The Syrian Crisis

[asianobserve]

which had little to do with Wahhabis...

Read again my posts earlier. It was in the context of Wahhabis referring to Saudi Arabia not Wahhabism...

 

[Armand2REP]

Read again my posts earlier. It was in the context of Wahhabis referring to Saudi Arabia not Wahhabism...

Considering the 80s oil glut had little to do with SKA but the lack of demand from sputtering developed economies, it was failed economic policy that did it.

 

[pmaitra]

Confused civilians swarm into Salaheddine district thinking Rebels routed

By Hadeel Al Shalchi
ALEPPO, Syria | Sun Aug 12, 2012

(Reuters) - Syrian civilians desperate to check on their homes pushed into fluid front lines around the devastated Salaheddine district of Aleppo on Sunday, even as sniper fire cracked out and rebels warned them to stay away.

Civilians drove their cars up to rebel checkpoints demanding to be allowed through, apparently convinced by government messages that the army had regained full control of their neighborhood, where battles have raged for three weeks.

"Snipers, snipers," the rebels manning the checkpoints shouted, but some women sat there, confused and stubborn, insisting they had to go through to check on their homes.

"I have to go in," pleaded one man. "My neighbor told me my house is being looted and I need to get my stuff. Please let me in, I left with only the clothes on my back."

One exasperated fighter eventually responded: "Say your prayers and go, just go."

Aleppo is vital to President Bashar al-Assad, struggling for the survival of a ruling system that his family and members of his minority Alawite clan have dominated for four decades.

Dozens of Salaheddine residents surged back after Syrian state television broadcast assurances that the area was now free of "terrorists" and that families were returning to their homes.

"Congratulations to Aleppo for the liberation of Salaheddine from the terrorists with the help of the families of Salaheddine," read a text message from a mobile network.

Outgunned rebels who have been fighting army troops backed by warplanes, tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships were unimpressed by the residents besieging their checkpoints.

"All these civilians are people who are against the revolution. They believe Syrian TV propaganda that the area is cleared of fighters," said a rebel calling himself Abu Islam.

Nearby, just off Saif al-Dawla street on the eastern edge of Salaheddine, a bullet struck a young man aged about 20 in the stomach, killing him. Rescuers dragged him to the side of road, where his father cried hysterically. "My only son has gone."

Out in the streets in and around Salaheddine, a southern gateway to Aleppo, fighting intensified.

Fighters at one intersection on Saif al-Dawla Street took turns to fire assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pickup vehicle.

A huge truck drove up carrying broken concrete blocks and rubble to create barriers against army tanks.

Yasir Osman, commander of the Abu Bakr al-Sedeeq Brigade, said his fighters had seized weapons and ammunition overnight after overrunning a petrol station in Salaheddine being used as an army base and killing its commander.

But he acknowledged the army was also inflicting losses. Three of his men were killed and seven wounded on Sunday.

Confused civilians swarm into Syria battle zone | Reuters

____________________________

Now Syrian propoganda is getting people killed. :shocked:

Thank you for posting this Armand2REP. This means Syrian civilians still trust the Syrian Forces and Assad, that they were willing to return believing the rebels have been routed.

 

[SADAKHUSH]

One positive thing that has come out is that long term vision of USA and NATO has succeeded in moving the Al-Queda in the backyard of terror sponsoring countries of GCC. This time the incubator and funding nations and her citizens will pay the price of terrorist snakes who were creating mayhem in other peaceful countries. Let us see how long they can tolerate the jihadists.

By doing this they have succeeded what ten years of bombing has not been able to do. Egyptian nomad people are complaining about the presence of Al-Queda in the latest incident in the Sinai desert bordering Israel. They have found nationals of Central Asian republic's, Afghanistani's, Pakistani's and Bangladeshi among them.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Downed MiG-23 pilot in FSA captivity.


MIG-23 was downed due to engine flame out..

 

[W.G.Ewald]

^^
Damned old to be a pilot.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Pure bad luck ...

 

[Kunal Biswas]

 

[Armand2REP]

^^
Damned old to be a pilot.

That would be considered average age in Russia.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

That would be considered average age in Russia.

Remember this guy?

 

[W.G.Ewald]

General Wesley Clark talking about the Plans of US invasion of Iraq, Lybia, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and finally Iran.

Wesley Clark Goes From 4-Star General to Reality TV Punchline | Danger Room | Wired.com

Thirteen years ago, Wesley Clark won a war. It's been all downhill since — from demeaning rank-and-file troops to shilling for shady data-brokers to blowing a presidential campaign. But tonight at 8 on NBC, Clark may have hit rock bottom: He's hosting a reality TV show.

Clark, a retired four-star Army general, will be the military representative on Stars Earn Stripes, a Survivor-style show that puts celebrities through the rigor of (fake) combat. Clark will judge the physical prowess of celebrities like boy-band also-ran Nick Lachey; action-movie C-lister Terry Crews; and Sarah Palin's husband Todd. The show is treacly, exploitative military porn, according to the early reviews. And Clark is like a martial Simon Cowell, only less frightening: "He has an easy manner on camera," judged The New York Times, and, as you'd expect, plenty of real-world knowledge to bring to these fake soldier games."

This seems like a bewildering career decision from a man who finished first in his West Point class and became a Rhodes scholar. But ever since retiring, Clark's made a second career out of pimping his first. He shilled for dubious tech products before turning himself into a product — that is, attempting to become president of the United States within three years of getting fired from his job running NATO's Kosovo war. Along the way, he inadvertently bolstered the case of his many, many military critics, who considered him a clown. Oh, and according to one of his subordinates, he came close to starting World War III.

Almost as soon as Clark took his uniform off in 2000, he began lending his reputation to prospective military tech. While lots of officers become defense-contractor shills, Clark's favored products trended toward the bizarre or the useless. One company, WaveCrest Laboratories, made an electric bicycle that Clark pitched as a vehicle for soldiers fighting in "tight alleys in urban areas." He joined the board of a Acxiom, the database company that sells your address and phone number to telemarketers. After 9/11, Acxiom hawked its infobrokering as a terror-stopper, with Clark's eager help. But then he decided his greatest product was himself — as president.

Clark's 2004 campaign seems like a fever dream. Democrats loved the guy not for who he was — he has never held an elective office; and Kosovo was not a war that the public cared about — but because he was the rare general who was openly a Democrat, especially in the first post-9/11 election. But when Clark entered the primaries, his greenness quickly showed: Not only was his announcement speech awkward, but his first press conference memorably featured a beleaguered Clark wailing to an aide, "Mary, help!" Not something you want to do when your chief selling point is your military experience.

But it wasn't just Clark's political inexperience that defined his doomed campaign. Clark seemed to believe the presidency belonged to him as a matter of rank. Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, Clark fielded a question about rival John Kerry's Vietnam experience. "With all due respect," Clark noted, "he's a lieutenant and I'm a general." The lieutenant, a politician with 30 years' experience, trounced the general in the early voting.

Then came the vitriol Clark attracted from what was supposed to be his key constituency: the military. Almost as soon as Clark announced his candidacy, he faced a fierce and surprisingly personal attack from a man who ought to have been his ally: retired Army Gen. Hugh Shelton. Shelton was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Clark ran the Kosovo war and a contemporary in the close-knit community of Army four-stars. Yet in a rare public remark during his retirement, Shelton derided Clark for unspecified "integrity and character issues" and said he wouldn't vote for his fellow general. Their problems stemmed from a war in Kosovo that Clark — and few others — thought covered him in glory.

Shelton's memoir, published in 2010, portrayed Clark as a blithering idiot who happened to be a Rhodes scholar and West Point valedictorian. Most accounts of the Kosovo war describe Clark's plan to push the Serbs out of the beleaguered ethnic-Albanian province as a jumble of disconnected, escalating air strikes lacking strategic vision. (One monograph about the 78-day war was titled "Winning Ugly.") Shelton's beef was that Clark's initial plan, with its "random and haphazard" bombing runs, was even worse. "A few days into the war, it became clear to me that General Clark had developed a very weak battle plan, one without a strategic plan and corresponding targets," Shelton wrote. In the chairman's telling, he had to fax Clark a better plan — the same one that would be criticized for its incoherence — and left it for the telegenic Clark to "brief well in front of the cameras." Privately, Shelton seethed that Clark was "absolutely in it for whatever was best for Wes."

Worse, as the Russians ultimately pulled their Serbian proxies back from Kosovo, they landed their own troops in Pristina Airport in the heart of the province. It was a provocative move — the Russian military line might demarcate a partition of Kosovo — one that risked the conflict between NATO and Russia that the Cold War successfully escaped. Clark ordered his man on the ground, British Lt. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, to block the Russian access to the airport runways. "Sir," Jackson recounted in his 2007 memoir, "I'm not starting World War III for you." Clark called the dispute in to Washington, where Shelton backed Jackson. Within weeks of running a successful war, Clark was fired.

Clark's war and his political future ended, but his record of putting his foot in his mouth continued. In 2008, he contended on cable news that the Saudis were behind the Sunni Awakening in Iraq's Anbar Province. Wading back into the political waters, Clark made a tasteless argument about 2008 GOP nominee and war hero John McCain: "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." It earned a rebuke from McCain's rival, Barack Obama, and ensured Clark wouldn't have a role in either the Obama campaign or the Obama administration.

To be fair, generals say uncouth things all the time; they shill for dubious military contractors all the time; and they're all open to charges of outsized ambition. Many of the criticisms Clark faced for being an egghead were also directed at David Petraeus. But unlike Petraeus, Clark didn't attract a lot of love from his soldiers. The late military gadfly David Hackworth described Clark as a "Perfumed Prince," who "never paid his dues with the troops in the trenches and doesn't understand the nitty-gritty of war or what motivates warriors down at the bayonet level." Although, as Danger Room friend and Afghanistan veteran Richard Allen Smith points out, Clark did win the Silver Star in Vietnam for ordering his men to complete a counterattack after he had been shot four times by an AK-47.

Clark doesn't have too many military protégés, a rarity for a senior general. A notable exception is Peter Chiarelli, who recently retired as the Army's vice chief of staff. Among the things Chiarelli learned from Clark was "how not to handle himself," according to Greg Jaffe and David Cloud's book on generalship, The Fourth Star, which describes Clark as a "brusque, highly intelligent man who had made lots of enemies during his long Army career."

Clark may not have been the greatest leader of men. Now he'll have a chance to be the next best thing: a leader of reality-TV media mutants.

 

[Armand2REP]

MIG-23 was downed due to engine flame out..

More likely due to the bullets that hit the fuselage.

 

[Cliff@sea]

Disturbing Video : Wahhabi supported Free Syrian Army beheading a Man as they Laugh

[video]http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=244_1344796488[/video]

 

[pmaitra]

I don't even want to see it.

Well, I guess it is beyond doubt that this is all about Wahhabi barbarism, not freedom.

 

[Cliff@sea]

I don't even want to see it.

Well, I guess it is beyond doubt that this is all about Wahhabi barbarism, not freedom.

Yes . . .May be its better if you don't. . .I broke down after seeing it . . .
Have'nt seen anything worse in My Life and I mean seriously

This is the Glimpse of Things to come in Syria if (God Forbid) the Rebels Take over . . .

First it will be Assad Supporters , then the Alawis/Shias then Christians and so on

 

[IBSA]

I saw the video. Amazing!!!

It drew my attention the FSA killers shouting Allah Akbar after the beheading. They kill a man and gives thanks to God.

God: the best friend of the assassins.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Disturbing Video : Wahhabi supported Free Syrian Army beheading a Man as they Laugh

[video]http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=244_1344796488[/video]

Poor guy was sacred, worst way of beheading..

Few days back saw the similar action of captured soldiers....


Similar way of killing of ISAF men in Astan..

 

[Kunal Biswas]

More likely due to the bullets that hit the fuselage.

This bird was flying above the effective range of 14.7mm ..

Even a FSA told it was downed due to technical fault..

 

[pmaitra]

Syrian rebels accused of war crimes

Experts complain that the rebels have violated the rules set out in the Geneva Convention to protect prisoners of war. "We are telling the Syria opposition that the Geneva Conventions covers them as organised armed groups and they will be held responsible for what they do and what they fail to prevent," said Kristyan Benedict, a Syria specialist for Amnesty International. "We have seen video of people being executed with machineguns – clearly that's a war crime."
[HR][/HR]
At the biggest detention facility north of Aleppo, more than 120 men are being held in a girls' secondary school where the fledgling authorities claim that they will be tried before Islamic courts.
[HR][/HR]
Anna Neistat, a researcher who has interviewed the captives and the rebels-turned-jailers, said that an entirely new form of justice, heavily reliant on Islamic law, was emerging in the area. "They are clear that they are applying Islamic law. The [rebels'] legal representatives mentioned that those that are convicted face fines, imprisonment and lashes," said Miss Neistat, who is working in rebel-held areas of northern Syria. "But they also say that it's a transitional moment and a great deal remains to be worked out."

Source: Syrian rebels accused of war crimes - Telegraph