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Sergg posted:I dunno how much better those SAA guys would've fared if the FSA had captured that base instead. Would depend on precisly which "FSA" parts. Some should have had a chance of paying ransom, or perhaps even prisoner exchanges. Death would still be most likely I guess though. I am not a fan of the FSA, or of arming it, but they arent quite on that level. If you want historic analogies, compare the civil war in Syria/Iraq with the Great Russian civil war. IS are the Bolsheviks (completelely ruthless revolutionaries), Assad is the white guard (complete ruthless "status quo I stay in power guys"), the Kurds are Nestor Makhno (the least bad guys) and the Shia are the Petljura army (pretty inept, uneasy relationship with their patron/unwanted big brother) and Iran is Pilsudski Poland. I wonder if Iran gets a similiar dynamic towards IS as Civil War Poland had with the Soviets. Pilsudski explicitly didnt want to bring down the Soviet Union, because he (quite reasonably) thought that a communist Soviet Union could not enter into an Anti Polish alliance with a non communist Germany (he underestimated the attraction that Pariahs have on each other, but he propably didnt assume that Germany would stay a Phariah as long as it did). Likewise, Iran has not exactly unjustified fears of encirclement, and IS is so far removed from alliances that they cant really be a part of an Anti Iranian encirclement. The FSA would be an even less powerfull Kerensky gouverment lookalike I guess, they never had govermental powers. This is kind of the lens from which Russia sees it, and propably also why they generally regarded an FSA victory as fantasy.
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Aug 28, 2014 01:37
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All this testing in the media about repositioning towards Assad is grossing me out. Was this the plan all along? Let the Islamists pillage and become demons, then quietly arm the bloodthirsty but tractable Baathist?
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Aug 28, 2014 01:37
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Volkerball posted:To what aim? Assad isn't going to yield an inch of power, and the rebels aren't going to give up without removing the Assad's from the government after everything they've sacrificed. Any attempts at a ceasefire would just be prolonging the inevitable, so I doubt either side would bother. I'm not even saying its a good idea, but I really think the USA will want to at least LOOK like it's getting something out of Assad and I could possibly see "we'll shoot at ISIS, but only as long as you aren't shooting at the FSA" being something like that. Under no delusion that it wouldn't just be prolonging the inevitable, but taking some heat of Assad so he can put even more pressure on the FSA would bring up too much "why are we basically helping him fight the guys we're arming" for a lot of people's tastes, I think.
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Aug 28, 2014 01:59
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I really don't get it. It just seems so bizarre that a group commits all these massive war crimes and just proudly broadcast it to the world and not like, at least try to cover it up like every other dickbag armed organisation in modern history. It's as if the Nazis had posted a big headline every day in the German papers with the "Daily Murdered Jewish Child Count"
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Aug 28, 2014 02:02
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It's pure hubris. They truly believe they have God behind them and, so far, no one seems to want to be the ones to do anything about it. I know things won't end well for ISIS but it's a question of how long away it is and what form their fall will take... not to mention the terrible suffering they inflict in the interim.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:04
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reignonyourparade posted:I'm not even saying its a good idea, but I really think the USA will want to at least LOOK like it's getting something out of Assad and I could possibly see "we'll shoot at ISIS, but only as long as you aren't shooting at the FSA" being something like that. Under no delusion that it wouldn't just be prolonging the inevitable, but taking some heat of Assad so he can put even more pressure on the FSA would bring up too much "why are we basically helping him fight the guys we're arming" for a lot of people's tastes, I think. I get what you're saying. One thing that's interesting is I've been seeing journalists saying that Obama gets disgusted by the implication that he's helping the regime, even inadvertently. That might play a role in how enthusiastically the US attempts to fight ISIS in Syria. That is, assuming they think fighting ISIS would hurt the opposition more than it would Assad, which isn't clear.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:05
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Isn't a lot of ISIS ex-Baathists? I'm wondering if they're just expecting a repeat of last time. Do as much as they can before the west decides to intervene, get kicked out of power, told not to do it again, form Neo-ISIS, rinse, repeat.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:39
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Assad is really just only slightly better than ISIS. It's impressive how some people have already forgotten the charnel house he's turned Syria into, though I imagine a lot of those people were already okay with Assad to begin with.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:43
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Interesting interviews with Alawites in regime held territory starting to lose their poo poo. Not mentioned is how the regime has portrayed the soldiers at Taqba air base as expendable, when 250 of them were the ones who were just executed by ISIS. They're not stupid, and things like this are making it clear Assad doesn't have control of the situation. They also know exactly what the future holds if ISIS pushes into their territory. A lot mentioned things like the Tremseh and Houla massacres the regime committed nearby that they know haven't been forgotten. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/syria-jihadist-threat-homs.html
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Aug 28, 2014 02:55
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SedanChair posted:All this testing in the media about repositioning towards Assad is grossing me out. Was this the plan all along? Let the Islamists pillage and become demons, then quietly arm the bloodthirsty but tractable Baathist? That was Assad's plan.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:02
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Oh God, every time I check in on this thread it seems like everything has gotten worse.Cippalippus posted:It's amazing that all I need to scare the poo poo out of you guys (without even trying or wanting to) is simply to point out some facts which are under everyone's eyes. So, Mohammed being the most common name in England isn't noteworthy, and neither are the statistics on fertility rates of europeans. I'm sure that if you ignore facts for long enough, they just go away. I remember the Texas GOP were freaking out when they read a similar names list and figured out that Jose was the most popular boys name in every state in the Southwest.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:03
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Brown Moses posted:Here's a video which appears to be them being marched into the desert, work safe What kind of monster does this to fellow men? HOLD THE PHONE HORIZONTALLY 
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Aug 28, 2014 04:01
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SedanChair posted:All this testing in the media about repositioning towards Assad is grossing me out. Was this the plan all along? Let the Islamists pillage and become demons, then quietly arm the bloodthirsty but tractable Baathist? The original plan was probably similar to Gaddafi's departure. What you're seeing now is an alternate universe where Gaddafi managed to win.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:35
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I still think some naive people in the State Department thought Putin could/would ask Assad to step aside like Mubarak. But then the Muslim Brotherhood would be calling the shots in both countries, dontcha know?
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Aug 28, 2014 04:41
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drat, CNN just aired a story of ISIS carbomb victims in Kirkuk. Dem feels  Little girl with a mangled face, barely conscious engineering student covered in sutures, his voice all messed up due to neck injuries. 
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Aug 28, 2014 05:11
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Sergg posted:drat, CNN just aired a story of ISIS carbomb victims in Kirkuk. Dem feels Only way to get CNN to cover hard foreign news is to get Obama to order air strikes on to watch on weekends.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:14
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SedanChair posted:Was this the plan all along? Let the Islamists pillage and become demons, then quietly arm the bloodthirsty but tractable Baathist? What is this, 1979? it's going to go down like this isn't it
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Aug 28, 2014 05:15
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FAUXTON posted:What is this, 1979? Don't worry, if that does happen then a decade down the line we'll stab him in the back in one of the annual American international interventions in/on/around things we don't like the look of and replace him with a biddable Western-friendly face to only light comment within Syria and it will all go perfectly according to plan. Perfectly.
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Aug 28, 2014 06:33
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FAUXTON posted:What is this, 1979? Plan? We don't need no stinkin' plans. All we need are interests, sometimes you listen to one, other times you ignore them completely while they run off to their own race. Assad has no long-term plans; he has a very coherent and highly motivating long-term objective which he enacts through short-term policy decisions. Assad cares about 3 things: the survival of Assad, the survival of the Assad family, and the survival of minority power in Syria. If he surrenders any of those three things, none of those three will survive in the territory now known as Syria.
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Aug 28, 2014 06:37
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Sergg posted:That was Assad's plan. So the entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States got gamed by a lisping ophthalmologist with his triangle ferret face. Splendid!
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Aug 28, 2014 07:44
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SedanChair posted:So the entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States got gamed by a lisping ophthalmologist with his triangle ferret face. Splendid! This sounds so stupid it's almost believable!!!
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Aug 28, 2014 08:46
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:I really don't get it. It just seems so bizarre that a group commits all these massive war crimes and just proudly broadcast it to the world and not like, at least try to cover it up like every other dickbag armed organisation in modern history. I thought a lot of that was PR, mostly to recruit foreigners, showing them that ISIS is a 'strong' and 'feared' organisation. I've only seen a handful of interviews with foreigners who've joined ISIS but all of them seem them seem to show similar portraits of people who feel powerless in someway or looking for some meaning in their life. If you look at Neo-Nazi groups you see a similar pattern. You get a whole bunch of young gently caress ups joining these violent groups as they see the groups as a symbol of strength, and feel by joining they will no longer be just some random gently caress up, but they'll be someone who's working for something bigger than themselves, but also they'll be someone with 'real power', as shown by the violent acts the group encourages them to committee, or sometimes just be part of. So yeah as what any reasonable person would see as an horrific meaningless ending of life, the people they are looking to recruit would probably see as a display of power. Also seriously who cares about war crimes after the fact, outside the country they happened in? The media forgets in a couple of month and the few foreigner fighters who aren't killed will probably just bugger off to some other warzone when things go south. You often hear about the well known leaders of countries getting chased around for decades after but if your just some random ISIS gently caress up the likely hood of you seeing the inside of the Hague is unfortunately pretty much 0. If the Iraqi Army or the Kurds are actually taking any ISIS prisoners (heard a lot of news stories saying how many ISIS they've killed, don't think I've read a single one mention prisoners taken) pretty sure if they bothered with a trial there's more would be more than enough evidence to convict with out even using official ISIS statements. So yeah I guess from ISIS's point of view no real down side and plus helps with recruiting.
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Aug 28, 2014 11:09
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Save the Children UK had 250,000 polio vaccines expire on them. Here's there response to the controversy, as well as the counter-response by the journalist who broke the story. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/aug/27/polio-syria-save-children-responds/ And here's an album of 100+ pictures showing some of the vaccines. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mjapmi9nevbwh1m/AADJr_Aq1tyPzjjSxg3r4jQka#/ There's a box in the middle of the blue circle. Polio vaccines degrade in stages, and the condition of the white box determines what stage the vaccine is in. Solid white is Stage 1, the edges of the box turning dark while the middle remains white is Stage 2, and the box being fully dark is Stage 3, which is unusable.
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Aug 28, 2014 12:25
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This video appears to show the bodies of the 200 soldiers the Islamic State executed. Jobar, Damascus, is also getting hammered this morning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q13REYErH4 There were reports of an opposition attack on a military barracks that killed dozens, and this appears to be in response. Perhaps a pre-planned operation moved up in the schedule in reaction to the earlier attacks.
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Aug 28, 2014 13:16
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reignonyourparade posted:I'm not even saying its a good idea, but I really think the USA will want to at least LOOK like it's getting something out of Assad and I could possibly see "we'll shoot at ISIS, but only as long as you aren't shooting at the FSA" being something like that. Under no delusion that it wouldn't just be prolonging the inevitable, but taking some heat of Assad so he can put even more pressure on the FSA would bring up too much "why are we basically helping him fight the guys we're arming" for a lot of people's tastes, I think. I think Assad would prefer to keep ISIS around because by default he can get away with chemical weapons and other atrocities against all of his enemies carte blanche for as long as the US is more concerned about ISIS.
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Aug 28, 2014 13:35
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If anyone fancies investigating a war crime we're looking at the Tabqa executions on Checkdesk, so come join us.
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Aug 28, 2014 14:03
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Brown Moses posted:This video appears to show the bodies of the 200 soldiers the Islamic State executed. There's the photographic evidence, not that anyone doubted claims they'd been executed. Ugh Brown Moses posted:If anyone fancies investigating a war crime we're looking at the Tabqa executions on Checkdesk, so come join us. right on, will be looking. so they were executed at a brick factory and buried nearby. Presumably between Taqba and Raqaa swizz fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 14:04
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Brown Moses posted:This video appears to show the bodies of the 200 soldiers the Islamic State executed. This is perhaps naive, but has any other group ever been so excited to document its own war crimes?
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Aug 28, 2014 14:56
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TheOtherContraGuy posted:This is perhaps naive, but has any other group ever been so excited to document its own war crimes? The Khmer Rouge photographed all the people they marked for execution for record keeping (Assad does this too) - ISIL just likes to post things on facebook.
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Aug 28, 2014 15:06
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TheOtherContraGuy posted:This is perhaps naive, but has any other group ever been so excited to document its own war crimes? The Assyrians. They practically boasted about the gruesome things they did to their enemies to destroy them and terrify them into obedience. In the age before internet and mass media though, but monuments and tablets do boast of how this and that king pierced the cheeks of his enemies, burned them alive in small cages, cut of their fingers, noses, ears and genitalia and other frightful stuff.
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Aug 28, 2014 15:13
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Welp nothing like an ISIS video to make me feel sympathetic towards the people gassing kids. Why'd they even surrender? Surely that's a fight past the last bullet situation if anything is?
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Aug 28, 2014 15:21
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TheOtherContraGuy posted:This is perhaps naive, but has any other group ever been so excited to document its own war crimes? When the Bosnian-Serb forces began occupying and cleansing cities, they had cameras that moved freely about to document how they rounded up Bosniaks and shots of trucks upon trucks being loaded up with bodies. Course they got wise that this was a pretty stupid idea. Serbian paramilitaries however massacred civilians both in Bosnia and Croatia with the express purpose to induce fears. And Radovan Karadizch was still happy to be quoted "Sarajevans will not be counting the dead, they will be counting the living." *whoops Freudian slip* 54.4 crowns fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 15:38
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Brown Moses posted:If anyone fancies investigating a war crime we're looking at the Tabqa executions on Checkdesk, so come join us. Your site is directing people to videos documenting the event, but they are hosted on Youtube, and Youtube will almost certainly pull them down if they become aware of their existence. Do you have any plans in place for reliable video hosting that you control for the various investigative activities you intend to facilitate? You really should set up a dedicated repository where people can place any kind of potential evidence that is discovered.
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Aug 28, 2014 15:42
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SedanChair posted:So the entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States got gamed by a lisping ophthalmologist with his triangle ferret face. Splendid! Rand Paul?
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Aug 28, 2014 15:53
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XK posted:Your site is directing people to videos documenting the event, but they are hosted on Youtube, and Youtube will almost certainly pull them down if they become aware of their existence. Do you have any plans in place for reliable video hosting that you control for the various investigative activities you intend to facilitate? You really should set up a dedicated repository where people can place any kind of potential evidence that is discovered. I back them up myself, YouTube are actually pretty good about not pulling down the videos I reupload because they know who I am. It would be nice to have somewhere to store them online though.
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Aug 28, 2014 15:56
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28972436 Syria conflict: UN peacekeepers held in Golan Heights quote:Forty-three UN peacekeepers are being held by an "armed group" in the Syrian Golan Heights, a UN spokesperson says.
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Aug 28, 2014 16:07
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Randarkman posted:The Assyrians. They practically boasted about the gruesome things they did to their enemies to destroy them and terrify them into obedience. In the age before internet and mass media though, but monuments and tablets do boast of how this and that king pierced the cheeks of his enemies, burned them alive in small cages, cut of their fingers, noses, ears and genitalia and other frightful stuff. The Assyrians are kind of funny in just how out of the place they were even in pre-classical history. If they were born a few thousand of years later they would've loved to live in modern day Syria and Iraq!
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Aug 28, 2014 16:21
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I don't really know much about the Assyrians. Inform me, Middle East Thread.
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Aug 28, 2014 16:35
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Radio Prune posted:I don't really know much about the Assyrians. Inform me, Middle East Thread. Basically they were the most hated civilization back in the day. Basically the Boltons with wicked siege towers.  If I remember correctly there was an alliance of several powers that eventually led to their demise, and its citizen had to face poo poo ton of retribution.
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Aug 28, 2014 16:44
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Radio Prune posted:I don't really know much about the Assyrians. Inform me, Middle East Thread. They were an ancient civ based out of Assur and Nineveh in what is now northern Iraq. They were an very militaristic state, and pioneered a lot of ancient siege warfare and logistical tactics, so that they could field an army year-round if needed to extract tribute from their neighbors. If their neighbors gave up the tribute without a fight, they got to provide labor and resources to the empire, if they resisted or rebelled they would be massacred/mass tortured and then the survivors would be relocated elsewhere in the empire, with new peoples moved in. They liked to advertise what they did in monuments all over the empire, just to remind people how they rolled. They were around for a long time (~1200 years or so) with an Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian, and "New" Assyrian kingdoms. A Persian/Medean/Babylonian alliance ended up erasing their cities from the map after a couple of attempts at trying.
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Aug 28, 2014 16:47
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