities under siege#- and to reject the second, the strikes against JFS.

As it happened, neither would occur.

All but three of the sieges in Syria are imposed by the Assad regime, and during this period not a single aid delivery made it to its destination.

Nearly 150 people were killed by the pro-Assad coalition during the CoH. On Monday night, within three hours of the Assad regime unilaterally declaring the "ceasefire" over, 100 airstrikes and barrel bombs had been launched against rebel-held areas of Aleppo, killing dozens.

Shortly after Damascus said it was no longer abiding by the CoH, 18 Syrian Red Crescent trucks loaded with aid from the United Nations finally moved into Aleppo. The convoy was obliterated with airstrikes, killing at least 21 people and destroying aid intended to help 78,000 others.

The airstrikes took place in an area patrolled by Russian reconnaissance drones, ostensibly in place to monitor the CoH.

In August 2003, the Islamic State group's predecessor colluded with the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime to launch a terrorist strike against the UN in Baghdad, leading to the UN's withdrawal. The pro-Assad coalition has borrowed this playbook: the UN announced on Tuesday morning that it was suspending all humanitarian aid deliveries into Syria.

This comes on the heels of the revelations that the UN has provided millions of dollars to crucial sectors of the Assad regime since 2011, contributing to its remaining in power.

Russia has justified its position by claiming the US never abided by its part of the deal and restrained the armed opposition, pointing to an incident on Saturday night when Coalition airstrikes killed 62 regime soldiers.

The US says it was an accident, and this is plausible. Most conspiracy theories in Syria go wrong by assuming the West is hell-bent on overthrowing Assad, a proposition that, to put it mildly, lacks evidence.

Still, there are pieces of the puzzle missing.

One US official explained that it was possible that, because Assad had pressed prisoners and others into being conscripts, and in his degraded armed forces these government militiamen might not be wearing recognisable uniforms or be in regime-like formations, they were mistaken for an irregular force.

"That is where we are right now," the official said, acknowledging "that could change". This would be the most innocent explanation for the fact that, though the Russians were informed ahead of time about the airstrike, they did not alert the US to the presence of pro-regime forces.

Going forward

With the pro-regime coalition having flouted the terms of the CoH, publicly rejected it, engaging in targeted airstrikes against humanitarian actors, and indiscriminate attacks on Syrian civilians, most would consider the CoH to be dead.

The US-Russia agreement might have been misconceived; had it worked as planned it would have strengthened both the Assad regime and al-Qaeda

Since Russia was either unable or unwilling to halt any of this, it would seem to end the argument for Moscow being a useful enforcement mechanism and an interlocutor worth dealing with cooperatively in Syria.

But that is not how Secretary of State John Kerry sees it.

Hours after the regime recommenced mass anti-civilian aerial attacks on Monday night, the State Department was waiting for Russia to "clarify" its position to decide whether or not the ceasefire was holding. Kerry was more definitive on Tuesday morning: "The ceasefire is not dead."

The US-Russia agreement might have been misconceived; had it worked as planned it would have strengthened both the Assad regime and al-Qaeda. But the pretense it is working when it isn't is even worse.

It amounts in practice to a replay of the CoH earlier this year, when the rebels under US sway were restrained and the pro-Assad coalition acted as it wished. This is particularly damaging to Western efforts to isolate al-Qaeda from the mainstream rebellion.

Al-Qaeda made the argument, from the beginning of this round of the political process in December 2015, that it was a conspiracy against the revolution, an effort to demobilise the armed opposition and co-opt them into an interim government on terms indistinguishable from surrender.

Al-Qaeda had plenty to work with in making this case.

Their rebranding has been dismissed by most in the West, but it was never intended for the West, and it is working on the ground. JFS' "break" with al-Qaeda is interpreted as a serious indication that its desire is to serve not rule. And their record as a better servant of opposition security and interests than the West is quite plain.

Having Syrians lay down arms would require them to feel secure and that cannot happen while Assad remains in power. The tilt of the US-led efforts towards keeping Assad are therefore bringing discredit on the idea of a political solution, and al-Qaeda is stepping into that breach with a ready-made answer: violent jihad.

While Assad remains, the population will look to anyone who can help continue the fight.

The current political track took place in the shadow of the Russian intervention that turned this entire process on its head, from one about the terms of Assad's departure to negotiating the terms under which he would stay. Al-Qaeda could hardly have asked for more.

A political settlement could only be feasible after reversing this trend. Alas, a willingness to use force, even minimally, to alter the balance of power against the pro-Assad coalition does not seem to be on the table for the foreseeable future.

So by "do nothing stupid" Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH is both complicit with and participating in "ethnic cleansing" as part of the current US FP in Syria....

Footage
Sunni civilians are systemativally displaced from al-Waer.
The world watches the #EthnicCleansing in #Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-tbJ8kSRP4 …

ALL of this is the direct result of a "do nothing stupid" Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH Syrian FP that never existed beyond "doing nothing stupid".......

Burning #Aleppo City after #Russian attacks with incendiary ammunition on the peaceful population tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txiiau8J2ek#…

Also opposition-held #KafrDael near #Aleppo was hit by incendiary bombs tonight. Large fires irrupted afterwards.

Aleppo City tonight.
The #Russian air force uses incendiary bombs vs. sleeping civilians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0tufmP4Gg#…

IMHO I never thought I would see the day that American FP would be directly associated with and part of and complicit in genocide, war crimes and starvation BUT this Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH has placed the US front and center in the middle of it.....

AND the worst thing is ...it never had to be this way...there were over 50 options presented to Obama and he chose over all of them..."to do nothing stupid" as the correct way forward....which we all know now is a total failure...

A very brutal article on the Obama failures in Syria from a Syrian SME who probably knows more about Syria and the ground players especially IS THAN the entire Obama WH, Rhodes, Kerry and the entire 700 person NSC....

Charles Lister ‏@Charles_Lister

My latest, on @ForeignPolicy:

"Obama’s Syria Strategy Is the Definition of Insanity"

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/21/...of-insanity/#…

REMEMBER deeply REMEMBER the core statement that actually supports this article..when reading the article....

"we will judge Putin on his actions not his words".....2014 public press conference.

SO with that in mind is Obama following his own words or is he really lying to the general public and thinking this is what we want to hear?????

HERE is the living and or in this case the "dying" proof of just how successful the Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH "do nothing stupid" strategy has been...........

Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Horrific footage of residential buildings on fire after regime/Russian phosphorous strikes on Aleppo

Video from @AleppoAMC showing what it says is the result of an incendiary attack in eastern #Aleppo tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txiiau8J2ek#…

Another angle, from @Alburaqmedia, of the reported incendiary attack in #Aleppo tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0tufmP4Gg#…

SOHR At least 24 casualties in Khan Shaykhun #Idlib massacre &in the intensive airstrikes at #Aleppo neighborhoods
http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=50923

A media activist (Omar Arab) makes it out alive following Russia/Assad airstrikes in #Aleppo
https://youtu.be/Q-o3hHAX1TA

Aftermath of regime barrel bombs & airstrikes today in the Sukkari district in #Aleppo
https://youtu.be/eai-uhZ4jtc

No shortage of destruction vids, here aftermath of Russia/Assad airstrikes on civilians in Muwasalat area in #Aleppo
https://youtu.be/uToKQUxGaBI

More destruction in the Mash'had district in #Aleppo following a regime barrel bomb attack today
https://youtu.be/g8LQXcKcEaI

Footage from today showing aftermath of regime airstrikes in Tibat al-Imam, N rural #Hama, destruction everywhere
https://youtu.be/NCRFKmgpy8E

"What is the alternative?" Dep Sec of State Tony Blinken says just now on CNN to a negotiated settlement on Syria.

Culmination of having a "red line" & then erasing it. Now Russia's a player & we enabled it. What an amateurish made mess !

SO Kerry's GRAND statement that there is a PLAN B was all lies as usual...ACTUALLY Kerry is matching Lavrov lie for lie these days.....

REMEMBER Obama stated on Monday...."we must remain with the "hard" diplomacy"....whatever that means..... at the han

FOR Syrian Arab Sunni's this means more destruction and death via the hands of a genocidal dictator supported by Putin who is now just as complicit as Assad is.... making him a war criminal was well....

Lavrov says he thinks we should refrain from emotional reactions to attack on aid convoy

Oh really.......????...emotional reaction to a war crime seems to be appropriate....

Syria Update: US officials - #Obama wants to give #Russia "time & space" to investigate UN convoy attack
http://eaworldview.com/2016/09/syria-

Probably up to and including the time he is no longer in office.....

The @bellingcat analysis of Russian/Syrian attack on the UN aid convoy, courtesy of @n_waters89 and @Hadi_alkhatib
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena...aid-analysis/#
…

REALLY worth reading as this is a Russian based social media open source analysis team that has done some impressive work in eastern Ukraine and now Syria....

CIT (en) ‏@CITeam_en
Airstrikes on UN Aid Convoy in Aleppo: Claims and Reality
https://citeam.org/aleppo-convoy-en/#…

They place the air strike squarely on the RuAF....and their are Russians....

So is now Russia using the Russian mercenary model as practiced in eastern Ukraine by sending "Russian trained mercenaries to Aleppo???????

3000 #Russian fighters dispatched to #Syria: monitor
http://mme.cm/GNBW00

Quote:
Russia has recruited a number of its nationals to fight on behalf of the Syrian regime against both ISIS and rebel factions, according to an NGO tracking developments in the war-torn country.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Wednesday that it “received information from several reliable sources” that 3,000 Russian citizens were recruited by the country’s army and dispatched to “fight on Syrian territory.”

The report did not go into details on the nature of the Russian combatants sent to Syria and whether they were contractors, regular servicemen in the country’s armed forces or auxiliary fighters.

However, SOHR did provide purported details on where the fighters were deployed, saying that “the largest number of these [combatants] gathered in the As-Safira region southeast of Aleppo,” near the regime’s Defense Plants complex.

The Observatory said it “learned that the fighters arrived in Syria in the past four weeks,” adding that their deployment in As-Safira “was in preparation for the start of their involvement in fighting in several Syrian areas.”

So far, the SOHR is the only source reporting on the purported deployment of Russian fighters in Syria.
Unquote:

Russian non linear warfare hard at work in both eastern Ukraine and now in Syria.....

The Obama administration considers arming Syrian Kurds against ISIS
http://nyti.ms/2cCoPgK

SO is the Obama/Rhode/Kerry truly fighting for OR against IS as the concept of arming the Kurds MIGHT in the eyes of the Turks be one heck of a very large RED FLAG....due to the following....

Turkey's line has always been that SDF=PYD=PKK and US arming efforts have been a major problem SO WHY would Obama/Kerry now fully arm the Kurds unless they want the Kurds to fight the Turks in support of IS and the PKK.....

SO having failed in Geneva 1, 2, and now 3 and having failed in general in Syria NOW they want to pour more gasoline on an open wood fire????

They could not get to the point of arming the anti Assad armed opposition AS they could never really find that "moderate" Syrian...BUT Kurds who conduct ethnic cleansing, attack the FSA (Arab Sunni) with Russian CAS and fight together with IS during attacks on FSA...THEY can arm????????

The Obama WH really does not know what to do and or what to say these days other than "do nothing stupid".....

Obama had better simply now just walk away from Syria as he and Kerry have truly failed and both urgently have to ask themselves if "doing nothing stupid" in the end was the core reason for their failure...

Both had a truly golden opportunity in 2012 to end the Syrian nightmare and rid Syria of Assad the core reason for the rapid development of AQI and then ISIL and to stop the genocidal killing machine that had just gotten underway with 7,000 killed....it now stands at 500,000 and counting...Which by any definition is "genocide".....

Now we are seeing for the first time and THIS IS SIGNIFICANT.....the actual merging of interests between a large Syrian Salafist armed fighting group and the Turkish Armed Forces.....WHO could have in this Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH coming full at them....anyone if they followed closely what actually was ongoing inside Syria....saw it coming if the West did nothing which is what happened.

Not surprising, but implications are significant.

Ahrar al-Sham say it's permissible to work w. Turkey’s armed forces

NOW Salafists are becoming legitimate partners in the war against Shia, Assad and Putin.....AND the Sunni Front States are a half step away from openly attacking Assad and Iranian mercenaries inside Syria....including the US proxy YPG/SDF/PKK.....

BUT WHAT can one expect when the Obama/Rhodes/Kerry WH and NSC fully and completely sold out to Iran as the new regional hegemon.....

"Obama's folly is mistaking this for a Syrian problem rather than a global one"

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/obamas-bloo...-hands-1582387

Obama's bloody legacy will be Syria's destruction at Putin's hands

Russia has invaded a sovereign state, shot down an airliner, bombed hospitals and then lied about all of it.

By Oz Katerji
September 20, 2016 17:49 BST

Quote:
'Madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result', everyone knows the old cliché but I doubt few expected it to so perfectly represent the Obama administration's policy approach to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Whilst Monday's air strikes on a UN-supplied Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy bound for Aleppo shock and 'outrage' the international community, it really shouldn't surprise anyone. This deliberate and pre-planned attack on a humanitarian aid convoy simply marks yet another gruesome chapter in the 21st century's bloodiest war and further exposes the world's failure to protect Syria's civilians.

The attack killed 21 people according to the Red Cross, including the Syrian Arab Red Crescent's Aleppo director Omar Barakat. The convoy was due to deliver aid to 78,000 vulnerable civilians, instead it lies smouldering while Syrians continue to starve at the hands of their brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Following the attack UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O'Brien released a strongly worded statement expressing his 'disgust' over the incident, adding "notification of the convoy had been provided to all parties to the conflict and the convoy was clearly marked as humanitarian.

The Russian ministry of defence has typically responded with the same callous inhumanity as it always does, with denials, deceit and obfuscation. As with most war crimes committed by the regime and its allies in Syria, the Kremlin has immediately set about trying to blame the armed opposition for the attack, "all information on the whereabouts of the convoy was available only to the militants controlling these areas," said Russia's defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Tuesday.

Konashenkov took his war crimes denial a step further by suggesting that the Nobel peace prize nominated Syrian Civil Defence, who themselves as first-responders suffered from the "double-tap" strikes that targeted the convoy, would know who was responsible for the attack.

Not to be outdone Damascus also reported that there was "no truth to media reports that the Syrian army targeted a convoy of humanitarian aid in Aleppo province".

The irony should not be lost on people that the convoy attack took place as the leaders of the world gathered at the UN for a summit on solving the refugee crisis.

Maybe the Kremlin's policy of denying war crimes and blaming the other side might be more believable here if the rebels had an air force capable of carrying out such an attack or if Russia Today had themselves not live-streamed drone footage of the same convoy hours before the attack, proving the UN's assertion that they knew exactly where it was.

To add further insult to Syria's injury, the UN has now suspended aid operations in the war-ravaged state. Not that this will make a discernible difference to Syrian civilians suffering the most from Assad's 'submit or starve' as a Guardian investigation found troubling links between Damascus and the UN's aid operations in Syria.

Meanwhile, witnesses in Syria told Amnesty that Russian-made fighter jets and helicopters took part in the bombardment.

The pertinent question should be just what the Obama administration or the UN expected when trying to enter into agreements with Putin. This is a man whose forces have invaded a sovereign state, shot down a civilian airliner and repeatedly and deliberately bombed hospitals and then lied about it all. What other possible outcome could there have been for this deal?

After all, Putin openly backs Assad, a man that seems to actively revel in his policy of gratuitous and obscene violence against civilians. The Assad regime has employed rape, starvation, torture and chemical weapons against its civilian population with sole intention of breaking their will to resist. The regime has unleashed a war that has either killed or displaced a staggering 50% of its pre-war population.

Not only have Kremlin-backed media outlets have used their platforms to deny and deflect every one of Assad's crimes and promote the regime's ethnic cleansing program in Homs and the Damascus suburbs as humanitarian evacuations rather than the predictable result of years of starvation and bombardment.

So where to now? After Geneva 1, 2 and 3, Kerry's "cessation of hostilities" agreements clearly aren't worth the paper they are written on. The most astonishing part of it all though is that there is no other plan, all carrot and no stick with the 21st century's worst dictator.

Obama's legacy in Syria will be defined as one of cowardice and appeasement and the search for justice and accountability in Syria remains at the mercy of an international community that is paralyzed by inaction.

When John Kerry was asked on NPR on September 14, he said "What's the alternative? The alternative is to allow us to go from 450,000 people who've been slaughtered to how many thousands more? That Aleppo gets completely overrun? That the Russians and Assad simply bomb indiscriminately for days to come, and we sit there and do nothing? That's the alternative to trying to get this done, if America is not going to go in with their troops – and America's made the decision we're not going in with our troops. And the president's made that decision."

In a nutshell, Kerry is saying here that the Obama administration would rather sit aside and 'do nothing' than take active steps to fulfil their obligations under international law to protect civilians from mass murder, his statements on Tuesday following the convoy strike that the 'ceasefire is not dead' only further prove how completely out of touch with reality this administration is. Obama's folly is mistaking this for a Syrian problem rather than a global one.

The irony should not be lost on people that the convoy attack took place as the leaders of the world gathered at the UN for a summit on solving the refugee crisis.

The biggest current cause of global conflict displacement is the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the international community's failure to protect the civilians of Syria will forever define Obama's foreign policy legacy. The rapid rise in ultra-nationalism and Jihadist terrorist attacks that have rocked both America and Western Europe to their cores in recent years are byproducts of the Syria crisis.

Obama's legacy in Syria will be defined as one of cowardice and appeasement and the search for justice and accountability in that country remains at the mercy of an international community that is paralyzed by inaction.

The consequences of the moral abdication of our responsibility to protect will ripple out for generations, just as the forced displacement of Palestinians decades ago still impacts global and regional politics today.

And, when the history books are written, they will say that the tyrant Bashar al-Assad unleashed a genocide upon his people as the world simply sat back and watched. We owe Syria better than this, and regardless of what Obama thinks, it is time the alternatives to his appeasement are finally discussed.

Syria this morning.
Gruesome scenes of dying children across the country as the @UN/US keeps negotiating w/#Putin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8-MFgKEyBU#…

REMEMBER Obama stated in 2014
"we will judge Putin on his actions not his words"

AND REMEMBER Kerry......
"we are trying to test the seriousness of Russia".........

AND.....??????

SO Lavrov publicly states in Russian media "it was not the Assad AF"...it certainly was not the US/Danish/UK/Australian and 22 other AFs...AND the only ones flying SU24s in the night over Aleppo was the Russian AF......

BUT hey he just keeps on trying to change the narrative ......

MFA Russia
✔
@mfa_russia
#Lavrov: Our military have already made the statements that our aviation did not work in Aleppo
http://tass.com/politics/901157

@mod_russia: "We reviewed the photographs from Aleppo and we see only evidence of damage from fire, no sign of explosion or shrapnel"

APPEARS that the Russian MoD did not have these photos which depict massive explosions did in fact occur and shrapnel was in play.....OR did a simple fire collapse a complete building and blow apart a truck cab.......???

BUT as we know from countless Russian MoD Syrian statements all they do is lie.....one can count on one finger how often they have been correct since arriving in Syria......

Ties nicely into the Russian FM Lavrov's Russian media statement from today.

Russian FM Lavrov's Freudian slip of the loose tongue.....maybe just a "vodka moment" he is going to regret forever......

Lavrov: Syrian army couldn't have struck UN aid convoy bc it doesn't have night-flying capability
http://kommersant.ru/doc/3094975

"Loose lips sink ships"...in this case the entire narrative Russian media and the Russian MoD have been blasting to the world...."it ain't us".....

With this statement he confirms;

1. what we have been posting here of weeks....Assad AF has no night time strike abilities thus all hospitals, and cluster/incendiary attacks at night have been Russian

2. CONFIRMS that the Russian AF has the night time strike abilities AND uses it based on countless night time air strike videos

AND it fits nicely to the US statement that there were TWO Russian SU24s flying over the strike zone at the time of the bombing...BOTH have night time strike abilities.....WHICH Russia claims were not flying.....

MAYBE it was that ever elusive IS AF Russia often talks about....supported by the USAF.....

We've now reached the point where giving the regime and Russia impunity to commit war crimes is seen as a deterrent against war crimes.

Pretty special form of cynicism to block testimony about war crimes by Assad in service of a deal with Russia that objectively helps Assad

So again just who does this Obama/Kerry WH want to truly protect....Putin, Assad or Khamenei......

#Assad: ceasefire is over

#Russia: "terrorists" broke the ceasefire

US: ceasefire is still alive

UN: ceasefire isn't dead

= #Syria burns

Breaking International Syria Support Group meeting agrees ceasefire needed:

God help #Syria.

Robert Ford @fordrs58
even if it is unintended, the leaders in Damascus will understand only one thing: USA is shifting its stance on Syr govt/Assad steadily

Syria 40.000 people (+lots displaced) in #Madaja/#Zabadani west of #Damascus close to starvation bc under #Hezbollah siege

WHY does this Obama/Kerry WH still refuse to address the Assad/Putin genocide, war crimes, starvation and ethnic cleansing??????

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...2749&tid=ss_tw

Obama running defense for Assad in Congress now.

Josh Rogin

White House worked secretly to delay Syria sanctions bill

Quote:
The White House worked behind the scenes last week to prevent a bipartisan bill to sanction the Assad regime for war crimes and atrocities against civilians from getting a vote in the House of Representatives. The Democratic leadership bowed to White House pressure and withdrew its support for voting on the bill for now.

Lawmakers and congressional staff had been preparing to bring up the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act this week and pass it out of the House with relative ease. The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of civilians in custody, has more than 50 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was the primary author of the bill, along with his committee counterpart Ed Royce (R-Calif.). Even liberal Democrats like Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) had signed on. But late Friday afternoon, just before the legislative calendar for the following week was to be released, White House legislative affairs staffers began calling leadership in both parties urging them to shelve the legislation.

The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told me that the White House pressured House Democratic leadership to pull their support for moving the bill, and Democrats obliged.

“After President Obama’s disastrous handling of Syria, he’s now adding insult to injury by pressuring House Democrats to kill a bipartisan bill aimed at cleaning up his mess,” said Ryan’s press secretary, AshLee Strong. “We hope members will have a chance to vote on this important legislation soon.”
The bill would impose new sanctions on the Assad regime and its supporters, spur investigations meant to fuel the prosecution of war crimes in Syria, and encourage a process to find a negotiated solution to the crisis.#Specifically, it#would require the president to impose new sanctions on any entity that does business with or finances the Syrian government or its military or intelligence services, which includes Russia and Iran.

It would also require sanctions on any entity that does business with several Syrian government-controlled industries, including the airline, telecommunications and energy sectors.

There had been an agreement between Republicans and Democrats to bring the bill to the House floor this week under a suspension of the rules, which provides for a streamlined process but also requires two-thirds support to pass.#Once Democratic leadership went back on that agreement, the obstacles to passing it increased immensely. Royce, whose committee approved the bill in July, also put the blame on the Obama administration.

“I’m dismayed that the administration seems to be throwing up roadblocks to our bipartisan effort to cut off the resources Assad uses to annihilate his own people, and I will continue working to find a path forward for this important legislation,” he said.

An administration source told me that it’s normal for the White House to be in touch with congressional officials in both parties on any piece of legislation. The administration source said House Democrats opted not to move forward with this legislation on their own volition.

Several congressional officials disputed that assertion, saying that the administration argued that if Congress even voted on the Syrian sanctions bill, that could negatively affect the delicate cessation of hostilities that Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated with Russia.

“It was the desire of the National Security Council that this bill not move,” one senior congressional staffer who received a call told me. “White House legislative affairs staff said the timing was not good.”
Engel, in a statement, said that he agreed with the White House that a delay was appropriate and that although he was skeptical about the cease-fire, it should be given a chance to succeed. But he promised to work to ensure that, sooner or later, the sanctions bill will get a vote in the House.

“At the end of last week, the implementation of the cessation of hostilities in Syria was just beginning. It would have been short-sighted — even irresponsible — for the House to proceed with the consideration of the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act as if nothing had changed,” he said.#“That said, things can change quickly, and if they do, Congress should act quickly … If that happens, I will work day and night to move this bill through the House.”

Engel and the administration don’t agree on Syria policy. Engel has been a strong supporter of a no-fly zone to protect civilians and more robust support for the armed Syrian opposition. But Engel worked with the administration when crafting the bill in an effort to get the administration to buy in and prevent the White House from opposing the legislation.

Some of the congressional officials who worked on the bill believe the administration is intentionally trying to delay it because the White House opposes placing strong pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Evan McMullin worked on the bill when he was policy director for Royce and then for the House Republican Conference. Now he is running as an independent candidate for president.

“In 2014, the administration fought hard to prevent Caesar from testifying to Congress and the public of Assad’s crimes, all in the name of security,” he told me. “Now they’ve mobilized similarly against the sanctions bill, which is the very thing needed to help compel Assad to stop killing.”
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If the administration is serious about preventing Assad from committing war crimes and seeking accountability for the regime, it should welcome the leverage that Congress is trying hard to give it, McMullin said.
Mouaz Moustafa is a Syrian activist who helped Congress craft the bill as a representative of the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, an umbrella group of nongovernmental organizations that support the moderate Syrian opposition. He said the delay of the bill equals a delay of justice for victims of Assad’s atrocities and for possible prevention of future horrors.

“This bipartisan measure pursues nonviolent means of compelling the regime to stop murdering civilians and the administration shuts it down in what can only be described as a subversion of the democratic process,” he said. “Do the victims of war crimes not at least deserve a vote?”

Democrats’ desire not to be seen as interfering with the cease-fire, which represented a measure of hope last week for progress, is understandable. But this week, with the cease-fire in tatters and Assad resuming his indiscriminate barrel bombing of civilians in Aleppo, there’s no more excuse.

Congress should move the Syria sanctions bill to the floor and the administration should clearly endorse it or oppose it and make its arguments public. If the White House doesn’t believe this bill represents the best way to hold the Assad regime accountable for its many atrocities, it must explain what it plans to do as an alternative.
JUST how many more secret agreements does this Obama/Kerry WH...have now in play...first with Iran Deal with a still unknown number of secret agreements.....THEN onto the secret agreements in the just failed ceasefire AND now this .....

SO the Russians say "it ain't us"....BUT WAIT...Russian bomb debris found at the attack site says otherwise....

UN aid convoy bombing. Russian OFAB-250-270

Bomb fins do not lie regardless of what the Russian MoD says......especially when they are buried inside an aid building under destroyed aid boxes

Footage of UN aid convoy destroyed by Russia'n airstrikes last night near Aleppo
https://youtu.be/Ma0DtIcKWa8
https://youtu.be/jlVwmkIAY8o

Russia'n drone view on #UN aid convoy before airstrikes hit the trucks in western #Aleppo's Urem al-Kubra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwLxk-ypKk …

Russian statement ..."it ain't us"...just as they denied responsibility for the shot down of MH17.....

Last night shows what happens when someone with no respect for international law or human life knows there's no red-line, AND no consequences.

Well we have had from Kerry over the last year the following words after major attacks on IPD camps, hospitals and marketplaces......"concerned"...."seriously concerned".....and now "outraged"....

So what does it really mean if there is no action behind the word "outraged"...just another kick the can down the road statement is all....

BBC: U.S. 'outraged' over aid convoy attack in Syria

Outrage definition, an act of wanton cruelty or violence; any gross violation of law or decency...it is simply another meaningless word if there is no action behind it.....

WOW.....that is all the Russia MoD propaganda could come up with.....

Kremlin denies involvement in attack on UN convoy

Let's now analyze who could have done it......

1. JFS (AQ) and FSA...do not have an AF
2. US and others were not flying in the area last night due to the so called ceasefire
3. Assad AF...definitely flying all throughout the so called ceasefire
4. Russia AF....definitely flying throughout the ceasefire

Who could fly at night and WHO has a history of night time air strikes in Syrian.....Assad AF....not really.....RuAF DEFINITELY A YES

NOW just who conducts "double tap air strikes on first responders" a very old Russian Chechen war tactic ...the RuAF WHICH has been actually caught on video footage conducting such air strikes...

THE RuAF......was there a "double tap air strike last night ...THERE SURE WAS.....was there accurate multiple air strikes on the aid compound in the middle of the night YES there WERE...

WHO was using a targeting drone to track the aid convoy up to the actual bombing location......rebels...no....Assad.....no....WOW it was a Russian drone operated by the Russian MoD....

WOW...now we know it was...it was the Ukrainian AF that bombed the aid convoy...CERTAINLY NOT THE RUSSIANS.....

US refuses to throw in towel on Syria ceasefire
http://u.afp.com/ZFQ8#

Since the strike on the aid convoy -- senior US officials now more skeptical: "We don't know if can be salvaged"

http://freebeacon.com/blog/i-just-cant-even/

John Kerry Wishes Media Wouldn’t Cover Bad News (Continued)

BY: Noah Pollak

September 19, 2016 2:31 pm

[QUOTE]
It was only three weeks ago that the secretary of state committed a perfect Washington gaffe,#complaining#that media coverage of terrorism is making life difficult for him and the administration he serves:#“Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

The mockery and ridicule to which he was subjected afterward was, as they say on the Internet, epic. But John Kerry does not learn from experience, and so he’s done it again.

In a press appearance Monday#Kerry was asked about his latest diplomatic disaster, the “cease-fire” in Syria. The fighting was supposed to stop so that aid could be delivered to civilians, but the fighting never stopped and the aid was never delivered, because Kerry didn’t realize that his negotiating partners were lying to his face about everything.

It’s not a good situation when America’s top diplomat is unaware that the Russians, Syrians, and Iranians tend to be dishonest in negotiations.

Anyway, asked for comment on the cease-fire, Kerry wasn’t upset that Assad and the Russians had snookered him again. No, he was annoyed, for the second time in a month, that#the media found out, in this case because the Syrians told them:

QUESTION: The Syrian military is saying the seven-day ceasefire is over. It – has it failed?
SECRETARY KERRY: We have not had seven days of calm and delivery of humanitarian goods, and so – it’d be good if they didn’t talk first to the press but if they talked to the people who are actually negotiating this. … we’re happy to have a good conversation with them about how to proceed.

So, to summarize: John Kerry negotiated a fake cease-fire with people who have an unblemished record of undermining American interests and lying to him personally. Now they’ve pulled the rug out in the most conspicuous and humiliating way possible, and Kerry thinks Assad simply goofed on media etiquette and wants to iron out the details of the cease fire in a new round of negotiations — and it’d all be possible if the media would stop claiming that he has failed.

Vain, dense, and self-deluded, John Kerry is such an enormous embarrassment to the United States and such a profound cretin as a human being that it almost makes his humiliation enjoyable to watch. Except that there are civilians in Syria whose lives depend on the aid Kerry so cruelly keeps promising, and which he should know will never be delivered.

BUT WAIT...Russian UNSC Ambassador will submit clear evidence that the USAF bombed the convoy.....

BUT WAIT.....it now appears that the Russian MoD was fully aware of the aid convoy and actively tracked it with one of their recon/targeting drones.....

Unconfirmed: Russian MOD stream earlier today showed drone tracking SARC/UN aid convoy approaching Urem al-Kubra. http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=36...15&m=b#…

Now confirmed. Watch 01:00:26 where the trucks are followed by a Russian targeting drone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwLxk-ypKk#…

SO JUST WHAT DO WE KNOW NOW.

1. IT WAS NOT THE USAF
2. THAT IT WAS A JOINT ASSAD/PUITN AIR STRIKE
3. RUSSIA NEVER FULFILLED THE CORE KEY ELEMENT OF THEIR OWN CEASEFIRE.... HUMANITARIAN AID BEING DELIVERED

So can Putin now every be trusted on anything he says and or signs....not really....

So is Putin is just as a complicit in war crimes, genocide and starvation as is the entire Obama WH......valid point now...

Aleppo: Pro-#Assad forces shelling Eastern #Aleppo with heavy artillery from the Citadel.

Aleppo: Horrible hospital scenes in Aleppo City tonight many children have been wounded in the air strikes and Obama and Kerry do not care.

Aleppo is under heavy bombardment, within an hour of Syria calling off the ceasefire. Planes, helicopters in the sky. People are terrified.

Countless air strikes and barrel bomb attacks ongoing as this is being typed.....

Aleppo: Omar Barakat, head of the #Syria|n Arab Red Crescent in #Aleppo, was killed by #Russia|n airstrikes.

Aid official on attack on UN convoy: "All standard de-confliction had been done so it is in-expliciable that such attack could take place."

BUT WAIT THIS TIME Putin gave the orders to strike not the MoD.........

Kyle W. Orton ‏@KyleWOrton
The notion that the pro-#Assad coalition would bomb an aid convoy in these circumstances provoked some scepticism. Shouldn't have, of course

This begs a question: does ceasefire diplomacy really save lives? Or does flawed diplomacy just defer a solution & prolong the misery?

After two runs at it, approaching a relatively decisive "no". Also convincing everyone politics is useless; it's now a fight to the finish.

RUSSIA will now argue that they "knew nothing about it" and thus the need to work jointly with the US to avoid such "accidents".....

BUT WAIT....THEY DID KNOW A FULL NINE HOURS BEFORE THE CONVOYS LEFT TURKEY

OCHA Syria Verifizierter Account 
‏@OCHA_Syria
Inter-agency convoy is crossing the conflict line to Big Orem in #Aleppo #Syria to deliver aid w/ @UN @SYRedCrescent

This was posted nine hours ago.

REMEMBER Bismarck once said..."sometimes in politics one reaches a stage where it will be settled by blood and iron"...we are now at that stage.....

AWAITING now the Arab Sunni response from Turkey and KSA.....we are closing in on a potential Sunni Shia war which is what Iran has wanted for a long time aided and abetted by Obama and Kerry....

Epic Kremlin trolling here....Putin's only got a few months of humiliating Obama left, might as well go all the way.

Russia declares the ceasefire over, blames the United States and Syrian rebels.

AFP news agency
Verified account
‏@AFP
#BREAKING Obama says no military solution in Syria, backs 'hard work' of diplomacy

BUT WAIT.....Assad and Putin really do believe a military solution is the way forward....AND Kerry and Obama just talk......and talk....and talk.....

"No military solution" confirms that admin will continue failing to even threaten retaliation for grave violations of agreements, ceasefires

APPEARS this President does not even know when he has actually failed and failed badly......it is a serious problem when he cannot seem to actually understand the reality of "power politics"....

Interesting how events on the ground in Syria and an Op Ed tie themsleves together......

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.9b49c24d36ed

Putin’s lesson for Obama in Syria

Quote:
In the great American debate about Syria, there has been an intervention by Vladi#mir Putin — and it has made Barack Obama the loser.

Since 2012, Obama has been stubbornly arguing that there is no workable option for even a limited U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war. John F. Kerry, Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus and Leon E. Panetta, among others, pushed the president to use U.S. air power or stepped-up support for rebels to tilt the balance of the war against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, thereby making possible a political settlement favorable to the United States and its allies.

Obama repeatedly refused. There was no way to get involved, he said, without starting the U.S. military down a slippery slope that would lead to another quagmire, like Iraq or Afghanistan. Anyway, he said, U.S. intervention would only worsen the war, encourage extremism and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.

All those bad things happened in the absence of American action. And now Putin has proved that the concept Obama rejected — that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs — was right all along. The difference, of course, is that the result has been a victory for Russia, Iran and the Assad regime, at the expense of the United States and its Arab, Israeli and Turkish friends.

The deal that Kerry brokered with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this month offered Putin everything he sought in Syria. The Assad regime would be entrenched by a truce that leaves its forces in a commanding position around Aleppo, the country’s largest city. If it holds for seven days, U.S. commanders are mandated to join Russia in operations against anti-Assad forces deemed extremist, in Aleppo and elsewhere — satisfying Putin’s long-standing demand that the West join him in fighting “terrorists” rather than Assad. The Pentagon’s fierce objections to this capitulation were overruled.

Even if the cease-fire fails, as seemed possible Sunday, Putin will have won U.S. endorsement of the principle that rebels, not the regime, are the prime problem in Syria. While Kerry portrayed the deal as opening the way to humanitarian assistance to Syrian civilians, Assad is obstructing aid deliveries. If past is prologue, Kerry will respond to such violations by going back to Putin for a fix.

Remember: Putin ordered Russia’s intervention just a year ago, after Iran’s chief foreign military commander, Qassem Soleimani, warned Moscow that the Assad regime faced defeat. When Russian bombers suddenly began appearing in Syria — to the surprise of Washington — Obama quickly declared the Russians were stepping into a “quagmire.” That was predictable: After all, that is what the president insisted would be the result of a U.S. air intervention.

But there has been no quagmire for Russia. On the contrary, Putin, who made a show of withdrawing some of his planes six months ago, has suffered minimal losses. He turned the tide of the war in favor of Assad and as a result has gotten the political terms he wanted from the United States. Most remarkably, he has done so even while simultaneously staging an audacious and unprecedented intervention in the U.S. presidential campaign.

As Kerry was parlaying with Lavrov, Russian intelligence was leaking hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. No matter: Kerry pressed on to finish a deal on Moscow’s terms. His defenders are reduced to arguing that Russia’s military action, and Obama’s refusal to commit the United States, left Kerry no alternative but to play a weak diplomatic hand.

Putin must feel a particular satisfaction at having turned the geopolitical tables on Washington. During the 1990s, he and his former KGB colleagues watched in dismay as the Clinton administration launched military actions in areas once considered part of Russia’s sphere of influence — such as Serbia and Bosnia — then imposed political solutions of U.S. design. The Russian government of Boris Yeltsin was forced to swallow fiats such as the independence of Kosovo. All the while, from Putin’s point of view, the United States was meddling in Russia’s domestic politics by funding civil society groups advocating human rights and democracy.

Now Putin is the one imposing political outcomes in regions the United States once dominated while brazenly seeking to disrupt the U.S. political system. The difference is that the United States, unlike Russia in the 1990s, is not weak; in fact it is far stronger than Putin’s Russia. U.S. fecklessness is a choice.

Obama, of course, doesn’t see it that way. His aides sometimes contrast his presidency with that of Bill Clinton’s: Those who served Clinton in foreign policy, they say, don’t understand how much U.S. capacity to impose its will internationally has diminished in the past 20 years. Maybe they are right. But that doesn’t explain Syria — where Vladimir Putin has just accomplished that which Obama deemed impossible.

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Obama’s Syria Plan Teams Up American and Russian Forces

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