US in deep trouble with it's ISIS/Turkey/Kurdish policies

[Kirkland Laing]

@you lot.

Remember our current Syria strategy? We're training a bunch of moderate nutjobs to fight the Islamic nutjobs. Turns out the moderate nutjobs aren't doing so well.........

A Pentagon program to train moderate Syrian insurgents to fight the Islamic State has been vexed by problems of recruitment, screening, dismissals and desertions that have left only a tiny band of fighters ready to do battle.
Those fighters — 54 in all — suffered perhaps their most embarrassing setback yet on Thursday. One of their leaders, a Syrian Army defector who recruited them, was abducted in Syria near the Turkish border, along with his deputy who commands the trainees....Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has acknowledged the shortfalls, citing strict screening standards, which have created a backlog of 7,000 recruits waiting to be vetted. Mr. Carter has insisted the numbers will increase.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/wo...-in-syria.html

A Syrian insurgent group at the heart of the Pentagon’s effort to fight the Islamic State came under intense attack on Friday....The American-led coalition responded with airstrikes to help the American-aligned unit, known as Division 30, in fighting off the assault....The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program.
....“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments....Division 30 said in a statement that five of its fighters were killed in the firefight on Friday, 18 were wounded and 20 were captured by the Nusra Front. It was not clear whether the 20 captives included the six fighters and two commanders captured a day earlier....

A spokesman for the American military, Col. Patrick S. Ryder, wrote in an email statement that “we are confident that this attack will not deter Syrians from joining the program to fight for Syria,” and added that the program “is making progress.”
....[A senior] defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, described what he called “silver linings” to the attack on Friday: that the trainees had fought effectively in the battle, and that coalition warplanes responded quickly with airstrikes to support them.




http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/wo...roup.html?_r=0




So depending on how you count it there are either three or eleven moderate nutjobs left alive. Out of a whopping total of 54 trained nutjobs since we stated this policy a couple of years ago. Impressive.

[walrus]

Erdogan in Turkey has his own agenda for this. I think he wants to bomb Kurds so he can get enough support to alter the countries constitution to get more power. I'm sure the US is throwing him a few billion as well. Erdogan is a strange guy, we might be seeing Brock in a Burkah if Erdogan gets his hands on the Turkish constitution.

[mrbig1]

Look what happen to Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and now Syria. A weaken middle east make Israel that much stronger. Which makes a attack on Iran much more likely.

[walrus]

@you lot.

Remember our current Syria strategy? We're training a bunch of moderate nutjobs to fight the Islamic nutjobs. Turns out the moderate nutjobs aren't doing so well.........

A Pentagon program to train moderate Syrian insurgents to fight the Islamic State has been vexed by problems of recruitment, screening, dismissals and desertions that have left only a tiny band of fighters ready to do battle.
Those fighters — 54 in all — suffered perhaps their most embarrassing setback yet on Thursday. One of their leaders, a Syrian Army defector who recruited them, was abducted in Syria near the Turkish border, along with his deputy who commands the trainees....Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has acknowledged the shortfalls, citing strict screening standards, which have created a backlog of 7,000 recruits waiting to be vetted. Mr. Carter has insisted the numbers will increase.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/wo...-in-syria.html

A Syrian insurgent group at the heart of the Pentagon’s effort to fight the Islamic State came under intense attack on Friday....The American-led coalition responded with airstrikes to help the American-aligned unit, known as Division 30, in fighting off the assault....The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program.
....“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments....Division 30 said in a statement that five of its fighters were killed in the firefight on Friday, 18 were wounded and 20 were captured by the Nusra Front. It was not clear whether the 20 captives included the six fighters and two commanders captured a day earlier....

A spokesman for the American military, Col. Patrick S. Ryder, wrote in an email statement that “we are confident that this attack will not deter Syrians from joining the program to fight for Syria,” and added that the program “is making progress.”
....[A senior] defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, described what he called “silver linings” to the attack on Friday: that the trainees had fought effectively in the battle, and that coalition warplanes responded quickly with airstrikes to support them.




http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/wo...roup.html?_r=0




So depending on how you count it there are either three or eleven moderate nutjobs left alive. Out of a whopping total of 54 trained nutjobs since we stated this policy a couple of years ago. Impressive.

I don't know Kirk, with Iran, China and Russia backing Bashir Syria unfortunately becomes a chess game and the people living their are the ones that suffer while read about it and discuss it in the paper. I remember shortly before the doody hitting the fan there was a nyt magazine special about Bashir and his wife. His wife lived a very opulent lifestyle. I think it was one of the things that pissed the Syrian people off. It's a shame, Syria has a beautiful history with some of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Bashir actually took time to protect those Christians who are now being butchered by the caliphate. With the middle eastern history I know many of us in the US would love to visit it but who wants to visit a war torn country, I can go to Chicago for that. It's a shame the whole Damn thing, I hope the best for the people of Syria, I'm sure they are just walking around like WTF. People just want a decent life. We take so much for granted and then read and pontificate about it like we know what the he'll is going on.

[Kirkland Laing]

I don't know Kirk, with Iran, China and Russia backing Bashir Syria unfortunately becomes a chess game and the people living their are the ones that suffer while read about it and discuss it in the paper. I remember shortly before the doody hitting the fan there was a nyt magazine special about Bashir and his wife. His wife lived a very opulent lifestyle. I think it was one of the things that pissed the Syrian people off. It's a shame, Syria has a beautiful history with some of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Bashir actually took time to protect those Christians who are now being butchered by the caliphate. With the middle eastern history I know many of us in the US would love to visit it but who wants to visit a war torn country, I can go to Chicago for that. It's a shame the whole Damn thing, I hope the best for the people of Syria, I'm sure they are just walking around like WTF. People just want a decent life. We take so much for granted and then read and pontificate about it like we know what the he'll is going on.

Syria has always been a country where big powers have fought their proxy wars. Just not as an actual war, that's a new thing. Every single Middle Eastern dictator lives an opulent lifestyle including all the ones we've kept in power for decades.

What we're doing there is the samr ridiculous thing we've done in countries like Ukraine and Libya. Some guy is in power who isn't allied to us so we've done everything we can to overthrow him and just expecting peace to break out the minute the regime is overthrown and a stable pro-American government to take its place. Because that's what happened in Iraq! It's hard to believe how idiotic our policies are. Iraq, Syria and Libya are ongoing nightmares with Yemen and other regional countries on the way to the same kind of faile d states. In a few years if we we somehow able to produce a bunch of guys like Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad and put them in charge and for them to produce peace and stability we'd be popping champagne corks. We'd immediately back them and fund them and prop up their regimes just like we once did to Saddam, Gadaffi, Assad* and so on.

*To be fair it was Hafez Assad, Bashir's dad who we propped up for a long time.

[walrus]

Yes Kirk, we all know the Arabs and most leaders live . Opulent lives but I think Mrs Bashir showed off too much of her taste for western goods Gucci and what not. Basically the entire middle east has been a pawn for Britain, the US and Islam itself for years. I don't think that can be blamed for all of its current problems. Africa was a playground for the US and Russia during the cold war. Once again, can that be blamed for its current problems today.

[SlimTrae]

Yes Kirk, we all know the Arabs and most leaders live . Opulent lives but I think Mrs Bashir showed off too much of her taste for western goods Gucci and what not. Basically the entire middle east has been a pawn for Britain, the US and Islam itself for years. I don't think that can be blamed for all of its current problems. Africa was a playground for the US and Russia during the cold war. Once again, can that be blamed for its current problems today.

Agreed.

[Kirkland Laing]

Yes Kirk, we all know the Arabs and most leaders live . Opulent lives but I think Mrs Bashir showed off too much of her taste for western goods Gucci and what not. Basically the entire middle east has been a pawn for Britain, the US and Islam itself for years. I don't think that can be blamed for all of its current problems. Africa was a playground for the US and Russia during the cold war. Once again, can that be blamed for its current problems today.

They've been fighting the same war over there since the seventh century. Nothing is going to be resolved in our lifetimes. The last thing we should be doing though is destabilising a bunch of countries that were stable for decades.

[walrus]

Yes Kirk, we all know the Arabs and most leaders live . Opulent lives but I think Mrs Bashir showed off too much of her taste for western goods Gucci and what not. Basically the entire middle east has been a pawn for Britain, the US and Islam itself for years. I don't think that can be blamed for all of its current problems. Africa was a playground for the US and Russia during the cold war. Once again, can that be blamed for its current problems today.

They've been fighting the same war over there since the seventh century. Nothing is going to be resolved in our lifetimes. The last thing we should be doing though is destabilising a bunch of countries that were stable for decades.

tyranny is not stability. Carp, I sound like Louis Farrakhan

[Kirkland Laing]

Yes Kirk, we all know the Arabs and most leaders live . Opulent lives but I think Mrs Bashir showed off too much of her taste for western goods Gucci and what not. Basically the entire middle east has been a pawn for Britain, the US and Islam itself for years. I don't think that can be blamed for all of its current problems. Africa was a playground for the US and Russia during the cold war. Once again, can that be blamed for its current problems today.

They've been fighting the same war over there since the seventh century. Nothing is going to be resolved in our lifetimes. The last thing we should be doing though is destabilising a bunch of countries that were stable for decades.

tyranny is not stability. Carp, I sound like Louis Farrakhan

How many decades did the Assad family rule Syria with an orderly if dictatorial society? Or the Ba' aath party rule Iraq (Saddam plus others)? Or the Al Saud family rule Saudi Arabia? Or the Shah run Iran? Or the current mob run Iran? Or the Gulf princes rules their emirates? Gaddafi in Libya, various military dictators heading the same regime in Egypt? They're not pretty but they produce decade after decade of stable societies, QED. Encourage their downfall or actively overthrow them and look what you get.