Of Sultans, Muscovites and "no fly zones"

 

"Washington is urging Ankara to seal off a 100-kilometer stretch of borderline with Syria currently used by Islamic State for transportation of fighters and supplies into the Syrian war zone. The Turkish Army would need an estimated 30,000 personnel to do this.

The Obama administration is urging Turkey to ensure Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria receives no supplies through the Turkish border, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources in Washington. The request involves sealing off part of the frontier between the western Turkish town of Kilis and Jarabulus in eastern Syrian.

“The game has changed. Enough is enough! The border needs to be sealed,” the WSJ cited a senior Obama administration official as saying in a message from the US government to Turkey. “This is an international threat, and it’s all coming out of Syria and it’s coming through Turkish territory.”

The US has called particular attention to a small part of the border between Jarabulus and Cobanbey, which is being used extensively by IS to transfer munitions and other supplies from Turkey to Syria, and foreign fighters in both directions."  RT quoting heavily the WSJ

https://www.rt.com/news/323825-us-turkey-syrian-border/

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Did we really not know that Sultan Tayyip  (Someone should do his tughra) is the most effective secret ally of the Baghdadi Caliphate?

"All the world wonders..." and rightly so. 

Well pilgrims, I still remember quite a lot of the capabilities of US reconnaissance and there can have been little doubt of Turkey's trafficking with the enemy.  Little doubt.  This is probably yet another case of  the Obamanites simply ignoring reality if it conflicts with their group think R2P nonsense.  They would much rather concentrate on extracting agreement from some town to a DoJ consent agreement about the injustices wrought upon people of color.  They will not, of course, try that with Chicago.  Obama wants continuing access to the money in the pockets of Rahm Emmanuel's friends.

My guess is that Sultan Tayyip will smile and nod and promise and do the opposite of what he says.  He is playing what someone here who was familiar with the Raj called the "fooling the sahib" game.  pl

***********

"As CJTF-OIR reported on Friday, the US-led coalition had made no sorties against targets in Syria bsince Thursday, while airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq continued, with the coalition making 18 strikes on terrorist positions.

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber, which had been bombing IS positions. Moscow says the bomber was in Syrian airspace which the F-16 violated, while Turkey claims the Russian jet crossed the Turkish border and was repeatedly warned before the attack.

Both the pilot and the navigator of the Su-24 ejected. The pilot was killed by a militant group while parachuting to the ground, while the rescue operation for the Russian navigator was successful to a certain extent: a Marine died providing covering fire in the rescue team drop zone and a helicopter was lost after it was hit with an American-made anti-tank TOW missile the terrorists are armed with.

After the incident, Russia’s Joint Staff took the decision to enhance air defenses at the Khmeimim airbase south of the Syrian port of Latakia.

The following day, on November 25, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced the immediate deployment of S-400 misslies to Syria.

S-400 Triumph system missile launchers were airlifted to Syria by Antonov An-124 Ruslan super-jumbo aircraft 24 hours after the decision was announced on Wednesday."  RT

https://www.rt.com/news/323815-syria-s-400-us-airstrikes/

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this sounds like there now IS a no-fly zone in Syria.  pl 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tughra

 

Comments

[greg0]

Certainly looks like Erdogan has overplayed his hand. Will the Kurds take advantage of a reduction in Turkish air attacks?

[bth]

Col. there is also news today of this political assassination in Turkey of a human rights activist and lawyer for Kurds. http://www.todayszaman.com/national_diyarbakir-bar-association-president-killed_405573.html
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/video-the-moment-of-armed-clash-which-killed-diyarbakir-bar-association-head.aspx?pageID=238&nID=91805&NewsCatID=509
Lawyer Tahir Elçi, the president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association and a leading Kurdish rights activist, was killed during a shootout in the southeastern province which erupted as he was making a statement to the press.

[mbrenner]

LTG Flynn of the DIA, in his under-reported interview a while back, explained that his assessments of the emerging ISIL threat were ignored - and then rejected - because "it did not fit the White House's narrative." It would be worthwhile trying our hand at explicating that "narrative" since it still prevails.

By the way, it is noteworthy that no MSM followed up on this stunning revelation by as much as asking Earnest what's going on

[ISL]

Dear Colonel,

Likely non-coincidentally, the US is following German lead and removing Patriot batteries from Turkey to stateside for "upgrades." Clearly, some in the Pentagon are acting responsibly.

[DC]

Something must be done to control Tayyip/Turkey -- but if Tayyip is intent on controlling Syria for the long term, is the long-term cost of preventing Turkey from doing so worth it? What we would be talking about is either occupying a very dangerous territory for a long time, or propping up Assad so that he can do it again. Neither option (unless there are more options) seems like a good one, but fueling Assad seems better than the first.

Distancing ourselves from Turkey, removing military commitments there, and helping Europe to seal the borders, might be a co-existent third way of attacking the problem without committing a large number of troops to this long-term mess.

[bth]

My understanding is that the removal of the Patriot missile batteries had been planned for months and occurred in October I think related to software upgrades/hacks. Also the Chinese anti-missile system was canceled by Turkey recently. So really I don't see a great progression of events within Nato or Turkey for that matter leading up to the shoot down.

Also LTG Flynns departure and comments were widely discussed on this blog when it happened.

[turcopolier]

DC

"so that he can do it again" Are you sure that you really know what he did or has done? Pretty much all the information in the Borgist media is provided by Syrian government opponents. I am struck by the assertion in the Borg that if Assad were to run for president he would be defeated. If they are sure that is so, then why not let him run and be discredited. pl

[b]

"was killed during a shootout" like those people in that white Christian terror attack on the planned parenthood clinic?

Tahir Elçi was assassinated and the shootout only followed that attack. Unless of course you believe what Erdogan's propaganda puts out.

/quote/
Doğan News Agency quoted eye witnesses a saying that one bearded man fired at Elçi, ...
/endquote/
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bar-association-head-of-turkeys-diyarbakir-two-policemen-killed-in-gun-attack.aspx?pageID=238&nID=91802&NewsCatID=509

[turcopolier]

b

"like those people in that white Christian terror attack on the planned parenthood clinic?" Never miss a chance, do you? I recognize the face of schizophrenia. Do you think there are more Christian schizophrenics than in other groups? In the end it comes down to the Goat Boy Prophet's desire to disarm white people in the US. That could happen... Not. pl

[b]

The IS threat was not "ignored". Obama actively used it for regime change in Iraq. He admitted as much in an interview with Tom Friedman

/quote/
The reason, the president added, “that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.”
/endquote/

So Ramadi had to fall to IS because Obama wanted Maliki out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html?_r=0

As M K Bhadrakumar writes - regime change has precedence over IS:
/quote/
Just think of it: IS has killed American nationals and yet the Pentagon has been ordered to handle the IS with kid gloves! President Barack Obama waxes eloquently about his determination to “degrade and destroy” the IS, but the Pentagon is under instructions not to disrupt the IS’ oil trade! This is cold-blooded statecraft. Obama probably knows all about the Turkish elite’s flourishing business, but then, he has uses for Erdogan, too. Simply put, the regime change agenda in Syria got precedence over cutting off the IS’s funding sources.
/endquote/
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/11/28/us-connived-with-islamic-states-oil-trade/

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

Clearly no one is left in government of the caliber of the correspondents here. The shot down of the bomber was a planned ambush that Russia did not foresee. I am sure Recep Tayyip Erdogan hears what he wants to hear but now expresses sadness over the incident. No doubt because, yes, a no fly zone over Syria has been established for Turkey. SNAFUs are the nature of war. The underlying danger of the war escalating remains. Only Pope Francis is seeking peace.

At the heart of the problem are the Sunni Arabs. Years of war have left only the True Believers on the battlefield but there are a billion half Sunnis across the world. A 7th century Sharia state is being built in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile globalists are intent on dismantling the democratic states, making more war profits, destabilizing Russia and surrounding Israel with chaos. Inevitably millions more will be killed in the Christian Sunni Shiite Holy War if not ended. The West should join the world and build strong secular states governed by the rule of law regardless of one’s religion. Or, if unacceptable to ruling oligarchs, at least, they should stop expanding the dead zone and quarantine radical Islam with strong borders; lest being collateral damage forces the people to re-seize control of the government.

[b]

My beef is with the media reporting of that attack yesterday and the "killed in a shootout" bullshit. Sorry if that did not come through.

The early reports in the NYT and other media were completely agent-less. No one was responsible. Just a shoot out. Shit happens. That such attacks on abortion clinics have a history and a certain backing in some fundamentalist Christian and Republican circles was totally left out.

Likewise the "shoot out" that killed the Kurdish lawyer.

That there are crazies in every groups is obvious. What I find disgusting is that deeds of some crazies are reflected on that persons group while the deeds of other crazies are seen as completely independent of that persons group.

Are there calls for all Christians/Whites to publicly condemn the PP attack like the regular calls on all Muslims/Blacks to publicly condemn every deed some random Muslim/Black crazy does?

[b]

This book could be helpful to get some perspective on Assad

Prof. Tim Anderson "The Dirty War on Syria"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-war-on-syria/5491859#

[The Beaver]

In the meantime, killings are up as far as dead Kurds are concerned :

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34952954

As far as the involvement of "unidentified gunmen", same excuses as when bombing happened before the elections - put it down to terrorism and same thing today.

I guess it must be the same as the murder of three Kurdish women activists - including a co-founder of the militant nationalist PKK - who were found dead with gunshot wounds in a Kurdish information centre in Paris in January 2013.
This past summer , "French investigators have found that Turkey's secret services were probably involved" in the murder"

http://www.english.rfi.fr/europe/20150723-french-inquiry-implicates-turkish-secret-services-paris-kurds-murder

[Casowary]

I recognize the "face of schizophrenia" as well. I guess "b" had to throw that in
there even if it's tangential at best; must have been referring to those shot as collateral damage who just happened to be there.
Schizophrenics of the paranoid variety are drawn to the nuttier forms of Christianity, as they are to other far out belief systems that offer them a "unified field theory" on how the world works.

[turcopolier]

b

It seems to me that it would be useful to us hard pressed committeemen if you would give us some idea of the content of the book. pl

[DC]

Sir -- what I meant was, so he can control the territory again, and we would leave him be. I mean, he received 100% of the votes in elections for many years, so he must have been doing something right!

[C Webb]

Book review
http://www.sott.net/article/305835-Tim-Anderson-author-of-The-Dirty-War-on-Syria-explains-western-imperialist-venture-in-Syria-is-NOT-a-civil-war

Tim Anderson (Sydney Australia)
http://lorikeet.and.com.au/t2/t2.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_Hotel_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananda_Marga

mad stuff altogether

[Alexey]

As far as I understood from twitter today generals who detained convoy with weapons for Syria previously were arrested today in Turkey.

[Bill Herschel]

What happens if Turkey invades Syria? Turkish troops cross the border to seize a "safe area" for [fill in the blank] and to stop violations of its territory by Syrian troops.

Shooting down the Russian Su-24 would then be a trial balloon.

Seeing that Syrian government troops can do no right, and NATO members can do no wrong, President Obama would certainly council restraint if Turkey invaded.

The question can be refined.

Do Russian jets bomb Turkish troops invading Syria?

And, finally, is there any other way than a Turkish invasion for President Obama to prevent victory by the Syrian Army and the extermination of ISIS?

[Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg]

I'm astonished at how fast things are moving in an accelerating downward spiral. Putin keeps making efforts to bond with other European and American leaders over the terrorist issue, but provacateurs like the neocons, the Gulf States and the Turkish regime keep instigating things.

[Farmer Don]

More info on the group that shot the pilot:

http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/11/syrian-rebels-waiting-on-ground-to-kill.html

[mbrenner]

That was well into 2014. Flynn, and I, were referring to circa 2012. Also, Brennan has claimed that the CIA was on to ISIL by late 2011 but doesn't explain how that tallies with Obama stating in April 2014 that ISIl was an al-Qaeda junior varsity.

[Chris Chuba]

Who says that it would take 30,000 Turkish soldiers to seal the border? I'd love to see the source of that estimate. The Turks were able to seal off Kobani for months from Kurdish reinforcements when they wanted to. In any case, 60 mi / 30k = 2k soldiers per mile which is a very lavish budget.

Realistically, you can first cut of the handful of roads with a small number of troops and that would create a huge deficit right away. The rest of the 100k border is going to be a combination of easy to navigate vs very hard to navigate terrain. You can concentrate on securing the easy to navigate terrain. If smugglers still use the hard to navigate terrain then you will end up reducing the capacity by a huge amount.

I read one of David Glantz's books on the Eastern Front during WW2 and one of the first lessons that the Red Army had to learn was NOT to spread out their defensive firepower (especially anti-tank guns) evenly across the entire line of defense but to anticipate the likely avenues of attack based on terrain and concentrate them there. It almost sounds like the Turks are trying to find an excuse here, 30k troops is almost 10% of their standing army. It doesn't sound right but if anyone has any thoughts on this matter I'd be curious to hear about it.

[Mark Logan]

All,

The model I have for Obama is Presider in Chief. He feels the machine can't be driven by him. Instead he must, when he does beg to differ with it, limit himself to subtle guidance. "Don't make any sudden moves" was his motto. I see perhaps a bit of reverse psychology in his Unicorn Army management, but I admit it may be wishful thinking on my part. Perhaps he is uncertain of being significantly more intelligent than the machine, promoting people too fast is frequently a tragic story.

IOW, IMO it's not beyond hoping the Borg can change its collective mind on a specific issue, albeit very very slowly and never absolutely. There will of course be a few stray bots all but impossible to shut up yapping on to infinity, and since The Borg will never ever admitting to having changed it's mind, they will be the only things talking. Admitting fallibility is deemed self-immolation by the political scientists of today, who either wrote a lot of the code or are written by it. Actions and deliberate loopholes left in rhetoric will be the only indications.

Erdo expressed regret for shooting down that plane? Like to have been a fly on the wall of NATO's woodshed this week.