Windmill knight said:
Yupo said:
This is from Foreign Policy this morning. Made me laugh. As if CIA isn't in any way involved with ISIS. Note 'urgent talks' at the end.
'Though Russia claimed yesterday its airstrikes targeted the Islamic State, Syrian rebel groups told reporters that the strikes hit other groups, including some rebels believed to have participated in a CIA-supported training program. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter noted that the strikes, which occurred in western Syria, were in locations “where there probably were not ISIL forces.” The U.S. representative of the Syrian National Coalition denounced the strikes, saying, “The Russian claim that they are there to fight ISIS is a baseless claim, and that was proven today. They are there to uphold a regime that lost its legitimacy and only controls 14 percent of the land in Syria.”
What - all five of them? 
_https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/16/only-4-to-5-american-trained-syrians-fighting-against-the-islamic-state/
There are only four or five American-trained Syrian rebels currently fighting against the Islamic State, the top general leading the effort to build a force to counter the militant group in Syria said Wednesday.
And the five of them took "stage left" ....... long before Putin's military got there!
In Latest Embarrassment, US-Trained Syrian Fighters Surrender "Pick-Up Trucks, Ammo" To Al-Qaeda
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-26/latest-embarrassment-us-trained-syrian-fighters-surrender-pick-trucks-ammo-al-qaeda
Back in July we learned that
the Pentagon’s effort to train and equip properly “vetted” Syrian rebels to combat ISIS had suffered an embarrassing setback when the group’s commander and deputy commander were captured by al-Nusra.
Less than two months later, Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. Central Command and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth admitted to Congress that the effort to recruit and field a force of more than 5,000 anti-ISIS fighters by year end wasn’t on track. When asked how many soldiers trained under the program (which was launched in May) were still operating in Syria, Austin said the total was probably “four or five.”
“Let’s not kid ourselves, that’s a joke. This is just a total failure,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said.
Training those “four or five” freedom fighters has so far cost US taxpayers north of $40 million, and as we noted earlier this month, it’s important to take note of the sheer absurdity inherent in al-Nusra capturing the group’s leaders over the summer:
Effectively, the newest group of US-trained Syrian fighters was on their way to fight ISIS, another group of US-trained Syrian fighters, when their leaders were captured by al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, whose founder and allies received US support during the Soviet-Afghan war.
Well, just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any more ridiculous,
the Pentagon now says the “four or five” fighters still operating under the latest effort to train “moderate” Syrian rebels were forced to hand over six “pickup trucks” and an ammo cache to al-Qaeda in order to secure safe passage to who knows where. Here’s Reuters:
Syrian rebels trained by the United States gave some of their equipment to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday, the latest blow to a troubled U.S. effort to train local partners to fight Islamic State militants.
The rebels surrendered six pick-up trucks and some ammunition, or about one-quarter of their issued equipment, to a suspected Nusra intermediary on Sept. 21-22 in exchange for safe passage, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, in a statement.
The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-03/largest-us-foreign-policy-blunder-vietnam-complete-iran-readies-massive-syrian-groun
On Thursday, in “Mid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic”, we attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow’s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize what’s taking shape in the Middle East:
Putin looks to have viewed this as the ultimate geopolitical win-win. That is, Russia gets to i) expand its influence in the Middle East in defiance of Washington and its allies, a move that also helps to protect Russian energy interests and preserves the Mediterranean port at Tartus, and ii) support its allies in Tehran and Damascus thus preserving the counterbalance to the US-Saudi-Qatar alliance.
Meanwhile, Iran gets to enjoy the support of the Russian military juggernaut on the way to protecting the delicate regional nexus that is the source of Tehran’s Mid-East influence. It is absolutely critical for Iran to keep Assad in power, as the loss of Syria to the West would effectively cut the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of what appears to be going on here. This is nothing short of a Middle Eastern coup, as Iran looks to displace Saudi Arabia as the regional power broker and as Russia looks to supplant the US as the superpower puppet master.
Solidifying the Assad regime in Syria serves to shore up Hezbollah and presents Tehran with an opportunity to assert itself in the name of combatting terror. The latter point there is critical. The West has long contended that Iran is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror, and the Pentagon has variously accused the Quds Force of orchestrating attacks on US soldiers in Iraq after cooperation between Washington and Tehran broke down in the wake of Bush’s “axis of evil” comment.
Indeed, Iran was accused of masterminding a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador at a Washington DC restaurant in 2011.
Now, the tables have turned. It is the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar who stand accused of sponsoring Sunni extremists and it is Iran, and specifically the Revolutionary Guard, that gets to play hero.
Of course this would be largely impossible without Moscow’s stamp of superpower approval. The optics around the P5+1 nuclear deal were making it difficult for Tehran to be too public in its efforts to bolster Assad. That doesn’t mean Tehran’s support for the regime in Syria hasn’t been well documented for years, it simply means that Iran needed to observe some semblance of caution, lest its role in Syria should end up torpedoing the nuclear negotiations. Now that Moscow is officially involved, that caution is no longer obligatory and Iran is now moving to support Russian airstrikes with an outright ground incursion.
Since late 2012 Iran has played a lead role in organizing, training and funding local pro-regime militias in Syria, many of them members of Mr. Assad’s Alawite minority, a branch of Shiite Islam. Experts believe they number between 150,000 and 190,000—possibly more than what remains of Syria’s conventional army.
What’s more, some experts estimate 20,000 Shiite foreign fighters are on the ground, backed by both Shiite Iran and its main proxy in the region, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
About 5,000 of them are new arrivals from Iraq in July and August alone, said Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland. He said this figure was compiled through his own contacts with some of these fighters, flight data between Baghdad and Damascus as well as social media postings. “It looks like it was timed out to coincide with the Russian move,” Mr. Smyth said.
Back in June, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimaini, visited a town north of Latakia on the frontlines of Syria’s protracted civil war. Following that visit, he promised that Tehran and Damascus were set to unveil a new strategy that would “surprise the world.”
Just a little over a month later, Soleimani – in violation of a UN travel ban – visited Russia and held meetings with The Kremlin.
