Nothing much really, just the same old war-promoting slop:
"Al Qaeda group gains in Syria war" by Diaa Hadid | Associated Press November 08, 2014
BEIRUT — Al Qaeda-linked fighters captured at least three villages from Western-backed rebels in northwestern Syria on Friday as the militants continued their push to assert control over an area once held by more moderate groups.
The Nusra Front’s recent advances have exposed the weakness of more moderate factions, which the United States hopes to forge into an effective fighting force against President Bashar Assad’s troops.
Yeah, I'm really wondering who created and enabled al Nusra.
Underscoring their strength, Al Qaeda militants seized the three villages just a day after US airstrikes hit one of their major weapons storage compounds in northwestern Idlib province.
In the past week, the militants have been overrunning Idlib strongholds once held by prominent rebel factions armed and trained by the United States, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm.
The Nusra fighters on Friday seized at least three more villages in Idlib — Safuhan, Fatira, and Hazareen — and were pushing to take others, according to a local activist who goes by his first name, Alaa al-Deen.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, also reported the same advances by the Nusra Front.
The capture of the villages may allow the Nusra Front fighters to advance onto the last Idlib strongholds held by the Syrian Revolutionaries Front.
It would also pave the way for them to seize more rebel-held areas in the central Syrian province of Hama, said Alaa al-Deen, who did not provide his family name fearing he’d be identified by the militants.
He said Nusra’s advances were a sinister development and could spell ‘‘the end of the Free Syrian Army,’’ the Western-backed moderate rebels fighting Assad.
The Nusra Front is a bitter and bloody rival of the Islamic State group, which has captured large swaths of Syria and northwestern Iraq, despite their shared extremist ideology.
It's good to have several self-serving creations rather than just one.
On Thursday, American aircraft bombed a Nusra Front compound in Idlib, close to the Turkish border.
A senior US official said one of the targets was a French militant and bomb-maker, David Drugeon, who was killed in the strike.
We are in high dudgeon now!
Also Friday, Syrian troops battled rebels near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the Lebanon border in clashes that killed and wounded dozens, activists and state media said.
While the Syria Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm have both received U.S. support, it never reached the levels that either group deemed necessary to make significant advances against Assad's forces in Syria's 3½-year-old civil war. At the same time, the link to the Americans also earned them enmity of radical groups.
Syria's state news agency SANA said government forces killed "a number of terrorists" in the southwestern village of Beit Jin near Mount Hermon in the Golan. Assad's government refers to opposition fighters and members of jihadi groups as terrorists.
So do we.
The Britain-based Observatory said the fighting, which began on Thursday, killed 26 pro-government forces and 14 rebels and jihadi fighters. The clashes lasted into early Friday, it said.
The area near Mount Hermon along the disputed borders between the three countries has seen weeks of heavy clashes as rebels and the Nusra Front jointly fought Assad's forces.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said Lebanese troops prevented the Syrian government forces from bringing in 11 wounded people from the Beit Jin area.
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What is not Nusra:
"US begins airstrikes in defense of Syrian Kurds" by David E. Sanger and Anne Barnard | New York Times September 28, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said on Saturday that it had conducted its first strikes against Islamic State targets in a besieged Kurdish area of Syria along the Turkish border.
The action appeared to signify the opening of a new front for US airstrikes in Syria.
It came on a day when several other strikes took place in Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the Islamic State’s forces, and other sites in the eastern part of the country.
Symbolically, though, the modest strikes around Kobani demonstrated some US and Arab commitment to the direct defense of the Kurds in an area that, village by village, has been falling to Islamic State forces.
After days of pleading for air cover, many local residents were gleeful as jets roared overhead and two columns of smoke could be seen from another front miles away. They hoped it meant that US jets had finally come to their aid.
One praised President Obama, using an honorific for a man who has made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
“Without Hajji Obama,” said one Syrian Kurd, Sheikh Mohammad Bozan, “we would all lose our heads.”
I think you just did.
Other Syrian and Turkish Kurds cheered from hilltops dotted with fig and olive trees and army foxholes as Kurdish fighters scaled a ridge and fired a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck.
That's the same thing Zionist Israelis do when Palestinians are being butchered.
Muzzle flashes could be seen as Islamic State fighters returned fire and zipped toward the front line in cars and on motorcycles.
Nonetheless, on Saturday it was clear that Kurdish fighters were outgunned by the Islamic State militants, in fighting just a few hundred yards inside Syria and clearly visible from hilltop olive groves in Karaca, a frontier village on the Turkish side of the border.
They fought with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns within sight of Kobani, the central town in the region.
A Kurdish activist, Mustafa Ebdi, said from Kobani that an Islamic State command post, a tank and a cannon had been hit by the US strike. In a statement, the US Central Command said that strikes around the country had been carried out with forces from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates — it did not specify which aircraft hit which areas — and that “all aircraft exited the strike areas safely.”
Related: US shouldering brunt of ISIS air campaign
The contradictions, mixed messages, deceptions, distortions, call 'em what you will, nothing Nusra.
The administration has been eager to show that those three Arab states, all dominated by Sunnis, are part of the effort against the Islamic State.
The statement also said there were three airstrikes near Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, that destroyed four of the Islamic State’s armed vehicles and one of its fighting positions.
But for all the action in the air, it was unclear how much progress was being made.
American strategists and retired officers such as General David H. Petraeus, the former commander of Centcom and an architect of the surge in Iraq in the Bush administration, have made clear that airstrikes alone, without coordinated ground attacks, may halt but are unlikely to reverse the Islamic State’s territorial gains.
But the United States has ruled out using combat troops on the ground, as have Britain and other allies, even while agreeing to provide air power.
They are calling them advisers.
A Turkish political analyst said Saturday that the scenes at the border raised the possibility that Turkey saw the Kurds, and the semiautonomous zone they have carved out around Kobani during three years of civil war in Syria, as “a greater threat” than the Islamic State.
Yeah, Turkey has used the ISIS cover to go after Kurds and push for an overthrow of Assad.
Those competing priorities, said the analyst, Soli Ozel, a columnist for the Turkish newspaper Haberturk and a lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, were probably among the remaining “sticking points” with the United States.
“Turkey will do something militarily,” he said, citing a proposal by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reported Saturday, to use Turkish ground forces to set up a secure zone inside Syria.
That is what they have wanted all along, to take a bite out of Syria and install their own Sunni puppet.
But one of Turkey’s goals, Ozel said, might be “to crush or dissolve the Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone.”
Well, I suppose Turkey has a history, too. Nothing Nusra there.
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I had been covering the situation every day, but....
"Al Qaeda in Syria warns West over airstrikes; Retaliation vow by Nusra Front clouds mission" by Diaa Hadid and Desmond Butler | Associated Press September 29, 2014
BEIRUT — As the US-led coalition continued airstrikes on militant targets in Syria on Sunday, the leader of the Al Qaeda’s affiliate there vowed that his group would ‘‘use all possible means’’ to fight back and warned that the conflict would reach Western countries joining the alliance.
They keep spelling it wrong; it's Al-CIA-Duh.
The United States views the affiliate, known as the Nusra Front, as a terrorist group, but Syrian rebels have long seen it as a potent ally against both the Islamic State extremist group — which is the main target of the coalition — and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Syrian rebels, activists, and analysts have warned that targeting the Nusra Front will inject more chaos into the Syrian conflict and indirectly help Assad by striking one of his main adversaries.
So we are told when all the airstrikes are hurting Assad!
Washington insists it wants Assad to step down, but is not targeting his forces, which are best placed to benefit from the airstrikes.
Yeah, I'm really believing what the official position is of the U.S. government.
In a 25-minute audio recording issued Sunday, Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani portrayed the US-led coalition as a ‘‘Crusader alliance’’ against Sunni Muslims and vowed to fight back.
‘‘We will use all that we have to defend the people of Syria . . . from the Crusader alliance,’’ Golani said. ‘‘And we will use all possible means to achieve this end.’’
He warned Western countries against taking part in the alliance in words that echoed those of the late founder of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
Not only is that not Nusra,.... sigh.
His specter still speaks from the watery grave, blah, blah, blah.
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On Sunday, explosions from aerial bombings lit the sky for two hours in the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad, near Turkey. The airstrikes, probably by the coalition but not confirmed, targeted a refinery operated by the militant group, said an eyewitness and activists....
The Turkish news agency Dogan said the strikes targeted an oil refinery and the local headquarters of the Islamic State group
The US-led coalition has been targeting Islamic State-held oil sites across Syria, aiming to cripple the group’s finances. The group is believed to earn $3 million a day from selling smuggled oil on the black market as well as from kidnapping ransoms and extortion.
Related: US: IS earns $1m per day in black market oil sales
Whatever Cohen $ays.
Who is buying it? (A: Turkey, Kurds).
Iraqi forces retake most of strategic oil town
That $ettles that.
The coalition includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan. Several European countries also are contributing to US efforts to strike the Islamic State group in Iraq, including France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Britain.
You know who is shouldering the brunt.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 19 civilians have been killed so far in coalition strikes in Syria. Overall, some 190,000 people have died in Syria’s three-year conflict and nearly one-half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million people has been displaced.
Also Sunday, tank and artillery shelling intensified in Kobani, the Syrian town in a region of Kurdish farming villages that has been under assault by the Islamic State. The militants have been closing in on the town from the east and west, outgunning Kurdish fighters struggling to defend the area.
The United States and five Arab allies launched an air campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria on Tuesday with the aim of ultimately crushing the extremist group. The United States has been carrying out airstrikes against the group in neighboring Iraq since August.
Some of the initial strikes struck the Nusra Front, hitting several of its facilities and killing dozens of its fighters. Washington said it was trying to take out an Al Qaeda cell known as the Khorasan Group that was actively plotting attacks against Americans and Western interests.
Turns out the Khorasan is fictional.
Syrian rebels have expressed anger at the coalition airstrikes, both because they have targeted the Nusra Front — which they see as an ally — and because they are not hitting pro-government forces, which are the best placed to benefit from any rolling back of the Islamic State group.
Yeah, right, whatever.
The Nusra Front’s ultimate goal is to impose Islamic law in Syria. But unlike the Islamic State group, it has fought alongside other rebel groups, seeing the overthrow of Assad as its first priority.
I see the hand of the CIA!
Golani warned the airstrikes would weaken the rebels.
‘‘Those of our men who were targeted in the shelling . . . the effect of their loss will be witnessed by the entire conflict, not just on the [Nusra] Front alone,’’ he said.
The Nusra Front leader also warned other rebel groups not to coordinate with the US-led alliance. Washington has promised to arm and train more Syrian rebels to help fight the Islamic State group.
How you liking this cloak-and-dagger double-dealing propaganda?
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"Islamic State closes in on Kurdish area of Syria" by Desmond Butler | Associated Press September 30, 2014
ANTAKYA, Turkey — Militants of the Islamic State group were closing in Monday on a Kurdish area of Syria on the border with Turkey — an advance unhindered so far by US-led coalition airstrikes, including one that struck a grain silo, killing two civilians, according to activists.
First the oil and energy fields, now the food!
Islamic State fighters pounded the city of Kobani with mortars and artillery shells, advancing within 3 miles of the Kurdish frontier city, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Nawaf Khalil, a Kurdish official.
The Islamic extremists intensified their shelling of the border region following US-led strikes Saturday. The aerial assault appeared to have done little to thwart the militants, Kurdish officials and activists said.
Maybe it wasn't meant to.
If anything, the extremists seemed more determined to seize the area, which would deepen their control over territory stretching from the Turkish border, across Syria and to the western edge of Baghdad, activists said.
‘‘Instead of pushing them back, now every time they hear the planes, they shell more,’’ Ahmad Sheikho, an activist operating along the Syria-Turkey border, said of the Islamic State fighters. He estimated he heard a rocket explosion every 15 minutes or so.
Three mortar shells landed in a field in nearby Turkey, the Turkish military said in a statement. After the strike, Turkey’s military moved tanks away from the army post in the area, positioning them on a hill overlooking the border.
In Iraq on Monday, Islamic State fighters were handed a setback when Iraqi troops, supported by US airstrikes, blocked their advance toward Baghdad from the militant stronghold of Fallujah.
The push by the Islamic State forces in Syria caused thousands more Kurds to flee the Kobani area on Monday, adding to some 150,000 refugees who have fled to Turkey since mid-September, one of the largest influxes of Syrian refugees since the war began 3½ years ago.
The Kurds were particularly fearful that the militants would repeat the mass killings of men and seizures of women that occurred in Iraq in August, after Islamic State fighters seized villages dominated by Iraqis of the Yazidi minority.
Turns out the Yazidis were the excuse to be able to airstrike Iraq, as the Marines that arrived found they had been living there for months and no emergency existed. I remember reading and writing about it.
Men were leaving their families in Turkey and then heading back to Kobani to fight, Sheikho said.
Washington and its Arab allies opened the air assault against the extremist group on Sept. 23, striking military facilities, training camps, heavy weapons and oil installations. The campaign expands upon the airstrikes the United States has been conducting against the militants in Iraq since early August.
The airstrikes are meant to ultimately destroy the group, which has declared a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic state, ruled by its harsh interpretation of Islamic law in areas under its control. Its brutal tactics, which include mass killings and beheadings, have galvanized the international community to take on the militants.
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One can take no comfort in the situation:
"UN says Syria vaccine deaths was an NGO ‘mistake’" | AP October 02, 2014
UNITED NATIONS — The recent deaths of Syrian children after receiving measles vaccinations was the result of a ‘‘mistake’’ by a nongovernmental partner who mixed in a muscle relaxant meant for anesthesia, a spokesman for the UN secretary general said Wednesday.
But Stephane Dujarric told reporters the incident has nothing to do with the quality of humanitarian aid now going through UN channels into Syria.
A physician who administered the vaccinations in rebel-held parts of northwestern Syria told the Associated Press in mid-September that at least 15 children died. The physician said the children exhibited signs of ‘‘severe allergic shock,’’ with many suffocating as their bodies swelled.
That is something that should be taken seriously.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations has demanded a UN investigation into whoever is responsible. In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council last month, Bashar Ja’afari called the deaths a ‘‘crime against humanity.’’
‘‘What happened with the vaccines was a real tragedy, but it was basic human error,’’ Dujarric said.
And since the global pharmaceuticals that produce the stuff are immune from lawsuits, oh well.
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Anyone seen Assad lately?
"Embattled Syrian president makes rare appearance" by Bassem Mroue | Associated Press October 05, 2014
BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance Saturday, attending prayers for a key Muslim holiday at a mosque in the capital of Damascus just hours after the US-led coalition carried out new airstrikes against Islamic State group militants in Syria.
The airstrikes targeted the militants’ positions on Friday night in the eastern town of Shaddadeh, a stronghold of the group in the northeastern Syrian province of Hassakeh, according to activists.
The airstrikes caused casualties, the activists said, with one group saying as many as 30 Islamic State fighters were killed. It was the first time Shaddadeh was struck since the US-led campaign began nearly two weeks ago. There was no immediate confirmation from Washington.
Syrian state television aired footage of Assad praying on Saturday at the al-Numan Bin Bashir mosque, along with government officials and the country’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, as most Muslims around the world started celebrating the three-day holiday of Eid al-Adha.
In Turkey on Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an apology from Vice President Joe Biden, who said in a speech at Harvard University that Erdogan had admitted erring in allowing foreign fighters to cross Turkey’s border into Syria, which led to the rise of the Islamic State.
“If Mr. Biden has said such a thing at Harvard, he needs to apologize to us,” Erdogan told reporters in Ankara. He said he had never made any such remark to Biden.
Why? What's the big secret?
Biden spoke with Erdogan by phone on Saturday. ‘‘The vice president apologized for any implication that Turkey or other allies and partners in the region had intentionally supplied or facilitated the growth of ISIL or other violent extremists in Syria,’’ the White House said, using another acronym for the Islamic State.
The United States and five Arab allies launched an aerial campaign against the Islamic State in Syria on Sept. 23 with the aim of rolling back and ultimately crushing the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The militants have also massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorized minorities in both countries, and beheaded two US journalists and two British aid workers.
Never mind the badly constructed and totally fake videos.
About 30 explosions were heard in and near Shaddadeh on Friday night, according to an activist in Hassakeh province, who added that the targets included several buildings occupied by Islamic State fighters.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists around Syria, said as many as 30 fighters from the Islamic State group were killed in the airstrikes on Shaddadeh. It said all the dead were foreign fighters.
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"Activists say Assad supporters protest in Syria" by Diaa Hadid | Associated Press October 03, 2014
BEIRUT — Hundreds of supporters of President Bashar Assad held a rare protest Thursday in Syria against the governor of the central city of Homs after twin bombings there killed 25 children, activists reported.
Was it Nusra or ISIS?
The demonstration of grim-faced men waving signs occurred after grieving residents gathered at a roundabout in Homs near where the attack took place, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A pro-Assad Facebook youth group in Homs also reported the protest. One photograph showed men and women carrying the Syrian flag and signs that read: ‘‘We won’t forget; We won’t be silent.’’
In Syria’s 3½-year civil war, open criticism against the government by Assad loyalists has been rare. But anger has been growing among Assad supporters since August, when extremists of the militant Islamic State group seized three military bases and killed hundreds of Syrian soldiers.
It was not immediately clear why the demonstrators specifically demanded the governor’s resignation.
I think I have a covert idea about it, but....
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Some questions starting to be answered:
"Some Alawites begin to question their support for Assad" by Hugh Naylor | Washington Post November 13, 2014
BEIRUT — The Alawite backbone of President Bashar Assad’s regime shows signs of wobbling under the strain of Syria’s civil war.
WaPo so hopes and wishes!!
Members of the minority group have become more critical of the regime’s handling of the conflict on social media and during rare protests, according to activists and analysts. They also say Alawites, who form the core of Assad’s security forces, increasingly have avoided compulsory military service in a nearly four-year war in which their community has sustained huge casualties relative to Syria’s Sunnis, who lead the rebellion.
Security forces have sharpened the friction by responding with arrests and intimidation.
But while few think this immediately threatens the rule of Assad, who also is Alawite, the rising tension signals exhaustion in a community that is crucial for his regime’s ability to confront a revolt that shows little sign of ending.
It's back to covert overthrow by terror and attrition, 'eh?
‘‘The Alawites are growing more and more impatient with the regime because it hasn’t been able to demonstrate much progress in ending the war,’’ said Louay Hussein, 54, an Alawite activist living in Damascus who is critical of the Assad regime.
Now multiply that threefold for the way Americans feel!!!!
Sort of explains the election results, huh?
‘‘People are realizing that the war is not going to go away any time soon and that you can’t shoot your way out of this problem — not with Syria’s demographics,’’ he said. ‘‘There are too many Sunnis.’’
Yup, which is why this blog will soon be ending.
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Time for a truce:
"Syria’s Assad says UN truce plan ‘worth studying’" Associated Press November 11, 2014
DAMASCUS — President Bashar Assad said Monday that the UN envoy’s proposal to implement a cease-fire in the embattled northern city of Aleppo was ‘‘worth studying.’’
Already gave up all his chem wrap, rem'mbr?
The envoy, Staffan de Mistura, first raised the idea of small-scale, localized, and negotiated truces in Syria at the United Nations in New York late last month.
The proposal would involve freezing the fighting in certain areas to allow for humanitarian aid as part of a push toward a wider peace in Syria’s 3½-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000.
Syrian media outlets that are considered mouthpieces for the government had warned that the veteran diplomat was being ‘‘hasty’’ and overstepping his authority.
Pot, kettle, nothing Nusra there.
On Monday, de Mistura met with Assad in Damascus for talks that touched on the idea of a local cease-fire in Aleppo, Syria’s former commercial hub and the last major city where rebels still hold large areas.
‘‘President Assad . . . considered that the initiative of de Mistura was worth studying and trying to work on to achieve its goals of returning security to the city of Aleppo,’’ said the statement, published by the state-run SANA news agency.
It was not immediately clear whether Assad’s remarks reflected a change in the government’s stance or an attempt to appear open to the idea without committing to it.
In other words, is he acting more the the U.S. and Israelis or.... ????
De Mistura, who is on a three-day trip to Syria aimed at reducing the violence, also traveled Monday to the central city of Homs, where he visited mosques and churches that were once in rebel-held districts before a local cease-fire agreement earlier this year ended the fighting.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
The SILLIness goes on and on....
"Syrian extremists said to form alliance" by Deb Riechmann | Associated Press November 14, 2014
ISTANBUL — Leaders from the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda gathered at a farm house in northern Syria last week and agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, according to a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander.
Why won't a drone missile or airstrike called in?
Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington’s strategy against the Islamic State group. While warplanes from a US-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming ‘‘moderate’’ rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together.
Just laying the groundwork for US combat troops, that's all, for a "multiyear campaign."
The Islamic State group — which has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a campaign of brutality and beheadings this year — and Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, have fought each other bitterly for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
There is your unchanging collective narrative for this next phase, even if phantom ISIS is real or not. They are everywhere and yet nowhere....
The Associated Press reported last month on signs the two groups had curtailed their feud with informal local truces. Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both Islamic State and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.
Cooperation, however, would fall short of unifying the rival groups, and experts believe any pact could easily unravel. US intelligence officials have been watching the groups closely and say a full merger is not expected soon, if ever.
Oh, I'll bet!!! Have their own case officers and operations managers, I'm sure!
Of course, if they have been watching closely they knew about the meeting at the farm house (ha-ha-ha).
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A US official with access to intelligence about Syria said the American intelligence community has, according to a Syrian opposition official, and a second source said he also had learned....
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
They REALLY THINK WE ARE GOING TO BUY and BELIEVE this RANK-ROT PROP after all we have seen over the years!!
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!
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Al Qaeda initially rejected the group’s claims to any role in Syria, and Nusra and other factions entered a war-within-a-war against it. But the Islamic State group swelled in power and became flush with weapons and cash after overrunning much of northern and western Iraq over the summer.
Uh-huh.
The official said the two groups agreed to work to destroy the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, a prominent rebel faction armed and trained by the United States....
Gonna have to go do it ourselves, American boys and girls.
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