Almost like they're not serious about fighting IS

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters opposed to IS, [recruited drivers for a convoy they said] would take hundreds of families displaced by fighting from the town of Tabqa on the Euphrates river to a camp further north.

[...]

But when [the] drivers assembled their convoy early on 12 October, they realised they had been lied to. Instead, [they would be transporting] hundreds of IS fighters, their families and tonnes of weapons and ammunition.

[...]

[D]rivers were promised thousands of dollars for the task but it had to remain secret.

[...]

The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa – de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate – had been arranged by local officials. It came after four months of fighting that left the city obliterated and almost devoid of people.

[...]

At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part.

  BBC

I bet!

Great pains were taken to hide it from the world. But the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal.

So how did the word get out?

[T]he drivers are angry. It’s weeks since they risked their lives for a journey that ruined engines and broke axles but still they haven’t been paid.

Pretty short-sighted if they were expected to keep quiet.

"We took out around 4,000 people including women and children - our vehicle and their vehicles combined. When we entered Raqqa, we thought there were 200 people to collect. In my vehicle alone, I took 112 people.”

[...]

The SDF didn’t want the retreat from Raqqa to look like an escape to victory. No flags or banners would be allowed to be flown from the convoy as it left the city, the deal stipulated.

[...]

[The convoy] included almost 50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles.

[...]

Despite an agreement to take only personal weapons, IS fighters took everything they could carry. Ten trucks were loaded with weapons and ammunition.

And to think the US government for years refused to release even the innocent men from Guantánamo one at a time with only the clothes on their backs because "they would be back on the streets fighting us".

This wasn’t so much an evacuation - it was the exodus of so-called Islamic State.

[...]

In light of the BBC investigation, the coalition now admits the part it played in the deal. Some 250 IS fighters were allowed to leave Raqqa, with 3,500 of their family members.

[...]

“They said, 'Let us know when you rebuild Raqqa - we will come back,’” says [driver] Abu Fawzi. “They were defiant and didn’t care."

Almost everyone we spoke to [in villages along the convoy's route] says IS threatened to return, its fighters running a finger across their throats as they passed by.

“We've been living in terror for the past four or five years,” says Muhanad.

"It will take us a while to rid ourselves of that psychological fear. We feel that they may be coming back for us, or will send sleeper agents. We’re still not sure that they've gone for good.” 

And there you have the story of how "the good guys" retook Raqqa from ISIS.

Or maybe you heard this story in October:

The battle to retake Raqqa began in June 2017, led by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arab fighters. The SDF waged war from the ground for months, while the U.S. backed up their allies from above, pounding the city with air strikes. On Tuesday, a representative for the SDF declared the offensive over. ISIS fighters had either surrendered or been killed by SDF, a spokesman said, whose forces were clearing the city of landmines and rooting out any sleeper cells.

[...]

President Donald Trump, in an interview with radio talk-show host Chris Plante, attributed the (not-yet-confirmed by the military) victory over ISIS to himself. “I totally changed rules of engagement. I totally changed our military, I totally changed the attitudes of the military and they have done a fantastic job,” he said. “ISIS is now giving up, they are giving up, they are raising their hands, they are walking off. Nobody has ever seen that before.”

  NY Magazine

It didn't happen, and even it if had, everybody has seen that before.  Perhaps he wasn't watching Fox News during Desert Storm.  But surely most of his lickspittle followers were glued to their TVs and shouting USA! USA! USA! as scores of ill-trained and ill-equpped Iraqi fighters gave up in droves.

Not to mention every other war in the history of the world where defeated armies were permitted to surrender.

"Nobody has ever seen that before." Stupid bragging rooster. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They Were Jealous of Our Freedoms

A spate of deadly bombings in recent months by the U.S. against marketplaces, schools, and mosques in Syria and Iraq have raised alarms about the type of intelligence the U.S. is using to carry out airstrikes, as well as the criteria being used to determine whether civilians are present at the targeted sites.

[...]

The attacks documented in the report include a March 20 airstrike that targeted a school housing displaced people in the suburban town of Mansourah, outside of Tabqa, as well as another strike that hit a packed marketplace in Tabqa City two days later. Investigators from Human Rights Watch visited the sites of both attacks this July and collected the names of at least 84 civilians who had died in the bombings, including 30 children. While witnesses who spoke to investigators acknowledged that ISIS members, along with their families, had been around the areas of the bombings, they also said many civilians were nearby who had no connection to the group.

In the case of the March 22 marketplace bombing, huge numbers of people who had been lining up to buy bread at a local bakery were killed by an airstrike in an attack that may have been targeting a few ISIS members sitting in a nearby internet cafe. While the U.S.-led coalition has acknowledged carrying out the March 20 attack against the school, which it claimed had targeted a suspected weapons storage facility, it has said that it is still assessing the circumstances surrounding the marketplace bombing.

[...]

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH’S estimate for the strikes’ death toll — based on named victims — is likely a conservative number, Solvang said, since many of those killed in the school strike were internally displaced refugees from surrounding areas whose identities were not necessarily known to locals. In response to questions from Human Rights Watch, the U.S. military stated that it had “determined prior to the Mansourah attack” — on the school — “that there was no civilian activity at the site,” but it was still assessing the Tabqa City incident.

[...]

The bombing took place in broad daylight, at 5 p.m., in a crowded marketplace as large numbers of people were queuing to buy bread from a local bakery. The lines of people should have been clearly visible to coalition forces conducting aerial surveillance before the attack was carried out.

[...]

According to local residents, the Mansourah school had long hosted displaced civilians fleeing other parts of Syria, and civilians had used the Tabqa market throughout the years-long war. Any person with local knowledge would likely have been able to identify the substantial risk that the two sites contained significant numbers of civilians.

[...]

This March, the U.S. bombed a mosque in the northern Syrian town of al-Jinah, an attack that locals said killed dozens of civilians who had gathered for a religious service. Interviews conducted by The Intercept with survivors indicated that large numbers of innocent people were killed in that attack. The military has said that its investigation into the incident will not be reopened.

[...]

In a Time interview earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. military officer during much of the coalition effort against ISIS, praised the Trump administration for having “freed us up a bit to prosecute the war in a more aggressive manner.”

[...]

Townsend insisted that the war was being waged proportionately, adding that responsibility for any civilian deaths lay solely with ISIS.

  The Intercept

He has no trouble sleeping at night.

“We must maintain the initiative and we must liberate the people of Iraq and Syria from this real and mortal danger.”

Liberate them from mortal danger by mortal liberation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Syria

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters fought Islamic State militants in the heart of Raqqa, the extremists’ self-styled capital, on Monday, as scores of civilians fled areas controlled by the group.

  TPM

Although I think my search engine is a little off in its timeline indication, wasn't Trump recently promoting his fabulous Syrian cease-fire deal with Putin?

Two thousand and eighteen years ago.

The intensification of fighting comes a week after Iraqi forces declared victory against IS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest the extremists have held. The loss of Raqqa would deal a major blow to IS, but the group still holds wide areas of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, bordering Iraq.

"Annihilation"

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ((ISIS) has "accelerated" and shifted to "annihilation tactics."

"Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. It is a threat to all civilized nations," Mattis said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

Mattis made the comments shortly after President Trump returned from his first foreign trip, where he focused on combating ISIS and terrorism in general. On his first stop in Saudi Arabia, the president called on Muslim nations to unite against terrorists and "drive them out of this Earth."

  CBS

Tough talk, and simply impossible.

"Tal Afar is now surrounded. We have got efforts underway right now to surround their self-declared caliphate capital of Raqqa. That surrounding operation is going on. And once surrounded, then we'll go in and clean them out."

[...]

"We have already shifted from attrition tactics where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them," Mattis said. "Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa."

They have families, you effing idiot.

"It shows the effectiveness of what we're doing," Mattis continued. "However, there are larger currents, there are larger confrontations in this part of the world, and we cannot be blind to those. That is why they met in Washington under Secretary (of State) Tillerson's effort to carry out President Trump's strategy to make certain we don't just clean out this enemy and end up with a new enemy in the same area."

And just how does he plan to do that?

Mattis declined to give a timeline for the fight against ISIS, only saying that it will be "long."

Lifetimes - or eons - would have been a better answer.

"[T]his is going to be a long fight and I don't put timelines on fights."

There you go.

IS Attacks Iranian Parliament

At least 12 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a two-pronged suicide bomb and gun assault on the Iranian parliament and a mausoleum for the founder of the Islamic Republic in Tehran.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks within two hours, publishing a brief video that purported to show the attackers inside the parliament. If an Isis role is confirmed it would be the first attack conducted by the terror group inside majority Shia Iran.

[...]

Attacks are highly rare in Tehran and other major cities though a Sunni militant group named Jundallah and its splinter group Ansar al Furqan have been waging a deadly insurgency, mostly in more remote areas, for almost a decade.

Isis, which adheres to a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam, considers Shias heretics and has carried out numerous attacks against Shia civilians in Iraq in particular.

  Guardian

Will we have to send in the drones?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Propaganda

Won't care and won't know any different.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

America Has Lost Its Way

Airwars and FP reached out to all 12 non-U.S. members of the coalition to ask which were responsible for the 80 deaths. The responses ranged from outright denials of involvement (Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Britain); to no response (Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates); to several ambiguously worded statements.

Despite these statements, Airwars and FP confirmed that every coalition member identified as responsible for any of the 80 deaths were informed by U.S. officials of their assessed involvement. The allies have known for months if not longer of these findings, according to U.S. officials — but those nations responsible chose not to admit it when questioned by Airwars and FP.

[...]

U.S. officials’ efforts to release information about casualties caused by their partner nations, however, came at a cost. As the result of a deal struck among the coalition partners, civilian casualty incidents included in monthly reporting will not be tied to specific countries. That means the United States will in the future no longer confirm its own responsibility for specific civilian casualty incidents either — a move toward greater secrecy that could deprive victims’ families of any avenue to seek justice or compensation for these deaths.

[...]

Going forward, a total tally of coalition strikes that resulted in civilian casualties will always be included in reports. However, the United States will no longer identify the strikes that were carried out by its own forces. This is due to a concern that allies responsible for civilian deaths could be identified by a process of elimination.

  Foreign Policy

Really? How? The only one it would eliminate would be the US.

“We will just say ‘Coalition,’ and we won’t say if it was U.S. or not,’ confirmed Centcom Director of Public Affairs Col. John Thomas.

Sounds more like the US is getting a pass. Especially since we are far and away the country with the most civilian deaths to account for.

The coalition has so far admitted to killing 352 civilians since 2014, including the 80 or more non-combatants slain by U.S. allies. However, this may just by the tip of the iceberg: That figure is still roughly 10 times lower than Airwars’s own minimum estimate of 3,500 civilian fatalities in the air campaign. That tally is the result of monitoring carried out by our team of researchers, and does not include incidents that are contested or are currently backed by weak evidence.

Our Eternal Pals

The facts are well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists.

[...]

The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam.

[...]

Leaked German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques, schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant version of Islam throughout Germany.

[...]

Trump has adopted the Saudi line on terrorism, which deflects any blame from the kingdom and redirects it toward Iran.

[...]

Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.

[...]

And we know, via a leaked email from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group of foreign fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

[...]

The Saudis showered Trump’s inexperienced negotiators with attention, arms deals and donations to a World Bank fund that Ivanka Trump is championing. [...] In short, the Saudis played Trump.

  WaPo

The Saudis have lots of money. We like that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Okay to Admit It Now

In the age of Trump, there is no need for pretense of civility.

“We didn't go to Iraq to bring democracy to Iraq,” Condoleezza Rice told a meeting at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, stressing that the aim was simply to eliminate a security challenge.

“We went to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who we thought was reconstituting weapons of mass destruction, and who we knew had been a threat in the region. It was a security problem.”

Bringing democracy to Afghanistan by removing the radical Taliban wasn’t a US goal either.

“We overthrew them [Taliban] because they were harboring Al-Qaeda in a safe haven after 9/11,” Rice said.

[...]

In his recently-published book, ‘Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein’, former CIA officer John Nixon, who interrogated Hussein in 2003, argued that Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) could not have arisen under his rule. “It is improbable that a group like ISIS would have been able to enjoy the kind of success under his [Hussein’s] repressive regime that they have had under the Shia-led Baghdad government,” Nixon said.

He noted that “Saddam felt that Islamist extremist groups in Iraq posed the biggest threat to his rule” and did his best to eradicate any such threats.

“In hindsight, the thought of having an ageing and disengaged Saddam in power seems almost comforting in comparison with the wasted effort of our brave men and women in uniform and the rise of Islamic State, not to mention the £2.5 trillion [US$3.2 trillion] spent to build a new Iraq,”Nixon wrote.

The recently-published Chilcot report, by eminent Britons on their country’s involvement in the 2003 Iraq War, supported Nixon’s assumption on IS.

  RT

Shrug.

Statement from Your Brilliant President on Syria

"I think what Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity. He's there, and I guess he's running things, so something should happen."

[...]

"I don't want to mention that," Trump said when asked if he told members of Congress he plans to take military action. "But the answer is no, I haven't."

[...]

Defense Secretary James Mattis will lead Trump through his available options [at Mar-A-Lago], including what the potential consequences for military action could be.

The White House official confirmed that in addition to Mattis, three other Cabinet secretaries are currently in Mar-a-Lago, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

  CNN

Again, I ask: Why are we paying extra to guard Mar-A-Lago?  Does it not take extra details to guard the president in a very public place?  What the hell is wrong with the White House?  It doesn't have a Trump restaurant and rooms to let to people who would like to be in proximity to the US president, robbing him of a rich source of income, eh?

The Syrian government says it did not attack with chemical weapons, but that it bombed an IS stronghold that was holding chemical weapons. The difference is nothing to the affected civilians, but if true, it begs the question: Are there other chemical weapons stores being held by IS forces, and if so, could coalition or Russian forces not do the same thing?

Also, it's not like we haven't already been engaged militarily in Syria.  But to read news reports, you'd think we've just been sitting on the sidelines watching. Still, it can get worse. Much worse.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Collateral Damage"

[T]he Iraqi Army continues the strenuous effort to liberate western Mosul, wiping out militants with an intensive air campaign as well as in clashes on the battlefield.

“We were ready and our moral was high. We destroyed ISIS here. We have liberated 70 to 80 percent of Mosul,” an Iraqi Army soldier told RT.

  RT

In the language of war, "liberated" = "destroyed".

Luring warplanes to residential buildings so they will target the innocent has become a standard tactic of the jihadists.

“ISIS made us keep our door open, so they could get onto the roofs at any time. They even broke down the walls between houses so they could move around,” a local resident told RT.

“I don’t know why they were climbing onto our rooftops, whether it was to fight or to provoke [coalition] airstrikes,” another witness said.

The suffering of civilians who have to endure the side-effects of the offensive on a daily basis has been immense.

“There was so much bombing, and so many deaths. Pieces of human flesh were flying in all directions. Add to that constant hunger and thirst,” an elderly woman told Gazdiev.

[...]

“It’s terrible. The kids can’t eat properly, they can’t drink properly. They’re devastated by what they’ve been through,” a middle-aged survivor told RT.

Many children have become orphans, losing their parents to war, and have to take care of their younger siblings.

Following the Iraqi military through an almost completely demolished residential neighborhood, RT’s crew filmed what was left from a building, now reduced to a pile of rubble, mixed with rotting corpses of dead ISIS militants.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More "Boots on the Ground"

Hundreds of US Marines have arrived in Syria to establish an outpost in support of the operation to retake the city of Raqqa, the de-facto Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) capital in the country, the US-led coalition confirmed on Thursday.

"We are talking about an additional 400 or so forces in total, and they will be there for a temporary period," coalition spokesman US Air Force Colonel John Dorrian said, as cited by Reuters.

The deployment is an addition to the existing 500 US forces already in Syria and is aimed at accelerating the defeat of IS in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa city, Dorrian said.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Breathe Easy

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How Long Will He Last?

President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers.

[...]

Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.

[...]

“This is very much a repudiation of his new boss’s lexicon and worldview,” said William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse.”

[...]

But Mr. McCants and others cautioned that General McMaster’s views would not necessarily be the final word in a White House where Mr. Trump and several of his top advisers view Islam in deeply xenophobic terms. Some aides, including the president’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, have warned of a looming existential clash between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A Little Desperation

via GIPHY

He doesn't give a fig about Christians anywhere. He just wants to rally his base and get some handle on the news cycle.

And by "base", I mean "base".  Who are too dim-witted to realize that Muslims in the Middle-East have been executed in larger numbers, and a great percentage of them by American weapons.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And One More Thing

That Muslim ban plays perfectly as a tool to radicalize American Muslims - exactly what radical Islamists have said is a major goal.  The registry should put the cherry on top.

Not to mention short-sighted and dangerous.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Old Fool Still Talking

Does Putin pose a greater threat to the U.S. than ISIS? @SenJohnMcCain: I agree with that https://t.co/YIncYVriLI

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 17, 2017

And that should tell you all you need to know about ISIS.

And could somebody please tell me what his point is about the invitation to a peace conference?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Obama's Serious Syria Errors

President Barack Obama has long been under fire from the US national security elite and the media for failing to intervene aggressively against the Assad regime.

  Middle East Eye

And lambasted constantly in media and political circles for "inaction" in Syria, which would be laughable if it weren't pathetic. Action, I suppose, doesn't include funding, arming and advising. (And, in September, running an air strike on the Syrian army.)

But the real strategic blunder was not that Barack Obama didn’t launch yet another war in Syria, but that he decided to go along with the ambitions of America's Sunni allies to create and arm a Syrian opposition army to overthrow the regime in the first place.

[...]

[A] former [anonymous] official revealed that when Obama made the first move toward supporting the arming of Syrian opposition forces, the president failed to foresee the risk of a direct Iranian or Russian intervention on behalf of the Syrian regime in response to an externally armed opposition – because his advisors had failed to take this likelihood into account themselves.

[...]

Obama’s advisers assumed instead that neither Iran nor Russia would do more than offer token assistance to keep Assad in power, so there was no risk of an endless, bloody sectarian war.

I find this almost impossible to believe. How could they not foresee such an event? The entire world has known about the American Project for a New American Century  (PNAC) created in the run-up to the GW Bush administration with one of its stated goals being to take control over Syria. Syria has been seen for decades in the Middle East as a deterrent to attacks from Israel. Did they think Russia and Iran would just stand back and watch? And, if they did realize it would draw them into the conflict, it suggests that they intended it.

The former administration official confirmed the recollections of both former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former Pentagon official Derek Chollet that Obama’s advisers believed Assad’s fall was inevitable.

Some of those advisers believed Assad lacked the “cunning and fortitude” to remain in power, as Chollet put it.

Just as they believed Hillary's coronation was inevitable. Bubbles are bad places from which to govern.

Obama did make a statement [in the summer of 2011] suggesting that Assad should step aside, but he made it clear privately that he had no intention of doing anything about it. “He viewed it as simply a suggestion, not a hard policy,” the ex-official said.

But soon after that, a bigger issue arose for the administration’s policy: how to respond to pressure from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for a US commitment to help overthrow Assad.

Countries who were counting heavily on a Hillary Clinton presidency which would announce a no-fly zone in Syria, further increasing the chance of a direct confrontation between Russia and the US.

Apparently to assuage the dissatisfaction of the Sunni allies, then-director of the CIA David Petraeus devised a plan, which Obama approved, to help move the small arms from Libyan government stocks in Benghazi to Turkey.

Confirming the 2014 story by Seymour Hersh, the ex-official recalled: “It was highly secret but officials involved in the Middle East learned of the programme by word of mouth.”

The combination of those two policy decisions committed Obama – albeit half-heartedly - to the armed overthrow of the Assad regime.

[...]

Obama and his advisers blundered on Syria in thinking that they were not getting into a high-risk war situation.

I would say that's an extremely large blunder, to the point of almost being unbelievable.

But there is a deeper level of explanation for the willingness of Obama and his advisers to go along with the inherent risk of another regime change policy – even if Obama was half-hearted about it at best and limited direct US involvement in it.

The administration was unwilling to be at cross-purposes with its Sunni allies, the former official recalled, because of the direct US military interests at stake in its alliances with those three states: the Saudis effectively controlled US access to the naval base in Bahrain, Turkey controlled the airbase at Incirlik, and Qatar controlled land and air bases that had become central to US military operations in the region.

Now that sounds more like it. They knew, but they decided the risk was worth it. Besides, if we don't stay involved in war, our economy will sink like a stone. It's barely hanging on as it is, and the next financial crash will need a big cushion.

This Gareth Porter article outlines the entire Syria debacle, including how the US once again became a partner with a terrorist organization in the Middle East, and is definitely worth the read if you're fuzzy on the details.

By the way, Donald Trump said America will no longer be in the regime change business when he's in the White House.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that was just another lie to get elected. It might not happen in the beginning, but it will happen.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Syria

Last week Brig. Gen. Richard Coe, the lead US official on the investigating team, told reporters that US air strikes in Deir Ezzor on 17 September, which killed at least 62 - and possibly more than 100 - Syrian army troops, was the unintentional result of “human error”.

[...]

The summary report on an investigation into US and allied air strikes on Syrian government troops has revealed irregularities in decision-making consistent with a deliberate targeting of Syrian forces.

The report, released by US Central Command on 29 November, shows that senior US Air Force officers at the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, who were responsible for the decision to carry out the September airstrike at Deir Ezzor:

• misled the Russians about where the US intended to strike so Russia could not warn that it was targeting Syrian troops
• ignored information and intelligence analysis warning that the positions to be struck were Syrian government rather than Islamic State
• shifted abruptly from a deliberate targeting process to an immediate strike in violation of normal Air Force procedures

  Middle East Eye

"Human error", all right.

Both Moscow and Damascus denounced the strikes as a deliberate move by the Obama administration to support the Islamic State group and cited the attacks as the reason for declaring an end to the ceasefire on 19 September.

What a surprise.

We will fight terrorism anywhere it occurs unless it occurs in support of a regime change we'd like to see, and then we'll back it.

In the following video, investigative journalist Gareth Porter discusses  his belief that the latest cease-fire drawn up between Russia and Turkey for action in Syria will be more successful than two previous agreements between the US and Russia, and briefly touches on the tenuous state of affairs between the US and Turkey, both NATO members.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Donald Trump's Admin

We don't know where he'll put Rudy Giuliani, but he'll give him some job.  Speculation has been Attorney General or Secretary of State.  With that in mind, this should be comforting...

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Sunday defended Donald Trump's suggestion that the U.S. should "take the oil" from Iraq.

[...]

n ABC's "This Week." Host George Stephanopoulos pushed back, questioning the legality of that strategy.

"Wouldn't that just be theft? ... That's not legal, is it?" he asked.

"Of course it's legal. It's a war," Giuliani said.

  The Hill

Hoo boy. Here we go again. It's legal if the president does it (Dick Nixon); it's legal if I say it is (W Bush and John Yoo); it's legal if it's war (pretty much all of them, but only these yahoos will say it out loud).

Trump said, during NBC News's "Commander-in-Chief Forum" last week that the U.S. should "take the oil" in Iraq as part of the "spoils of war" to keep it from ISIS.

“I’ve always said, shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil,” he said.

“If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.”

A sentiment that Rudy parroted on Sunday.

Hey, von Clownstick, didn't you say Obama founded ISIS?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.