War in Syria: Latest & Analysis

[James D]

[Fintan]

Hawaiian Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's just announced 2020 presidential bid has unleashed fury from both the right and the left, but more so from within her own party, and especially from corners long focused on regime change in Syria and who generally lobby for a more muscular "boots on the ground" foreign policy from Ukraine to Syria to Afghanistan.

Some pundits have already gone so far as to say "keep an eye on her finances," suggesting illegal foreign campaign funding through Damascus or Moscow.

Both neocons and liberal interventionists alike have united to slam the anti-war progressive as "Assad's mouthpiece in Washington" and an "Assad apologist" and of course there's the customary “Putin puppet” slur — the latter because as journalist Michael Tracey puts it, she "hasn't been sufficiently Russiagate-crazy for Democrats".

The former charge was regularly sounded after her early 2017 trip to Damascus to meet privately with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a diplomatic gesture to personally investigate the West's regime change efforts and its consequences for the Syrian people. The move was slammed by fellow Congressional Democrats, who raised questions over possible violation of the Logan Act.

Funny enough as a mixed race far-left congresswoman (of American Samoan descent), Hindu, and US Army reserve officer one would think she would be lionized by the left given her "impeccable identity-politics bona fides".

But her unforgivable sin? She's long made it a central goal of her political career to "end America's interventionist wars of regime change that have cost our nation trillions of dollars and thousands of lives," for which she's introduced Syria-related resolutions in Congress toward that end.

She's also accused Washington's covert regime change efforts as fueling the rise of ISIS and playing "the protective big brother of al-Qaeda and other jihadists" — a charge repeated just two days after the last nation-wide 9/11 remembrance from the house floor.

Considering that Congresswoman Gabbard herself is an Iraq war veteran and current Army reserve officer who served in the aftermath of 9/11, it's all the more powerful and rare that a sitting Congress member would make such forceful comments exposing the hypocrisy and contradictions of US policy.

She's identified the primary impetus for her 2020 candidacy as follows:

"There is one main issue that is central to the rest,
and that is the issue of war and peace."


No doubt, this alone will send the beltway zero skin-in-the-game armchair hawks and theorists into foaming at the mouth rants of Gabbard "endangering our national security" should she ever get anywhere close to clinching the Democratic nomination.

The neocon smear machine has already revved into high gear - something consistent on both sides of the aisle:

• “Assad’s ‘mouthpiece’ in Washington” —RNC welcomes Tulsi Gabbard to the presidential race with a moniker that many liberals probably agree with as well pic.twitter.com/WJJrP1aJv1
  
  — Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) January 12, 2019
  Tired of Putin? Vote Assad 2020!!!!!!! https://t.co/aMMF71wz69
  
  — Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) January 11, 2019
  Tulsi Gabbard’s disturbing and singular denialism of Assad’s role in the brutal butchering of his own people, obliging a meeting with him and spreading his propaganda should be disqualifying. pic.twitter.com/EI3UiEvLuu
  
  — S.E. Cupp (@secupp) January 12, 2019
  Having personally experienced the ravages of one regime change war and its lasting consequences for both common Iraqis and the American people, she's emerged as a "Ron Paul of the Left" of sorts (strictly speaking on foreign policy that is).

And like Paul before, she could emerge in 2020 as a rare voice spotlighting Washington's addiction to regime change and "endless wars" abroad, and the military-industrial complex's fueling America's "global policeman" mentality, and its blindly obedient cheerleaders in the mainstream media. This will at the very least make the foreign policy debate during the next election — usually a mere single point of view establishment echo chamber — more interesting.

In the meantime, what does the virulent hatred of Gabbard's anti-war stance reveal? As Nassim Taleb summarized: The "left" is just as owned by weapon makers as the "right".

[duaneh]

A Gabbard 2020 presidential run may sound like fun
especially watching the old neocons going into cardiac arrest

but she won't get the party's nomination because of what is said
in the article.

a major feature of the swamp is the fake "2 party" system
if you just drain the swamp, it can fill back up and become a swamp again

Changing the landscape and bulldozing "2-party" system would go a long way in converting wasted northern Virginia land back into production

Trump should wait a while, then announce in his reelection campaign
that he is dumping Pence ( a neocon he needed to get elected) and choosing Gabbard as VP. This would in effect create a new centrist party
this would leave the far left and far right high and dry
Trump/Gabbard 2020
they are not that far apart on a lot of issues
with Trump being more pragmatic on how to get to those issues

this would set Gabbard up for a 2024 presidential run
Gabbard/Paul 2024

[duaneh]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYflh9ltqDY[/youtube]

[MichaelC]

Hawaiian Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's just announced 2020 presidential bid has unleashed fury from both the right and the left, but more so from within her own party, and especially from corners long focused on regime change in Syria and who generally lobby for a more muscular "boots on the ground" foreign policy from Ukraine to Syria to Afghanistan.

Some pundits have already gone so far as to say "keep an eye on her finances," suggesting illegal foreign campaign funding through Damascus or Moscow.

Both neocons and liberal interventionists alike have united to slam the anti-war progressive as "Assad's mouthpiece in Washington" and an "Assad apologist" and of course there's the customary “Putin puppet” slur — the latter because as journalist Michael Tracey puts it, she "hasn't been sufficiently Russiagate-crazy for Democrats".

The former charge was regularly sounded after her early 2017 trip to Damascus to meet privately with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a diplomatic gesture to personally investigate the West's regime change efforts and its consequences for the Syrian people. The move was slammed by fellow Congressional Democrats, who raised questions over possible violation of the Logan Act.

Funny enough as a mixed race far-left congresswoman (of American Samoan descent), Hindu, and US Army reserve officer one would think she would be lionized by the left given her "impeccable identity-politics bona fides".

But her unforgivable sin? She's long made it a central goal of her political career to "end America's interventionist wars of regime change that have cost our nation trillions of dollars and thousands of lives," for which she's introduced Syria-related resolutions in Congress toward that end.

She's also accused Washington's covert regime change efforts as fueling the rise of ISIS and playing "the protective big brother of al-Qaeda and other jihadists" — a charge repeated just two days after the last nation-wide 9/11 remembrance from the house floor.

Considering that Congresswoman Gabbard herself is an Iraq war veteran and current Army reserve officer who served in the aftermath of 9/11, it's all the more powerful and rare that a sitting Congress member would make such forceful comments exposing the hypocrisy and contradictions of US policy.

She's identified the primary impetus for her 2020 candidacy as follows:

"There is one main issue that is central to the rest,
and that is the issue of war and peace."


No doubt, this alone will send the beltway zero skin-in-the-game armchair hawks and theorists into foaming at the mouth rants of Gabbard "endangering our national security" should she ever get anywhere close to clinching the Democratic nomination.

The neocon smear machine has already revved into high gear - something consistent on both sides of the aisle:

• “Assad’s ‘mouthpiece’ in Washington” —RNC welcomes Tulsi Gabbard to the presidential race with a moniker that many liberals probably agree with as well pic.twitter.com/WJJrP1aJv1
  
  — Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) January 12, 2019
  Tired of Putin? Vote Assad 2020!!!!!!! https://t.co/aMMF71wz69
  
  — Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) January 11, 2019
  Tulsi Gabbard’s disturbing and singular denialism of Assad’s role in the brutal butchering of his own people, obliging a meeting with him and spreading his propaganda should be disqualifying. pic.twitter.com/EI3UiEvLuu
  
  — S.E. Cupp (@secupp) January 12, 2019
  Having personally experienced the ravages of one regime change war and its lasting consequences for both common Iraqis and the American people, she's emerged as a "Ron Paul of the Left" of sorts (strictly speaking on foreign policy that is).

And like Paul before, she could emerge in 2020 as a rare voice spotlighting Washington's addiction to regime change and "endless wars" abroad, and the military-industrial complex's fueling America's "global policeman" mentality, and its blindly obedient cheerleaders in the mainstream media. This will at the very least make the foreign policy debate during the next election — usually a mere single point of view establishment echo chamber — more interesting.

In the meantime, what does the virulent hatred of Gabbard's anti-war stance reveal? As Nassim Taleb summarized: The "left" is just as owned by weapon makers as the "right".

If she is for real,,,,she would get my vote

[Fintan]

"THESE WARS.... THEY NEVER END..."

- Donald Trump


"But, but, but..
- you're abandoning our friends the Kurds!
- and you're allowing ISIS to go HUGE again....
- and what about all the poor wikkel babies...

Our friends the Kurds. Gimmie a break.

Better rephrase that: the CIA's friends, the Kurds.

The CIA had great plans for the Kurds.
They would be sponsored to push for a Kurdish State.
Sowing permanent chaos at the intersection of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

So Trump played the neocons and tossed their plans out with Bolton.

Erdogan is fucking the CIA back for their failed coup against him.

Hillary's failed coup.

You won't hear that on Lamestream Meejia.
And you won't hear it on Fox neither.

But you can easily read between the
propaganda lines in the the following:

Russian shadow falls over Syria
as Kurds open door for Assad
With the US gone, the implications of their departure
is beginning to sink in across the Middle East

Martin Chulov in north-east Syria
Mon 14 Oct 2019 19.49 BST

The moment that changed the Middle East arrived with a sudden silence. Just before 7pm on Sunday, the internet was cut across north-eastern Syria where, for half an hour, the Kurds of the region had been digesting a news flash. The Syrian government was returning to two towns, Manbij and Kobane. The implication quickly sunk in.

The regional capital, Qamishli, soon emptied; streets that had bustled with minibuses and shoppers became eerie and still. With the internet down phones were no help and nor were officials who had vanished along with the traffic. Air seemed to be suddenly vacuumed from the city, and the few people still around knew exactly what it meant: this was the moment power changed hands. It was a time to be scared.

“You must leave now,” one man said, avoiding eye contact. “There are regime checkpoints to the east and it isn’t safe to stay.” He, and other Kurds had lived all their lives, except for the past seven years, under the control of the government in Damascus, and the prospect of their return left him pale and worried.

The Syrian army had maintained a presence in central Qamishli ever since Bashar al-Assad gave the Kurds semi-autonomy in 2012. They had always been toothless next to a larger and better armed rival. But could they be emboldened now? Their base was only 200 metres away.

A black sky covered the road to the border, the sparkling white lights of Turkey to the left and the Syrian army somewhere in the darkness to the right. Usually diligent Kurdish checkpoint guards had left their posts, or were preoccupied. Lone speeding cars and belching lorries without headlamps rumbled through the night, perhaps the last to make the journey before the conquerors arrived.

A day later, the ramifications of the momentous week that preceded the Kurds allowing the Assad regime to retake the province is still sinking in, across Syria and far beyond in Riyadh, Baghdad, Cairo and the Gulf.

Something far bigger was at play here; the end of US influence in Syria and the plunge in its status elsewhere. The public handover on show was that between the Assad regime and the Kurds, but the real power shift was between Washington – whose fighting troops have all but left the region, 16 years after invading Iraq – and Moscow, whose reach and influence across the Middle East has now been cemented.





As if to celebrate the moment, Vladimir Putin arrived in Riyadh for a state visit on Monday, his first in 12 years, hosted by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who three weeks earlier had similarly felt the humiliation of abandonment by US allies.

After Iran launched an attack against the kingdom’s oil production centres, the crown prince was expecting a US retaliation. None was forthcoming, and he felt abandoned by an ally that had sworn to protect Saudi interests. “Did you see what they [the US] did to us?” the crown prince asked Iraqi leaders in Riyadh a fortnight ago. “It was unbelievable.”

In northern Syria, the US decision to abandon the Kurds, who had helped lead the global fight against Isis, had bewildered locals and left them with very few options. “It’s better to go for compromise than genocide,” said Muzlum Abdi, commander in chief of the US-raised force, formerly known as the SDF.

Kurds, led by leaders of the Kurdistan Workers party (the PKK) had held talks with Russian officials in Qamishli in recent days about the terms of their pact with Damascus. Fighting Turkey to the north, and left without a protector after Donald Trump ordered the US military to leave, the Kurds held a very weak hand.

“The Russians have been accusing us of allowing the Americans into the region in the first place,” said Arshan Mizgin Ahmed. “We have paid a heavy political price for that.”

She added: “We will do whatever is in our best interests.”



As the US withdrew, what remained of its authority was increasingly tested. A jet buzzed a US base near Ain Issa – the US military won’t say who it was. Up the road, Turkish Arab proxies, who had executed a Kurdish politician on a highway a day earlier were setting up base.

As time ticked away on the last vestige of Kurdish rule, the Syrian military arrived – packed into cattle trucks – in the town of Tal Tamir, where Kurdish fighters had been bringing their wounded only hours earlier.

Their arrival would have likely heartened one of the country’s most recent refugees, Ahmad Mahmoud Hussein, who a day before had raged against Turkey’s proxies – Arabs from elsewhere in Syria, who had just forced him from his home in the town of Ras al-Ayn. “They are mercenaries, hired guns,” he claimed. “They are all ex-convicts and drug addicts and they have no honour or mercy. Those who fall for what Turkey are offering them will do anything for money. I don’t care if I’m sleeping on this school floor for one year, two years, or 10. I’m not going back while they’re still there.”

The dying days of the war in all its horror and contradictions played out on television screens across the Kurdish north, where normal transmissions had resumed after Sunday’s Big Brother-like shutdown. In the border town of Derik, drivers watched with looks of resignation as Kurdish families threw rice at the feet of Assad’s soldiers. “He’s acting,” said one of the men watching another Kurd on the television. “No he isn’t, he’s relieved,” said another.

Past scorched brown hills, along undulating roads to the border, the faces of the vanquished showed a similar mixture of resignation, and confusion. For the Kurds the dream of autonomy has ground to a halt, The new alliances taking shape on the ruins of their ambitions will be felt for generations in what remains of Syria.

“Iran and Russia are the dominant foreign powers now,” said Arshan. “They will dictate terms in this region. Things have really changed.”

[Fintan]

The death for the umteenth time of IS leader al-Baghdadi is a fake stunt.
It has the same validity as the propaganda "killing" of Osama bin Laden.

These are staged news events for political purposes.

Trump pulled the plug on the neocon/CIA plan for the Kurds.
A result was the end of al-Baghdadi and ISIS games for the CIA.

So the CIA had to grin and bear it and stage the 'victory' for Trump.
Obama benefited similarly when the CIA's Osama Psyop was run.

One arm of the CIA had al-Baghdadi on ice.
Another CIA arm was allowed to "discover" him.

The CIA and #Neocons having to destroy their own Op and give
all the credit for killing the ISIS #1 and #2 to Donald Trump......

Priceless.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: IS leader's underwear 'stolen' for DNA test

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have said their spy stole Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's underwear which was then DNA tested and used to prove his identity before he was killed.

A senior SDF commander claimed their source also played a vital role in tracking down the Islamic State (IS) leader's location before an operation by US special forces in Syria.

Baghdadi killed himself in the raid.

"All intelligence and access to al-Baghdadi as well as the identification of his place were the result of our own work. Our intelligence source was involved in sending coordinates, directing the airdrop, participating in and making the operation a success until the last minute," he said.

Several US allies or powers in the region were given advance notification of the raid, including Turkey, Iraq, Kurdish forces in north-eastern Syria, and Russia, which controls airspace over Idlib.

The troops arrived to a barrage of shots from the ground, reports said.

On landing, the US force called on Baghdadi, who had fled into a tunnel, to come out and surrender.

Mr Trump said test results carried out on the remains "gave certain, immediate and totally positive identification" that it was Baghdadi.

The tests were carried out on site by technicians who accompanied the special forces personnel and had samples of Baghdadi's DNA with them, reports said.

They combined facial recognition technology and a smaller DNA reader that troops can use aboard their helicopters to obtain the results, according to the Daily Beast.

The technicians also brought "substantial pieces" of the body back with them on the helicopters.

On Monday, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mike Milley, said that American officials had disposed of Baghdadi's remains.

He said the burial was now "complete and was handled appropriately" without providing any further details.

An anonymous official told the Reuters news agency that Baghdadi had been given religious rites according to the Islamic custom and buried at sea.

A similar process was carried out following the killing of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

[MichaelC]

Thanks Fintan, too bad Trump is forced to go along with this horse-shit.

[James D]

This video is funny in itself but when you realise that both psy-ops were faked Trump actually comes off better - like he's totally taking the piss! It's just that the MSM are too thick to get!

[MichaelC]

Trump is a real person who has worked and earned his money fair and square. He is having some fun with what he knows is bullshit. I love it!

The closeted homosexual Obama is a phony CIA created stooge who never worked a day in his life, reciting like an obedient parrot from a prepared script of lies.

[Fintan]

Overlooked in Western coverage of the crisis is that Idlib
is mostly controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebranded
affiliate of Al-Qaeda -- and that Turkey, with U.S. backing,
has intervened to keep the extremist group in place.

Guest: Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector
and Marine Corps Intelligence Officer.