A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[David Guyatt]

Pepe Escobar's latest. It's a really frightening scenario and the dumbasses in Washington and London are just too stupid to see it.

ou Want War? Russia is Ready for War

© Sputnik/ Dmitriy Vinogradov

COLUMNISTS18:56 15.12.2015(updated 19:37 15.12.2015) Get short URL
Pepe Escobar
29136941046

Nobody needs to read Zbigniew "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski's 1997 opus to know US foreign policy revolves around one single overarching theme: prevent by all means necessary the emergence of a power, or powers, capable of constraining Washington's unilateral swagger, not only in Eurasia but across the world.

The Pentagon carries the same message embedded in newspeak: the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.
Syria is leading all these assumptions to collapse like a house of cards. So no wonder in a Beltway under no visible chain of command the Obama administration barely qualifies as lame duck angst is the norm.
The Pentagon is now engaged in a Vietnam-style escalation of boots on the ground across "Syraq". 50 commandos are already in northern Syria "advising" the YPG Syrian Kurds as well as a few "moderate" Sunnis. Translation: telling them what Washington wants them to do. The official White House spin is that these commandos "support local forces" (Obama's words) in cutting off supply lines leading to the fake "Caliphate" capital, Raqqa.
Another 200 Special Forces sent to Iraq will soon follow, allegedly to "engage in direct combat" against the leadership of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, which is now ensconced in Mosul.

© US AIR FORCE

US-Led Coalition Strikes on Syrian Army Possibly Not Accidental - UN Envoy

These developments, billed as "efforts" to "partially re-engage in Iraq and Syria" are leading US Think Tankland to pen hilarious reports in search of "the perfect balance between wide-scale invasion and complete disengagement" when everyone knows Washington will never disengage from the Middle East's strategic oil wealth.All these American boots on the ground in theory should be coordinating, soon, with a new, spectacularly surrealist 34-country "Islamic" coalition (Iran was not invited), set up to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh by no less than the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism: Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.
Syria is now Coalition Central. There are at least four; the "4+1" (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah), which is actually fighting Daesh; the US-led coalition, a sort of mini NATO-GCC combo, but with the GCC doing nothing; the Russia-France direct military collaboration; and the new Saudi-led "Islamic" charade. They are pitted against an astonishing number of Salafi-jhadi coalitions and alliances of convenience that last from a few months to a few hours.
And then there's Turkey, which under Sultan Erdogan plays a vicious double game.
Sarajevo All Over Again?
"Tense" does not even begin to describe the current Russia-Turkey geopolitical tension, which shows no sign of abating. The Empire of Chaos lavishly profits from it as a privileged spectator; as long as the tension lasts, prospects of Eurasia integration are hampered.
Russian intel has certainly played all possible scenarios involving a NATO Turkish army on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as the possibility of Ankara closing the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles for the Russian "Syria Express". Erdogan may not be foolish enough to offer Russia yet another casus belli. But Moscow is taking no chances.

© AP PHOTO/ GEERT VANDEN WIJNGAERT

NATO Adds Fuel to Tensions With Russia by Supporting Turkey Greek Official

Russia has placed ships and submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles in case Turkey under the cover of NATO decides to strike out against the Russian position. President Putin has been clear; Russia will use nuclear weapons if necessary if conventional forces are threatened.If Ankara opts for a suicide mission of knocking out yet another Su-24, or Su-34, Russia will simply clear the airspace all across the border via the S-400s. If Ankara under the cover of NATO responds by launching the Turkish Army on Russian positions, Russia will use nuclear missiles, drawing NATO into war not only in Syria but potentially also in Europe. And this would include using nuclear missiles to keep Russian strategic use of the Bosphorus open.
That's how we can draw a parallel of Syria today as the equivalent of Sarajevo 1914.
Since mid-2014 the Pentagon has run all manner of war games as many as 16 times, under different scenarios pitting NATO against Russia. All scenarios were favorable to NATO. All simulations yielded the same victor: Russia.
And that's why Erdogan's erratic behavior actually terrifies quite a few real players from Washington to Brussels.
Let Me Take You on a Missile Cruise
The Pentagon is very much aware of the tremendous heavy metal Russia may unleash if provoked to the limit by someone like Erdogan. Let's roll out an abridged list.
Russia can use the mighty SS-18 which NATO codenames "Satan"; each "Satan" carries 10 warheads, with a yield of 750 to 1000 kilotons each, enough to destroy an area the size of New York state.
The Topol M ICBM is the world's fastest missile at 21 Mach (16,000 miles an hour); against it, there's no defense. Launched from Moscow, it hits New York City in 18 minutes, and L.A. in 22.8 minutes.
Russian submarines as well as Chinese submarines are able to launch offshore the US, striking coastal targets within a minute. Chinese submarines have surfaced next to US aircraft carriers undetected, and Russian submarines can do the same.

© SPUTNIK/ VALERIY MELNIKOV

Safe Skies: Russian Army Could Soon Receive Newest S-500 Air Defense System

The S-500 anti-missile system is capable of sealing Russia off from ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Moscow will only admit on the record that the S-500s will be rolled out in 2016; but the fact the S-400s will soon be delivered to China implies the S-500s may be already operational.)The S-500 makes the Patriot missile look like a V-2 from WWII.
Here, a former adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations essentially goes on the record saying the whole US missile defense apparatus is worthless.
Russia has a supersonic bomber fleet of Tupolev Tu-160s; they can take off from airbases deep in the heart of Russia, fly over the North Pole, launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from safe distances over the Atlantic, and return home to watch the whole thing on TV.
Russia can cripple virtually every forward NATO base with tactical or battlefield small-yield nuclear weapons. It's not by accident that Russia over the past few months tested NATO response times in multiple occasions.
The Iskander missile travels at seven times the speed of sound with a range of 400 km. It's deadly to airfields, logistics points and other stationary infrastructure along a broad war theatre, for instance in southern Turkey.
NATO would need to knock out all these Iskanders. But then they would need to face the S-400s or, worse, S-500s which Russia can layer in defense zones in nearly every conceivable theater of war. Positioning the S-400s in Kaliningrad, for instance, would cripple all NATO air operations deep inside Europe.
And presiding over military decisions, Russia privileges the use of Reflexive Control (RC). This is a tactic that aims to convey selected information to the enemy that forces him into making self-defeating decisions; a sort of virus influencing and controlling his decision-making process. Russia uses RC tactically, strategically and geopolitically. A young Vladimir Putin learned all there is to know about RC at the 401st KGB School and further on in his career as a KGB/FSB officer.
All right, Erdogan and NATO; do you still wanna go to war?






Read more: http://sputniknews.com/columnists/201512...z3uTayiFWn

From SputnikNews

[David Guyatt]

ConsortiumNews:

Mideast's Regime Change' Madness

January 4, 2016

Hillary Clinton's "regime change" policies as Secretary of State helped spread the chaos that has turned the Middle East into a killing field and might have done even worse if not for extraordinary obstructions from the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding Syria, as Gareth Porter recounts at Middle East Eye.
By Gareth Porter
Seymour Hersh's recent revelations about an effort by the U.S. military leadership in 2013 to bolster the Syrian army against jihadist forces in Syria shed important new light on the internal bureaucratic politics surrounding regime change in U.S. Middle East policy. Hersh's account makes it clear that the Obama administration's policy of regime change in both Libya and Syria provoked pushback from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
That account and another report on a similar episode in 2011 suggest that the U.S. military has a range of means by which it can oppose administration policies that it regards as unacceptable. But it also shows that the military leadership failed to alter the course of U.S. policy, and raises the question whether it was willing to use all the means available to stop the funneling of arms to al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups in Syria.

Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.

Hersh details a JCS initiative in the summer of 2013 to share intelligence on Islamic State and al-Qaeda organizations with other German, Russian and Israeli militaries, in the belief that the information would find its way to the Syrian army. Hersh reports that the military leadership did not inform the White House and the State Department about the "military to military" intelligence sharing on the jihadist forces in Syria, reflecting the hardball bureaucratic politics practiced within the national security institutions.
The 2013 initiative, approved by JCS chairman, General Martin Dempsey, was not the first active effort by the U.S. military to mitigate Obama administration regime change policies. In 2011, the JCS had been strongly opposed to the effort to depose the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, a regime-change effort led by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
When the Obama administration began its effort to overthrow Gaddafi, it did not call publicly for regime change and instead asserted that it was merely seeking to avert mass killings that administration officials had suggested might approach genocidal levels. But the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which had been given the lead role in assessing the situation in Libya, found no evidence to support such fears and concluded that it was based on nothing more than "speculative arguments."
The JCS warned that overthrowing the Gaddafi regime would serve no U.S. security interest, but would instead open the way for forces aligned with al-Qaeda to take over the country. After the Obama administration went ahead with a NATO air assault against the Gaddafi regime the U.S. military sought to head off the destruction of the entire Libyan government.
General Carter Ham, the commander of AFRICOM, the U.S. regional command for Africa, gave the State Department a proposal for a ceasefire to which Gaddafi had agreed. It would have resulted in Gaddafi's resignation but retain the Libyan military's capacity to hold off jihadist forces and rescind the sanctions against Gaddafi's family.
But the State Department refused any negotiation with Gaddafi on the proposal. Immediately after hearing that Gaddafi had been captured by rebel forces and killed, Clinton famously joked in a television interview, "We came, we saw, he died" and laughed.
By then the administration was already embarked on yet another regime change policy in Syria. Although Clinton led the public advocacy of the policy, then CIA Director David Petraeus, who had taken over the agency in early September 2011, was a major ally. He immediately began working on a major covert operation to arm rebel forces in Syria.
The CIA operation used ostensibly independent companies in Libya to ship arms from Libyan government warehouses to Syria and southern Turkey. These were then distributed in consultation with the United States through networks run by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The plan went into operation within days of Gaddafi's death on October 20, 2011, just before NATO officially ended its operation at the end of that month, as the DIA later reported to the JCS.
But the result of the operation was to accelerate the dominance of al-Qaeda and their Islamist allies. The Turks, Qataris and Saudis were funneling arms to al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front, or other closely related extremist groups. That should not have surprised the Obama administration. The same thing had happened in Libya in spring 2011 after the Obama administration had endorsed a Qatari plan to send arms to Libyan rebels. The White House had quickly learned that the Qataris had sent the arms to the most extremist elements in the Libyan opposition.
The original Petraeus covert operation ended with the torching of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September 2012 in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. It was superseded by a new program under which Qatar and Saudi Arabia financed the transfer of weapons from other sources that were supposed to be distributed in cooperation with CIA officials at a base in southern Turkey.
But "thousands of tons of weapons" were still going to groups fighting alongside the jihadists or who actually joined them as Vice President Joe Biden revealed in 2014.
By spring 2013, al-Nusra Front and its Islamic extremist allies were already in control of wide areas in the north and in the Damascus suburbs. The Islamic State had separated from al-Nusra Front and established its own territory south of the Turkish border. The secular armed opposition had ceased to exist as a significant force.
The "Free Syrian Army", the nominal command of those forces, was actually a fiction within Syria, as was reported by specialists on the Syrian conflict. But despite the absence of a real "moderate opposition," the Obama administration continued to support the flood of arms to the forces fighting to overthrow Assad.
In mid-2013, as Hersh recounts, the DIA issued an intelligence assessment warning that the administration's regime change policy might well result in a repeat of what was already happening in Libya: chaos and jihadist domination. The JCS also pulled off a clever maneuver to ensure that the jihadists and their allies were getting only obsolete weapons. A JCS representative convinced the CIA to obtain much cheaper arms from Turkish stocks controlled by officials sympathetic to the CIA's viewpoint on Syria.
But the JCS failed to alter the administration's policy of continuing to support the flow of arms into Syria. Did the military leadership really use all of its leverage to oppose the policy?
In 2013, some officials on the U.S. National Security Council staff pushed for a relatively modest form of pressure on Qatar to get it to back off its continued supply of arms to extremists, including al-Nusra Front, by pulling out a U.S. fighter squadron from the U.S. air base at al-Udeid in Qatar. But as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, the Pentagon, obviously reflecting the JCS position, vetoed the proposal, arguing that the forward headquarters of the Central Command at the airbase was "vital" to U.S. operations in the Middle East.
The political implications of the episode are clear: bureaucratic self-interest trumped the military's conviction that U.S. security is being endangered. No matter how strongly the JCS may have felt about the recklessness of administration policy, they were not prepared to sacrifice their access to military bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey to pressure their Middle Eastern allies.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism.

[David Guyatt]

Interesting developments this morning on Syria with the announcement of a ceasefire - except of course it does;t include any of the terrorists like, ISIS, Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and the rest. It looks to me as though the thing was designed to stop Turkey and Saudi from embarrassment following Russia's announcement that any attack by those two countries in Syria would result in all out war.

I also wonder if the political climate at home with Bernie Sanders recently trouncing the bankers favourite, Hilary, along with the Comb-over beating his contenders into a humiliating second place has had an influence on these matters? Maybe the neocons are now in retreat? Or is that wishful thinking?

[Magda Hassan]

The cease fire announcement is only for the western media who accept these things unquestioningly from the Pentagon and Foreign Office. It is not coming from the Syrian government is it?

I think it is too soon to assume the Neo Cons will quietly fade away. Though we would all be grateful if they did.

[Michael Barwell]

Notice how I'd said about the 'dream choreography' yesterday around 8am (on DARPA chips threadpage)- "Al Nusra puts-out the welcome mat"?; looking at BBC txt last night, page1 said "Al Nusra not included", then the page flipped-back to p1 from p2 of it's 'own accord'.

[Michael Barwell]

I think it is too soon to assume the Neo Cons will quietly fade away. Though we would all be grateful if they did.

No chance; the green slime have been deployed into society as a partisan force of a neo-Gestapo, and they're hungry murder-death-killing. (not the 'green slime' themselves, per se, but they're a military cog on a militairy meat grindr - the green slime're a higher lifeform than the actual shitehounds, 'cos they've got to be clever, most of them, I'll wager, know not what they do).

[Lauren Johnson]

The rhetoric was not to be believed, but the possibility keeps getting stronger. From ZeroHedge:

Even as all sides - including the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and select rebel groups - pretend to be working towards a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the five year conflict in Syria, actions speak louder than words, and to put it as succinctly as possible, everyone is still fighting.In fact, the fighting is more intense than ever. Russia and Hezbollah are closing in on Aleppo, the country's largest city and a key urban center where rebels are dug in for what amounts to a last stand. If the city is liberated by the government (and yes, "liberated" is more accurate than "falls" because occupied territory belongs to the Syrian government, not to Sunni extremists), Assad will have regained control of the country's backbone in the west.
That would effectively mean the end of the rebellion and the Gulf monarchies, not to mention Turkey, are not happy about it. "The main battle is about cutting the road between Aleppo and Turkey, for Turkey is the main conduit of supplies for the terrorists," Assad said in an interview with AFP on Friday.
That supply line has been severed and now, it's do or die time for the rebels' Sunni benefactors in Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha. Either intervene or watch as Hezbollah rolls up the opposition under cover of Russian airstrikes, restoring the Assad government and securing the Shiite crescent for the Iranians.
As we documented extensively this week, the Saudis and the Turks are now set to invade. Assad has promised to "confront them", which of course means that the IRGC and Hassan Nasrallah's army are set to come into direct contact with Turkish and Saudi troops, setting the stage for an all-out sectarian war that will almost invariably end up pitting NATO against the Russians. Note that this is different from Yemen, where Tehran fights via proxies rather than directly against the Saudi military.
On Saturday the stakes were raised when Turkey said Saudi Arabia is set to send warplanes to Incirlik.
As a reminder, access to Incirlik was the carrot Erdogan used last summer to convince NATO to acquiesce to Ankara's brutal crackdown on the PKK. "Let me wage war against my political rivals, and you can use our airbase," is a fair approximation of Erdogan's proposition.
Now, it appears the Saudis are set to use the base as a staging ground for strikes in Syria.
As RT reports, "Saudi Arabia is to deploy military jets and personnel to Turkey's Incirlik Air Base in the south of the country."
Of course the excuse is the same as it ever was for everyone involved: the fight against ISIS.
"The deployment is part of the US-led effort to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. "At every coalition meeting, we have always emphasized the need for an extensive result-oriented strategy in the fight against the Daesh terrorist group," he added.
Cavusoglu was speaking to the Yeni Safak newspaper after addressing the 52nd Munich Security Conference where over 60 foreign and defense ministers are gathered (see here for more from the meeting).
"If we have such a strategy, then Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch a ground operation," he added.
Remember that Ankara's primary concern in the country is ensuring that the YPG (i.e. the Kurdish opposition that Erdogan equates with the PKK and thus with "terrorism") doesn't end up declaring a sovereign state on Turkey's border. That, Erdogan fears, may embolden Kurds in Turkey who are already pushing for more autonomy.
In short: somehow, Turkey and Saudi Arabia need to figure out how to spin an attack on the YPG and an effort to rescue the opposition at Aleppo as an anti-ISIS operation even though ISIS doesn't have a large presence in the area.
How they plan to do that is anyone's guess, but the following tweets should tell you everything you need to know about where this is headed.
As you can see, Turkey has begun shelling Aleppo in what is indeed a very serious escalation that will likely prompt a Russian response.
"Shelling was reported at Menagh air base, a former Syrian Air Force facility that Kurds seized from Islamist rebels just days ago, and at three other positions between the airport and Turkish border," The Independent reports. "The air base has been a key target for several parties in the Syrian civil war since 2012, being besieged by rebels for almost a year until it was seized by a coalition including an early form of Isis and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra in August 2013 [and] it remained in rebel hands until Thursday, when Kurdish PYD fighters capitalised on the diversion caused by Bashar al-Assad's forces and Russian air strikes attacking rebel areas to the south to seize Menagh."
"A Kurdish official confirmed the shelling of Menagh air base in the northern Aleppo countryside, which he said had been captured by the Kurdish-allied Jaysh al-Thuwwar group rather than the Kurdish YPG militia," Reuters says, adding that "Both are part of the Syria Democratic Forces alliance." That group, you're reminded, was the subject of intense scrutiny late last year as we documented in our classic piece "Full Metal Retard: US Launches "Performance-Based" Ammo Paradrop Program For Make-Believe 'Syrian Arabs.'" It's the same group the US has been paradropping weapons to.
To sum up, Turkey is deliberately attempting to reverse gains made by the US-backed Kurds in an area that is under siege by the Russians and Iran. Or, more simply: utter chaos.

[Lauren Johnson]

[Magda Hassan]

Well, it is nearly 24 hours since Turkish officials said will be a 'massive escalation' happen in Syria.

[David Guyatt]

I wonder if - supposing Erdogan goes ahead with his planned invasion of Syria - it will be his end? That the guy is a megalomaniac is obvious, but you just don't stir a pot like Syria against the wishes of both the US and Russia. And, of course, Russia already has a grievance with him since the shooting down of his jet.

Of course the shelling action might just be his way of spitting behind him as he turns away from his threat, I suppose.

Watch this space...