Thread: Russia will pay price for Syrian airstrikes, says US defense secretary

Russia will pay price for Syrian airstrikes, says US defense secretary

Ashton Carter predicts reprisal attacks on Russian soil over Vladimir Putin’s military campaign to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime

Moscow will soon start paying the price for its escalating military intervention in Syria in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties, the US defence secretary has warned, amid signs that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are preparing to counter the Russian move.

Ashton Carter was talking at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday during which the ministers agreed to increase a Nato response force intended to move quickly to flashpoints.

There were no plans to deploy the force to Turkey, though the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, suggested its existence alone should discourage future Russian or Syrian incursions into Turkish territory.

“We don’t have to deploy the Nato response force or the spearhead force to deliver deterrence,” Stoltenberg said. “The important thing is that any adversary of Nato will know that we are able to deploy.”

Saudi Arabia, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, was said by diplomats to be preparing to step up its support, having despaired of the US. Ministers from Qatar and Turkey, the Saudis’ partners in the fight against Assad, are holding talks on their next moves.

Riyadh’s anger over Vladimir Putin’s intervention was reflected in a statement by 55 leading clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.

“Russia has created a Frankenstein in the region which it will not be able to control,” warned a senior Qatari source. “With the call to jihad things will change. Everyone will go to fight. Even Muslims who sit in bars. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. Imagine what will happen if 1% of them join.”

Saudi Arabia continues to insist that Assad must go, and cannot be part of any political transition, as the US, Britain and other western countries have signalled. It is expected to boost its financial aid to rebel groups and deliver weapons via the border with Turkey. Officials said they were watching to see if King Salman cancels a planned visit to Moscow next week.

Overnight, the Russian defence ministry said its planes had carried out more bombing missions over Syria. “Russian warplanes conducted 22 sorties overnight. The crews of Sukhoi Su-34, Sukhoi Su-24M and Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft struck 27 terrorist targets on Syrian territory,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry claimed to have destroyed eight Islamic State (Isis) strongholds near populated areas in the Homs province, and hit 11 training camps affiliated with the jihadi group in the Hama and Raqqa provinces.

“As a result of the strikes, the infrastructure used for the training of terrorists has been destroyed,” the statement said.
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The Russian air campaign increasingly appeared to be coordinated with a Syrian army advance in north-western Syria against non-Isis rebel groups. The Syrian regime army’s chief of staff, Gen Ali Abdullah Ayoub, announced “a vast offensive to defeat the terrorist groups” and restore control over opposition-held areas.

In his remarks, Carter said that the Russian military campaign, including airstrikes and ship-launched cruise missiles, were not targeting Isis but represented a Russian decision “to double down on a longstanding relationship with Assad”.

“They have initiated a joint ground offensive with the Syrian regime, shattering the facade that they are there to fight Isil [Isis],” he added. “This will have consequences for Russia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks. In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties.”
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Carter said that Russian missiles had been fired without giving notice to other states in the region and came within a few miles of hitting a US drone over Syrian airspace.

“We’ve seen increasingly unprofessional behaviour from Russian forces. They violated Turkish airspace ... They shot cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea without warning,” the defence secretary said. But he restated a US refusal to coordinate its own air campaign against Isis with Russian forces because of Moscow’s emphasis on supporting the Syrian president. Aircraft bombing Islamist militants in Syria were re-routed at least once to avoid a close encounter with Russian planes.

Germany’s defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said Russia must recognise that if it targeted opposition groups in Syria that are fighting Isis, “Russia will strengthen Isis and this can be neither in the Russian interest, nor in our interest”.

The British defence secretary, Michael Fallon, said Russia’s intervention was making “a very serious situation in Syria much more dangerous”.

Fallon announced that the UK would be sending a hundred more British trainers to the Baltic states to counter Russian pressure there.

The increased Nato response force is supposed to be able to react to threats in both the Baltics and in Turkey. The Russian intervention however has come at a time when Nato Patriot anti-aircraft missiles are being withdrawn from Turkey. A US battery was shipped back to the US for “modernisation”, Germany withdrew its battery partly in protest at Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish groups in Syria, and Spain is not expected to keep its missiles in Turkey beyond the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Congress has begun an investigation into whether US intelligence agencies had anticipated the scale and objectives of the Russian intervention in Syria, according to the Reuters news agency.

Most of the recent fighting appeared to be concentrated in Hama, a central province with a majority Sunni capital that has remained in the hands of the regime since the start of the war. It is key to Assad’s strategy of cementing control over major population centres in a strip of territory from Latakia in the north, through to Homs, Hama and Damascus.

Rebels recently attempted to wrest control of the strategic al-Ghab plain in Hama’s countryside, drawing closer to Assad’s coastal strongholds, and the Russian strategy seems primarily aimed at securing this territory from further incursions.

Jaysh al-Fateh, a coalition of Islamist rebel factions, conquered most of Idlib in a spring offensive, forcing the regime to abandon the province. Russian airstrikes have repeatedly targeted the province over the past week, though there is no known Isis presence in the area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Russian planes also bombed targets on the outskirts of the historic city of Palmyra, which was seized by Isis in May, and the town of Qaryatain, which was also seized by the militants this summer and whose Christian residents have either been taken hostage or fled. Syrian state TV said airstrikes also hit Isis positions in northern Aleppo.

It is unclear if the Assad regime will be able to score major ground advances against the rebels following years of vicious warfare that has sapped his armed forces, and amid widespread dereliction of duty among its conscripts, while facing rebels who are united by their anger at the Russian intervention.

“Russia is primarily targeting opposition fighters, and this could end any future peace process in Syria and strengthen the role of Islamic State and the extreme factions that do not want peace, whether they support or oppose the regime,” said the SOHR’s director, Rami Abdul Rahman.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ence-secretary

Saudi Arabia, a leading supporter of Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, was said by diplomats to be preparing to step up its support, having despaired of the US. Ministers from Qatar and Turkey, the Saudis’ partners in the fight against Assad, are holding talks on their next moves.

Riyadh’s anger over Vladimir Putin’s intervention was reflected in a statement by 55 leading clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.

“Russia has created a Frankenstein in the region which it will not be able to control,” warned a senior Qatari source. “With the call to jihad things will change. Everyone will go to fight. Even Muslims who sit in bars. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. Imagine what will happen if 1% of them join.”

Saudi Arabia continues to insist that Assad must go, and cannot be part of any political transition, as the US, Britain and other western countries have signalled. It is expected to boost its financial aid to rebel groups and deliver weapons via the border with Turkey. Officials said they were watching to see if King Salman cancels a planned visit to Moscow next week.

Really? Saudi Arabia has called for Jihad? Honestly? Now is the time to set this course straight. Any government, and I don't care WHAT government in what country that allows its "clerics" to call for Jihad is no longer on the most favored nation status with the United States, they are on the Terrorist List. Period.

No money, no weapons, no purchases. The United States needs to recall every American from Qatar and Saudi Arabia today, evacuate them all by Monday morning, close both Embassies, send Saudi Arabia a bill for every dime spent on 9/11, and deduct it from all remittances in progress.

It should be quite clear now whose skirts our stupid government has had its nose under sucking the wrong parts of the wrong people in the wrong country for all the wrong reasons.

Do Saudis really think we're stupid enough to continue to be their ally? Do you really believe for a single minute that Americans and Russians and the French, Brits and Chinese aren't just fed up to the gills with your stupid disgusting religious crap? Do you really think that the good people of these countries will tolerate your Muslimism Bull Shit for another second?

Your so-called religion is a disgrace and a scourge to the human race. It is a source of evil beyond most people's ability to comprehend its inherent darkness. Everyone carries on about what the Nazis did to the Jews, and yes that was horrible, and it was swiftly ended. But it was no more horrible than what you do every day to your own people and anyone you think is getting in your way.

We ended the Nazi Tyranny, and now it's time to do the same with yours. Oh, and don't think because you've got 1.5 billion "Muslims" in the world that this means a damn thing. You haven't got squat, because none of these people are fighters, they're cowards supreme. They won't even fight for their own country without a pay-off and by the time we get done with you, you won't have enough money to pay 10 of them.

You people are sick, you're mentally disturbed, you all need to be locked up in straight jackets and sent to Gulags in Siberia. That's right, no more flowing white robes for you, no more head-dresses, no more harems, no more beards, no more coffee, no more roasted goat. You'll be shaved, packed into prison pants, fed a small bowl of nasty gruel with a glass of untreated water, handed a pick to do the first day's work in your miserable hell-bent lives, and your little "Kingdom" will be no more.

Do you notice, like me, that with another country getting involved in this, instead of the US, that the stress level goes way down? I could give a **** whether Russia and the Saudis blow each other apart, as long as it doesn't spill over to either Israel or to us. This is why the UN mission should have continued in Iraq, instead of being expelled just the way Russia told us to clear out. ANY country in the world has commando types somewhere in their military; it's just human nature. Let them go get massacred if we need a military invasion. Actually I think in Iraq they could have stepped up to human rights violations with a small military force and some military/SWAT type engagements. We could have supplied equipment as our part of the deal.

There would have been a lot fewer headaches in this country----and more election wins for conservatives.

Saudi Arabia continues to insist that Assad must go, and cannot be part of any political transition, as the US, Britain and other western countries have signalled. It is expected to boost its financial aid to rebel groups and deliver weapons via the border with Turkey. Officials said they were watching to see if King Salman cancels a planned visit to Moscow next week.

Has Obama been choosing sides and paying for a religious war at the expense of the American people?

The 9/11 Hijackers were from? Saudi Arabia. Sorry, I think that the Saudis are the purveyors of the radical Islamic movement across the world and we have been paying for it. I personally would like to develope our own energy resources and stop paying for the Muslim Brotherhood and the emerging Sunni Caliphate.

In a special 9-11 edition of the Journal of American History, Appleby explained that the Shiite outlook is far different from the Sunni's, a difference that is highly significant:

... for Sunni Muslims, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate ... as they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate.

In 1928, four years after the abolishment of the caliphate, the Egyptian schoolteacher Hasan al-Banna founded the first Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Al-Banna was appalled by"the wave of atheism and lewdness [that] engulfed Egypt" following World War I. The victorious Europeans had"imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices." Suddenly the very heart of the Islamic world was penetrated by European"schools and scientific and cultural institutes" that" cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western."14 Most distressing to al-Banna and his followers was what they saw as the rapid moral decline of the religious establishment, including the leading sheikhs, or religious scholars, at Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and center of Islamic learning in Cairo. The clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters.

Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1920s was catastrophic, as he made clear in a videotape made after 9-11. On the tape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 7, 2001, he proclaimed:"What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. ... Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more [than] eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated."
- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/articl....xu9F4NVo.dpuf

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Originally Posted by Newmexican

Has Obama been choosing sides and paying for a religious war at the expense of the American people?

The 9/11 Hijackers were from? Saudi Arabia. Sorry, I think that the Saudis are the purveyors of the radical Islamic movement across the world and we have been paying for it. I personally would like to develope our own energy resources and stop paying for the Muslim Brotherhood and the emerging Sunni Caliphate.

Absolutely, he is, that's exactly what we've been embroiled in! So did Bush.

And it certainly is pushing large numbers of muslims into Europe & USA.

"We will pay for mosques"

They are a notorious "no face" group. Lie to your face w/o reservation and proud of it. Claim to be so religious yet they party in other countries with blond haired women, tobacco, liquor, etc.

I am disgusted over the continued attention wasted on groups that have hatred, killing, rape, sex slavery, male domination via female submissiveness at their core. If that is the ways of their land, then let them stay there & drown in their own muck and mire.

Years ago, Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane went on stage with a head scarf & yanked it off defiantly. American women don't go backwards in their achieved liberties and if muslim populations drastically increase here, there will be enormous problems. Due to their violent natures cutting off heads, arms, legs, stoning that is just not going to happen here w/o hell being raised. That is what people with hellish spirits bring with them.

Originally Posted by Captainron

Do you notice, like me, that with another country getting involved in this, instead of the US, that the stress level goes way down? I could give a **** whether Russia and the Saudis blow each other apart, as long as it doesn't spill over to either Israel or to us. This is why the UN mission should have continued in Iraq, instead of being expelled just the way Russia told us to clear out. ANY country in the world has commando types somewhere in their military; it's just human nature. Let them go get massacred if we need a military invasion. Actually I think in Iraq they could have stepped up to human rights violations with a small military force and some military/SWAT type engagements. We could have supplied equipment as our part of the deal.

There would have been a lot fewer headaches in this country----and more election wins for conservatives.

Russia is doing US the biggest favor. We need to stop this stupid plan of Obama's to arm 5,000 "rebels". We need to stop everything, and get out of Russia's way. They know how to fix this. We don't.