US checkmated in Syria. Chinese warships joining Russian forces in Syria.

[boutons_deux]

"Nothing is ever clear cut in this region" duh! And the stupid, ignorant, naive Repugs HAD NO CLUE when they invaded Iraq for oil.

"religious loyalty cannot be excluded from a understanding of the situation." duh! Muslim vs Muslim (Shia vs Sunni) And the stupid, ignorant, naive Repugs HAD NO CLUE when they invaded Iraq for oil.

Thanks, Repugs!

[pgardn]

Lol spiegel. Divide and conquer, information warfare

If you read the article you would have learned something.
If you got a better source post an article.
You wont because you read "day of the rope" fictional trash.

[pgardn]

"Nothing is ever clear cut in this region" duh! And the stupid, ignorant, naive Repugs HAD NO CLUE when they invaded Iraq for oil.

"religious loyalty cannot be excluded from a understanding of the situation." duh! Muslim vs Muslim (Shia vs Sunni) And the stupid, ignorant, naive Repugs HAD NO CLUE when they invaded Iraq for oil.

Thanks, Repugs!

So did you know the reasoning behind Assad asking the Russians in BEFORE this article?
Did you even read it? This article brings forth a very important dynamic that needs to be understood yet YOU never posted about it.

And Dont take the above as an apology for Cheney, Rumsfeld clown dancing.

[m>s]

If you read the article you would have learned something.
If you got a better source post an article.
You wont because you read "day of the rope" fictional trash.

I already read it a week before you posted it. I just don't believe it. Just like I didn't neoieve the stories about Russia targeting kids before the first plane even took off.

[hater]

For those of you who see a close alliance between Syria's Assad, Iran, and Russia:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1056263.html

Nothing is ever clear cut in this region. And religious loyalty cannot be excluded from a understanding of the situation.

Lol what a stupid bull article.

It's been do ented that the Iranians are the ones who asked for the Russian help. They negotiated multimillion weapons and space equipment deals in order to convince the Russians to join them. That and the fact that Assad was about to fall of course.

Wake up. This was an alliance between Iran and Russia and it was proposed by Iran.

Wow what bull articles abound....

[boutons_deux]

So did you know the reasoning behind Assad asking the Russians in BEFORE this article?
Did you even read it? This article brings forth a very important dynamic that needs to be understood yet YOU never posted about it.

And Dont take the above as an apology for Cheney, Rumsfeld clown dancing.

yes, of course, I knew. Don't doubt The Great Boutons massive, deep knowledge of world affairs.

Assad has been a Russian protege for a long time, supplying military equipment, a large military/diplomatic/cadre mission, and with Assad giving Russian fleet a port on the Med.

[hater]

Lol apparently Cuban generals and tank commanders have arrived in Syria to help out.

Lol Puting calling back the old gang like Gandalf

s about to get real

[RandomGuy]

Yahoo has a ton of stuff. Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, a wide variety. But then ads interspersed.

Add to that Economist.

[RandomGuy]

Lol spiegel. Divide and conquer, information warfare

Are those websites with list of 30 "countries" that said Syria's election was legit?

[m>s]

Forum stalking

[pgardn]

Lol what a stupid bull article.

It's been do ented that the Iranians are the ones who asked for the Russian help. They negotiated multimillion weapons and space equipment deals in order to convince the Russians to join them. That and the fact that Assad was about to fall of course.

Wake up. This was an alliance between Iran and Russia and it was proposed by Iran.

Wow what bull articles abound....

Iran has a strangle hold on Assad. Give me your aricle to refute this one before calling bs.
Der Speigel is not your RT news. It's not run by a government numb nuts.
You had no clue and now you do. You are welcome.

[pgardn]

Lol apparently Cuban generals and tank commanders have arrived in Syria to help out.

Lol Puting calling back the old gang like Gandalf

s about to get real

Cuban generals...
Oh no, not that.
The experience they bring... Cuban tank commanders, with the expertise they have in, in, Uhhh....
Holy this is as laughable as China playing a major role.

Cubans? Are you Fckn serious? Bring in the big guns lol!
Its getting real, the tide turned once the mighty Cubans entered the fray!
Holy ...

[pgardn]

yes, of course, I knew. Don't doubt The Great Boutons massive, deep knowledge of world affairs.

Assad has been a Russian protege for a long time, supplying military equipment, a large military/diplomatic/cadre mission, and with Assad giving Russian fleet a port on the Med.

No, no.
The Iranian dynamic.
Read it.

[pgardn]

I already read it a week before you posted it. I just don't believe it. Just like I didn't neoieve the stories about Russia targeting kids before the first plane even took off.

So you stick with that rope fiction then.

[boutons_deux]

Why the US Is Eternally Caught Off Guard in the Middle East

The national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.

1,500.

That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-pageNew York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: “CENTCOM’s mammoth intelligence operation, with some 1,500 civilian, military, and contract analysts, is housed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, in a bay front building that has the look of a sterile government facility posing as a Spanish hacienda.”

Think about that. CENTCOM, one of six U.S. military commands that divide the planet up like a pie, has at least 1,500 intelligence analysts (military, civilian, and private contractors) all to itself. Let me repeat that: 1,500 of them. CENTCOM is essentially the country’s war command, responsible for most of the Greater Middle East, that expanse of now-chaotic territory filled with strife-torn and failing states that runs from Pakistan’s border to Egypt. That’s no small task and about it there is much to be known. Still, that figure should act like a flash of lightning, illuminating for a second an otherwise dark and stormy landscape.

And mind you, that’s just the analysts, not the full CENTCOM intelligence roster for which we have no figure at all. In other words, even if that 1,500 represents a full count of the command’s intelligence analysts, not just the ones at its Tampa headquarters but in the field at places like its enormous operation at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, CENTCOM still has almost half as many of them as military personnel on the ground in Iraq (3,500 at latest count). Now, try to imagine what those 1,500 analysts are doing, even for a command deep in a “quagmire” in Syria and Iraq, as President Obama recently dubbed it (though he was admittedly speaking about the Russians), as well as what looks like a failing war, 14 years later, in Afghanistan, and another in Yemen led by the Saudis but backed by Washington. Even given all of that, what in the world could they possibly be “analyzing”? Who at CENTCOM, in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or elsewhere has the time to attend to the reports and data flows that must be generated by 1,500 analysts?

Of course, in the gargantuan beast that is the American military and intelligence universe, streams of raw intelligence beyond compare are undoubtedly flooding into CENTCOM’s headquarters, possibly overwhelming even 1,500 analysts. There’s “human intelligence,” or HUMINT, from sources and agents on the ground; there’s imagery and satellite intelligence, or GEOINT, by the bushelful. Given the size and scope of American global surveillance activities, there must be untold tons of signals intelligence, or SIGINT; and with all those drones flying over battlefields and prospective battlefields across the Greater Middle East, there’s undoubtedly a river of full motion video, or FMV, flowing into CENTCOM headquarters and various command posts; and don’t forget the information being shared with the command by allied intelligence services, including those of the “five eyes“ nations, and various Middle Eastern countries; and of course, some of the command’s analysts must be handling humdrum, everyday open-source material, or OSINT, as well -- local radio and TV broadcasts, the press, the Internet, scholarly journals, and god knows what else.

And while you’re thinking about all this, keep in mind that those 1,500 analysts feed into, and assumedly draw on, an intelligence system of a size surely unmatched even by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.

Think of it: the U.S. Intelligence Community has -- count ‘em -- 17 agencies and outfits,

eating close to $70 billion annually,

more than $500 billion between 2001 and 2013.

And if that doesn’t stagger you, think about the 500,000 private contractors hooked into the system in one way or another,

the 1.4 million people (34% of them private contractors) with access to “top secret” information, and the 5.1 million -- larger than Norway’s population -- with access to “confidential and secret” information.

Remember as well that, in these years, a global surveillance state of Orwellian proportions has been ramped up. It gathers billions of emails and cell phone calls from the backlands of the planet; has kept tabs on at least 35 leaders of other countries and the secretary general of the U.N. by hacking email accounts, tapping cell phones, and so on; keeps a careful eye and ear on its own citizens, including video gamers; and even, it seems, spies on Congress. (After all, whom can you trust?)

Surprised, Caught Off Guard, and Left Scrambling

The question remains: If data almost beyond imagining flows into CENTCOM, what are those 1,500 analysts actually doing? How are they passing their time? What exactly do they produce and does it really qualify as “intelligence,” no less prove useful? Of course, we out here have limited access to the intelligence produced by CENTCOM, unless stories like the one about top commanders fudging assessments on the air war against the Islamic State break into the media. So you might assume that there’s no way of measuring the effectiveness of the command’s intelligence operations. But you would be wrong. It is, in fact, possible to produce a rough gauge of its effectiveness. Let’s call it the TomDispatch Surprise Measurement System, or TSMS. Think of it as a practical, news-based guide to the questions: What did they know and when did they know it?

Take the seizure at the end of September by a few hundred Taliban fighters of the northern provincial Afghan capital of Kunduz, the first city the Taliban has controlled, however briefly, since it was ejected from that same town in 2002. In the process, the Taliban fighters reportedly scattered up to 7,000 members of the Afghan security forces that the U.S. has been training, funding, and arming for years.

For anyone following news reports closely, the Taliban had for months been tightening its control over rural areas around Kunduz and testing the city’s defenses. Nonetheless, this May, based assumedly on the best intelligence analyses available from CENTCOM, the top U.S. commander in the country, Army General John Campbell, offered this predictive comment: “If you take a look very closely at some of the things in Kunduz and up in [neighboring] Badakhshan [Province], [the Taliban] will attack some very small checkpoints... They will go out and hit a little bit and then they kind of go to ground... so they’re not gaining territory for the most part.’”

As late as August 13th, at a press briefing, an ABC News reporter asked Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, the U.S. deputy chief of staff for communications in Afghanistan: “There has been a significant increase in Taliban activity in northern Afghanistan, particularly around Kunduz. What is behind that? Are the Afghan troops in that part of Afghanistan at risk of falling to the Taliban?”

Shoffner responded, in part, this way: “So, again, I think there's been a lot of generalization when it comes to reports on the north. Kunduz is -- is not now, and has not been in danger of being overrun by the Taliban, and so -- with that, it's kind of a general perspective in the north, that's sort of how we see it.”

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...rd-middle-east

[pgardn]

Why the US Is Eternally Caught Off Guard in the Middle East

The national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.

1,500.

That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-pageNew York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: “CENTCOM’s mammoth intelligence operation, with some 1,500 civilian, military, and contract analysts, is housed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, in a bay front building that has the look of a sterile government facility posing as a Spanish hacienda.”

Think about that. CENTCOM, one of six U.S. military commands that divide the planet up like a pie, has at least 1,500 intelligence analysts (military, civilian, and private contractors) all to itself. Let me repeat that: 1,500 of them. CENTCOM is essentially the country’s war command, responsible for most of the Greater Middle East, that expanse of now-chaotic territory filled with strife-torn and failing states that runs from Pakistan’s border to Egypt. That’s no small task and about it there is much to be known. Still, that figure should act like a flash of lightning, illuminating for a second an otherwise dark and stormy landscape.

And mind you, that’s just the analysts, not the full CENTCOM intelligence roster for which we have no figure at all. In other words, even if that 1,500 represents a full count of the command’s intelligence analysts, not just the ones at its Tampa headquarters but in the field at places like its enormous operation at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, CENTCOM still has almost half as many of them as military personnel on the ground in Iraq (3,500 at latest count). Now, try to imagine what those 1,500 analysts are doing, even for a command deep in a “quagmire” in Syria and Iraq, as President Obama recently dubbed it (though he was admittedly speaking about the Russians), as well as what looks like a failing war, 14 years later, in Afghanistan, and another in Yemen led by the Saudis but backed by Washington. Even given all of that, what in the world could they possibly be “analyzing”? Who at CENTCOM, in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or elsewhere has the time to attend to the reports and data flows that must be generated by 1,500 analysts?

Of course, in the gargantuan beast that is the American military and intelligence universe, streams of raw intelligence beyond compare are undoubtedly flooding into CENTCOM’s headquarters, possibly overwhelming even 1,500 analysts. There’s “human intelligence,” or HUMINT, from sources and agents on the ground; there’s imagery and satellite intelligence, or GEOINT, by the bushelful. Given the size and scope of American global surveillance activities, there must be untold tons of signals intelligence, or SIGINT; and with all those drones flying over battlefields and prospective battlefields across the Greater Middle East, there’s undoubtedly a river of full motion video, or FMV, flowing into CENTCOM headquarters and various command posts; and don’t forget the information being shared with the command by allied intelligence services, including those of the “five eyes“ nations, and various Middle Eastern countries; and of course, some of the command’s analysts must be handling humdrum, everyday open-source material, or OSINT, as well -- local radio and TV broadcasts, the press, the Internet, scholarly journals, and god knows what else.

And while you’re thinking about all this, keep in mind that those 1,500 analysts feed into, and assumedly draw on, an intelligence system of a size surely unmatched even by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.

Think of it: the U.S. Intelligence Community has -- count ‘em -- 17 agencies and outfits,

eating close to $70 billion annually,

more than $500 billion between 2001 and 2013.

And if that doesn’t stagger you, think about the 500,000 private contractors hooked into the system in one way or another,

the 1.4 million people (34% of them private contractors) with access to “top secret” information, and the 5.1 million -- larger than Norway’s population -- with access to “confidential and secret” information.

Remember as well that, in these years, a global surveillance state of Orwellian proportions has been ramped up. It gathers billions of emails and cell phone calls from the backlands of the planet; has kept tabs on at least 35 leaders of other countries and the secretary general of the U.N. by hacking email accounts, tapping cell phones, and so on; keeps a careful eye and ear on its own citizens, including video gamers; and even, it seems, spies on Congress. (After all, whom can you trust?)

Surprised, Caught Off Guard, and Left Scrambling

The question remains: If data almost beyond imagining flows into CENTCOM, what are those 1,500 analysts actually doing? How are they passing their time? What exactly do they produce and does it really qualify as “intelligence,” no less prove useful? Of course, we out here have limited access to the intelligence produced by CENTCOM, unless stories like the one about top commanders fudging assessments on the air war against the Islamic State break into the media. So you might assume that there’s no way of measuring the effectiveness of the command’s intelligence operations. But you would be wrong. It is, in fact, possible to produce a rough gauge of its effectiveness. Let’s call it the TomDispatch Surprise Measurement System, or TSMS. Think of it as a practical, news-based guide to the questions: What did they know and when did they know it?

Take the seizure at the end of September by a few hundred Taliban fighters of the northern provincial Afghan capital of Kunduz, the first city the Taliban has controlled, however briefly, since it was ejected from that same town in 2002. In the process, the Taliban fighters reportedly scattered up to 7,000 members of the Afghan security forces that the U.S. has been training, funding, and arming for years.

For anyone following news reports closely, the Taliban had for months been tightening its control over rural areas around Kunduz and testing the city’s defenses. Nonetheless, this May, based assumedly on the best intelligence analyses available from CENTCOM, the top U.S. commander in the country, Army General John Campbell, offered this predictive comment: “If you take a look very closely at some of the things in Kunduz and up in [neighboring] Badakhshan [Province], [the Taliban] will attack some very small checkpoints... They will go out and hit a little bit and then they kind of go to ground... so they’re not gaining territory for the most part.’”

As late as August 13th, at a press briefing, an ABC News reporter asked Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, the U.S. deputy chief of staff for communications in Afghanistan: “There has been a significant increase in Taliban activity in northern Afghanistan, particularly around Kunduz. What is behind that? Are the Afghan troops in that part of Afghanistan at risk of falling to the Taliban?”

Shoffner responded, in part, this way: “So, again, I think there's been a lot of generalization when it comes to reports on the north. Kunduz is -- is not now, and has not been in danger of being overrun by the Taliban, and so -- with that, it's kind of a general perspective in the north, that's sort of how we see it.”

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...rd-middle-east

Ok...

So what does this have to do with Assad's concerns over Iran?
The US will always be caught off guard as the decision to react is not the same as having intelligence capabilities.

[hater]

Cuban generals...
Oh no, not that.
The experience they bring... Cuban tank commanders, with the expertise they have in, in, Uhhh....
Holy this is as laughable as China playing a major role.

Cubans? Are you Fckn serious? Bring in the big guns lol!
Its getting real, the tide turned once the mighty Cubans entered the fray!
Holy ...

It's funny cause nobody respects the US anymore. And yes there was a time most countries respected the US out of fear. That seems to be gone now.

[hater]

Iran has a strangle hold on Assad. Give me your aricle to refute this one before calling bs.
Der Speigel is not your RT news. It's not run by a government numb nuts.
You had no clue and now you do. You are welcome.

Here are a few links that tell the facts smh that Spiegel Disney story please wake the up

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0S02BV20151006

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10...officials-say/

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-how...moscow-2015-10


Reuters:
"At a meeting in Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help.

Major General Qassem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of Assad.

As Russian warplanes bomb rebels from above, the arrival of Iranian special forces for ground operations underscores several months of planning between Assad's two most important allies, driven by panic at rapid insurgent gains."

Fox:
Iran played an integral role leading up to Russia's move to launch its air campaign in Syria and play a stronger role in Iraq, with one of Tehran's most powerful generals meeting for three hours with President Vladimir Putin to push for intervention, Iraqi government officials tell The Associated Press.

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force, went to Moscow in August with the message that Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria were imperative, said the two senior officials, who were later briefed on the meeting. Soleimani and Putin reviewed maps and surveillance photos and shared intelligence, all suggesting the militant group would expand its reach to Russia's doorstep in the Caucuses if Moscow didn't act, the two officials said.

The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia's foreign minister and Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters.

"Soleimani, assigned by Khamenei to run the Iranian side of the operation, traveled to Moscow to discuss details. And he also traveled to Syria several times since then," the official said.

The Russian government says its Syria deployment came as the result of a formal request from Assad, who himself laid out the problems facing the Syrian military in stark terms in July, saying it faced a manpower problem.

Khamenei also sent a senior envoy to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, another senior regional official said. "Putin told him 'Okay we will intervene. Send Qassem Soleimani'. He went to explain the map of the theater."


now please come back to reality and stop with that bull story

[RandomGuy]

That's ok. We already know that.

Found that list of 30 countries yet?

[m>s]

Muh 30 list

better than having a wife with 30 notches on the bed post cuck. Leave me alone I don't want to argue anymore, I'm turning over a new leaf

[pgardn]

Here are a few links that tell the facts smh that Spiegel Disney story please wake the up

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0S02BV20151006

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10...officials-say/

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-how...moscow-2015-10


Reuters:
"At a meeting in Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help.

Major General Qassem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of Assad.

As Russian warplanes bomb rebels from above, the arrival of Iranian special forces for ground operations underscores several months of planning between Assad's two most important allies, driven by panic at rapid insurgent gains."

Fox:
Iran played an integral role leading up to Russia's move to launch its air campaign in Syria and play a stronger role in Iraq, with one of Tehran's most powerful generals meeting for three hours with President Vladimir Putin to push for intervention, Iraqi government officials tell The Associated Press.

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force, went to Moscow in August with the message that Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria were imperative, said the two senior officials, who were later briefed on the meeting. Soleimani and Putin reviewed maps and surveillance photos and shared intelligence, all suggesting the militant group would expand its reach to Russia's doorstep in the Caucuses if Moscow didn't act, the two officials said.

The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia's foreign minister and Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters.

"Soleimani, assigned by Khamenei to run the Iranian side of the operation, traveled to Moscow to discuss details. And he also traveled to Syria several times since then," the official said.

The Russian government says its Syria deployment came as the result of a formal request from Assad, who himself laid out the problems facing the Syrian military in stark terms in July, saying it faced a manpower problem.

Khamenei also sent a senior envoy to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, another senior regional official said. "Putin told him 'Okay we will intervene. Send Qassem Soleimani'. He went to explain the map of the theater."


now please come back to reality and stop with that bull story

None of this, absolutely none of this refutes the assertion the Der Spiegel article laid out.

This is NOT a Russia-Iran conflict
Its an Iran-Syria(Assad) back room power play.

Read the frkn article again and read what dynamic is portrayed. None of your aricles or anything you posted refutes ANY of that. Try to follow the assertion. It's Assad v. Iran and who might be calling the shots in the future.

Fail and totally off subject.
Try again.

[pgardn]

It's funny cause nobody respects the US anymore. And yes there was a time most countries respected the US out of fear. That seems to be gone now.

So when should we expect Cuban tanks in Washington?

Fear? Is that what the US seeks?

Actually its influence so our economy and Democracy stays strong.
So do you pay your alleged s in Rubles or would they rather have the Yuan?
Get off the middle school fear factor. It's childish and stupid.

The US has spread quite a bit of fear among a very large number of people who hear drones in their dreams. Where has that gotten us? We completely dismantled Iraq and Afghanistan and killed Bin Laden. We turned Al Q on its head. Where has that gotten us?

Everyone understands that if a country is really serious, you put men on the ground in large numbers and practice ruthless, quick, overwhelming force. We did that to Iraq already. So you want the US to play that card again?
Fool.

The American people don't want it and most of our politicians don't want it. (McCain might be an exception)

So WTF do you expect? You just want us to keep droning pirates and Isamic nuts so that everyone around them won't sleep well for the rest of their lives? You are enamored with that Russian respect? Seriously, where are you coming from with this respect BS? You want Obama to take off his shirt, jump in freezing water, and emerge with erect nipples? This would do it for you?

Trust is much more important. Trust leads to respect. This, is another story.

[hater]

None of this, absolutely none of this refutes the assertion the Der Spiegel article laid out.

This is NOT a Russia-Iran conflict
Its an Iran-Syria(Assad) back room power play.

Read the frkn article again and read what dynamic is portrayed. None of your aricles or anything you posted refutes ANY of that. Try to follow the assertion. It's Assad v. Iran and who might be calling the shots in the future.

Fail and totally off subject.
Try again.

you need to go back to reading school.

From your bull article:
Iran has long been sending troops and material to help Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad wage war against his own people. But now Tehran is busy establishing a state within a state -- which is why Assad now wants help from Russia.

From my articles:
The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia's foreign minister and Iran's Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters.

those 2 statements are contradictory. Please try to keep up

[pgardn]

you need to go back to reading school.

From your bull article:
Iran has long been sending troops and material to help Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad wage war against his own people. But now Tehran is busy establishing a state within a state -- which is why Assad now wants help from Russia.

From my articles:
The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia's foreign minister and Iran's Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters.

those 2 statements are contradictory. Please try to keep up

No they simply are not.


You still don't get it. The Russians have no stake in Assad staying as long as they get the Iranians to do the dirty work. What Russia will have, if they are able to maintain this small section of Syria, is a say in who Iran chooses... Keep Assasd and let the Iranians bully him, or pick a NEW SHIITE leader.

Do you get that the Alawite Syrians don't want the Shiites to have control? Did you read the article? You knew this dynamic already exisred BEFORE you read the article? You knew what sorry shape the Alawite Syrians were in concerning the Shiite Iranians?

[pgardn]

Add to that Economist.

I don't see the Economist in the Yahoo international news compilation very often. But that is a great magazine. I just never had time to read it fully. Those articles are very "heavy", they take a lot of time to read.