Local officials in Helmand on Friday said Lashkargah city, the provincial capital, is faced with serious security threats and that they need more reinforcements to secure the southern city.
"It is difficult to defeat the insurgents if more troops are not deployed to the city, because right now the war has intensified in most parts of the city," said Karim Atal, head of Helmand Provincial Council.
A security source told TOLOnews that due to a lack of coordination among Afghan security forces, U.S troops have taken the war leadership in Helmand. However, local officials have rejected the claim.
Meanwhile, a number of displaced families in Helmand said they are facing with an unknown fate.
"The residents who are hosting the displaced families are in trouble. Nearly 10 to 20 families are living in one house. Children are going through difficult times. Believe me, tonight I have not slept even for a single minutes," said Jalat Khan, member of a displaced family in Helmand.
"All people have left. You will not find a home with residents here," said Mir Hamza, another displaced person in the province.
Meanwhile, Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, head of military operations in Helmand said they need only one week to defeat the insurgents in the province.
"As a general, I have assessed the dimensions of the war and the abilities of the enemy. Remember that from now on, I will need only seven days to end the conflicts in Helmand," he stated.
He added: "After this, anyone, any commander and any policeman who leave their position, will be treated based on the law," said Abdul Rahman Saber, head of police operations in Helmand.
[AlAhram] Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has ordered the Rafah border crossing with the Gazoo Strip be opened on Saturday and Sunday as well as from 19 to 22 October, al-Ahram Arabic website reported.
The border crossing will be open on both sides to allow humanitarian cases to cross.
One and a half million Paleostinians living in Gazoo have been under land, air and sea blockade by Israel since 2006.
The border wtih Egypt has been kept closed by Egyptian authorities for several years, although Cairo periodically opens the border for short periods to allow civilians with foreign passports, Paleostinian students and those with medical needs to travel back and forth.
The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), has accused Kaduna State government of committing acts arson, butchery, murder and arbitrary arrest of its members.
The President of IMN Media Forum, Mr. Ibrahim Musa, said in a statement on Thursday that the security operatives unleashed on their members the worst forms of state-sponsored terror tactics ever known, through a well-designed plot involving arson, butchery, murder and unwarranted arrests of IMN members in their states.
You can read their statement at the link. Conveniently forgotten by the IMN is why the Kaduna police are conducting operations in the area.
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Washington, Aden-The latest military developments in Yemen have taken a new path after the U.S. navy hit Houthi radars along the Yemeni coast.
Washington asserted on Thursday its readiness to launch new strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen if they keep attacking U.S. ships facing the country’s shores.
Through its threat, Washington was also indirectly warning Iran, which provides Yemen’s insurgents with weapons.
Speaking during a press conference in Washington, Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook said the U.S. forces knock out three positions, the U.S. thinks had played a role in launching the missiles against USS Mason on Sunday and Wednesday.
“The U.S. will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate,” Cook said.
Earlier, the Pentagon had said that the USS Mason ship had launched a number of missiles at three military positions, controlled by Houthis along the Red Sea shores.
The Pentagon added that the U.S. missiles, authorized by President Barack Obama, hit radar sites in the city of Mukha in the Taiz province, and in Khoka and Ras Isa in the Hudaydah province.
The Pentagon spokesperson said Iran was playing a role in the Yemeni crisis by helping Houthi rebels.
In an earlier warning to Tehran, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said that the U.S. Department of Defense would make sure that anybody who interferes with freedom of navigation or anybody who puts US Navy ships at risk “does so at their own peril.”
Davis added: “It’s no secret that Iran has been actively supplying them and giving them the tools of war.”
Yemeni observers told Asharq Al-Awsat that Iran had provided the rebels with modern missiles capable to hit naval ships in the Yemeni ports.
On Thursday, Yemeni vice-president Lieutenant General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar condemned the attack on the U.S. ship in Bab al-Mandab. During a meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Matthew Tueller, al-Ahmar said: “This terrorist attack reveals the size of the plot that Houthis aim to serve, and which includes threatening neighboring countries and the international community.”
He said that threatening international fleets is an unacceptable violation that will be faced by the Arab Coalition.
Yemeni observers said that the attack on the U.S. navy aims to push Washington into the ongoing war between Houthis and the National Army, which is supported by the Arab Coalition. The observers said that by shoving the U.S. into the war, Houthis plan to assert their claims that Washington was involved in the Yemeni war.
#1
US has NO legitimate allies in the M.E.. Israel is hated by the US Regime and Iran is loved by Valjar and Obie but hated by the American people. Syria has just given Putin a permanent warm water naval base, Tartus, Syria per the following news release, not even covered by the US media.
Президент РФ Владимир Путин подписал закон, ратифицирующий соглашение о размещении российской авиации в Сирии. Об этом сообщили в пресс-службе Кремля. Соглашение о размещении военной авиации в Сирии бессрочное и применяется с момента его подписания. Военную операцию в Сирии Россия проводит с сентября 2015 года. Основные пункты базирования российских военных - авиабаза Хмеймим и пункт материально-технического обеспечения флота в Тартусе, который также станет постоянной военно-морской базой.
#2
"Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law ratifying the agreement on the deployment of Russian aviation in Syria. This was reported in the press-service of the Kremlin. Agreement on the deployment of military aircraft in Syria indefinitely and applied from the time of its signing. Military operations in Syria, Russia is pursuing since September 2015. The main points of the Russian military bases - an air base Hmeymim and paragraph logistics fleet in Tartus, which will also become a permanent naval base."
President Park Geun-hye’s advisory panel on unification policy has proposed a reintroduction of US tactical nuclear weapons and the constant stationing of other advanced strategic assets on the peninsula as deterrence against North Korea’s evolving threats.
In a recent paper, the National Unification Advisory Council made an array of policy suggestions, raising the need to better utilize top-notch US weapons systems such as the F-22 stealth fighter and B-2 nuclear bomber.
On home ground, Seoul should bring forward the establishment of its own Kill Chain and Korea Air and Missile Defense pre-emptive strike schemes, which are currently scheduled for the early 2020s to be used with the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system expected to be deployed here late next year.
#1
In situations like this I think deeply and pull out an old campaign button from '68 the year of the Monkey, I absorb the truthyness from the button and ask myself.... What would Nixon do?
Spanish and Moroccan security authorities Wednesday announced the arrest of four suspected Islamic State group militants in a joint security operation.
Two of the suspects were arrested in Spain by the country’s security forces, the interior ministry announced. The first suspect; a Spaniard of Moroccan origin, was arrested in the city of Gijon.
The second, a Moroccan citizen, was arrested at San Sebastian (Basque country). The two ISIS militants were very active in propaganda activities on social media, the interior ministry said in a statement.
The suspects indulged in promoting the group’s “military victories, social media progress and other deeds.” Besides the promotion of the victories, the two men also promoted the group’s videos acclaiming violent acts, reports further say.
The militant arrested in Gijon established a secured computer network that enabled him to evade police surveillance, the statement stressed. He used virtual telephones, some tools used by IS members to remain anonymous.
The individual arrested in the Basque country has been active in the recruitment of would-be jihadists. He actually recruited new members for the group because he was in contact with uneducated and underprivileged youths who are easy prey for the terrorist group.
The two men nabbed in Morocco were active in the Northern cities of Tetouan and Fnideq, said the Moroccan Interior Ministry in a statement. They are accused of recruiting new fighters for the terrorist group. According to the Moroccan interior ministry, the two militants had close contact with IS fighters operating in Syria and Iraq.
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This is what a Hillary presidency will bring against ordinary people in the U.S. And if you say it couldn't possibly happen here, remember, that's what they said about forcing people to bake cakes for a gay wedding...
A Dutch court on Friday upheld hate speech charges against anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, meaning his trial will now start later this month.
"The court rejects all the defence's objections," judge Hendrik Steenhuis told The Hague district court.
Wilders' lawyers last month urged judges at a preliminary hearing to drop the charges against the far-right leader, slamming it as a "political case" ahead of elections due in March.
But in his ruling, Steenhuis said prosecuting Wilders will "not affect his political freedoms or that of his Freedom Party."
How one can ban his speech and not affect his political freedom, I confess, flummoxes me, but then I'm not a Y'urp-peon judge...
The trial, which will now start on October 31, focuses on comments made at a March 2014 election rally in The Hague, when Wilders asked supporters whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?"
When the crowd shouted back "Fewer! Fewer!" a smiling Wilders answered: "We're going to organise that."
His lawyers argued Wilders had merely "put forward his party's political programme", and insisted he had a fundamental right to freedom of speech. Continuing with the case to trial could have "far reaching political consequences for democracy in the Netherlands," his lawyer had argued.
Judge Steenhuis on Friday said: "Just because... Wilders or his party have not been prosecuted over the last nine years because of their viewpoints about Moroccans... doesn't mean that he won't be prosecuted for any statements about Moroccans now."
Translation: they'll keep prosecuting him until they silence him.
Wilders has remained unrepentant, insisting at his last court appearance that he only said "what millions of Dutch citizens think," and adding he had "no regrets."
He tweeted the same comment on Friday, adding the hashtag "#pleurop," a vulgar Dutch way of telling someone to "go away."
It was a deliberate echo of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who in a recent TV interview made headlines by using the phrase to suggest Dutch citizens of Turkish and Dutch descent who failed to assimilate should return to their countries of origin.
The prosecution of the platinum-haired politician comes as his Freedom Party has been riding high in the polls ahead of the March vote. But the PVV recently lost its lead to Rutte's liberal VVD party.
Wilders's remarks triggered 6,400 complaints, and criticism from within his own party.
The proper way to handle this: if you're not a PVV party member, vote against them, and if you are, vote for someone else to be leader. It's called "democracy", and once upon a time Europe knew how to do that.
Some 56 people and five organisations have registered as victims of the comments and at least 34 witnesses have come forward, judges have said.
The whole point of registering as a "victim" of someone else's speech is odious, anti-democratic, and suicidal to a free society.
Although judges on Friday allowed 40 claims to go ahead, they capped the amount sought as damages at 500 euros, dismissing the 21 other claims.
Wilders is described as the "most heavily-guarded man" in the Netherlands. And since the 2004 assassination of anti-Islam film director Theo van Gogh, he has had around-the-clock protection.
But he has drawn heavy flack recently from fellow MPs after saying he would close all mosques and confiscate Korans -- which he famously compares to Hitler's "Mein Kampf" -- should he win the elections.
If found guilty, Wilders could face up to two years in jail or a fine of more than 20,000 euros ($22,000).
In an earlier 2011 hate trial Wilders was acquitted when judges ruled his remarks targeted a religion and not a specific group of people.
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[AnNahar] Raising tensions with Iraq ahead of the planned U.S.-backed operation by Iraqi troops to retake djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... from Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) jihadists, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... is seeking to have its say over who controls and lives in the city once the gunnies are ousted.
Ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Ottoman Empire, Mosul is considered by mainly Sunni Moslem Turkey to be part of its natural sphere of influence in the Middle East.
Ankara is watching uneasily the potential involvement of Shiite and Kurdish militia in the offensive, insisting that Mosul must keep its Sunni Arab Moslem majority as before IS took over the city from woefully unprepared Iraqi troops in 2014.
Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has in turn reacted angrily to the presence of hundreds of Turkish troops on its territory, ostensibly with the aim of training Iraqi troops to retake the city.
The tensions prompted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... to launch an attack on Iraqi Premier Haider al-Abadi that was venomous even by his sharp standards, telling the Iraqi leader to "know your place" and even saying "you are not at my level."
Not to be outdone, Abadi hit back by mocking Erdogan's appearance on FaceTime to rouse supporters on the night of the failed July 15 coup.
- 'Say in the future' -
Erdogan "is concerned about the future ethnic and sectarian composition of Mosul and its environs, and wants to make sure Kurds and Shiites don't get an upper hand," said Aykan Erdemir of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Turkey has appeared hugely sensitive to any notion it has been left out of the decision-making process ahead of what is likely to be the biggest battle yet in the fight against IS.
According to the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... , the city still has a population of one million. Aid groups have warned hundreds of thousands could flee at the start of the operation.
Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey wanted to take part in the operation but would engage a "plan B or plan C" if it was turned down. He did not expand on the nature of the plans.
"Ankara does not want to be left out of the equation in Iraq. Erdogan is trying to make sure that he has a say in the future of the affairs in Mosul as well as Iraq," said Erdemir.
Erdemir said that after training Sunni militia to prepare for the liberation of Mosul, Ankara feared Baghdad would back Shiite militia as a key element in the planned offensive.
- 'Day after Mosul' -
Turkey is wary of seeing a similar picture emerging as in Syria, where the United States chose a Kurdish militia detested by Ankara as its prime ally on the ground in the fight against IS.
Ankara sees the Syrian People's Protection Units (YPG) as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has fought the Turkish state for decades and has its rear bases in northern Iraq.
"Erdogan is preparing for the day after Mosul," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.
"Ankara realizes that Iraq will be a weak state and they want a zone of influence in northern Iraq to protect Turkey from instability coming from Iraq."
"Ankara wants to prevent the PKK from taking territory, taking advantage of a vacuum after ISIS," he added.
- 'Same mistakes' -
Before the emergence of IS in Iraq, Turkey had major ambitions for Mosul, opening a vast consulate but then finding its entire 49 strong staff was taken hostage by the jihadists in June 2014.
The hostages were later freed in September 2015 amid murky circumstances and, symbolically, the consulate building was destroyed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike in April 2016.
But Burhanettin Duran of the Foundation for Political Economic and Social Research (SETA) said that the United States risked making the same mistakes of poor post-conflict planning that marked its occupation of Iraq.
"The U.S. is on the brink of a new mistake," he said, saying that by siding with the Iraqi government the United States was effectively backing Baghdad's Shiite Iranian allies.
"Omitting Turkey from the Iraqi agenda or placing the country into a secondary position due to the pressure from Iran will not create a new and peaceful Iraq."
#1
Mosul is considered by mainly Sunni Moslem Turkey to be part of its natural sphere of influence in the Middle East.
So much for the idea of sovereign nations that you can consider cities in other nations to be part of your sphere of influence. I assume then that Montreal is within the US sphere of influence. This could open whole new vistas for organizing the plebs and proles.
Investigators believe the Florence woman arrested on charges of terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism was helping her husband, a radicalized member of the Islamic faith who is serving a life prison for first-degree murder, with a plot to murder a warden.
FBI agents arrested Michelle Bastian, 49, Wednesday morning at her workplace, a bakery in Chandler called Urban Oven where she was a bookkeeper. They also served search warrants at her Florence home.
According to court paperwork released Thursday, this investigation goes back to May when "a known source" reported to the Arizona Department of Corrections that Thomas Bastian, Michelle's husband, was a believer in Islam and had become radicalized. In September, the same source told the FBI that Thomas "was planning to create an explosive device in order to kill people, to include the prison warden."
According to court paperwork, the source's information was corroborated by evidence discovered during a search of Thomas' cell In his cell?! Is there no longer incarceration censorship?
including a publication called Inspire, which is put out by al-Qaida, and another called Dabiq, which is distributed by ISIS.
"The objective of these publications is to provide detailed instruction on how to commit acts of terrorism and to praise those that have successfully carried out attacks," the arrested officer wrote. "Located within a stack of detailed handwritten notes on how to construct an explosive device were several pages from an issue of Inspire that contained information on how to construct a bomb out of materials found in "your mothers kitchen."
The mail made it past prison security because it was labeled as "legal mail.'"
Police are investigating threats made against a Dearborn mosque after it was announced online that a building which was previously a Baptist church would now be turned into the New Islamic Institute of America.
After the announcement of the change made by Imam Sayid Hassan Qaz-wini via Facebook, a woman commented a series of threats toward the new mosque.
“I live right there, I seen them working on it, I should blow it up,” said one of the posts made by the woman, who has since been identified as a 26-year-old mother who lives nearby.
The woman’s threats didn’t stop there; she went on to to post two more serious threats toward the mosque:
“Them Arabs, they need to leave America, they are slowly changing everything, it ain’t gunna be America anymore in about a year…bet,” the woman said.
Continuing on with her threats, her last post was the most shocking:
“That Arab church will be burnt down, hopefully there ain’t kids in there” she said.
The woman who made the threats later apologized online, but the threats remain shocking in nature, and possibly criminal.
“When you threaten children, it doesn’t get any lower than that” said Azzam Elder, attorney for the Amity Foundation, which recently purchased the building.
Dearborn police said they’re taking the threats seriously and the woman could face felony charges.
As you read this, let's remember the Rantburg policy about threatening the lives of Americans, any Americans, in the comments. As in, don't do it.
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#1
“When you threaten children, it doesn’t get any lower than that”
Thousands of Iraqi security personnel guarded areas in and around Karbala to protect hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims flocking to the shrine city for annual mourning rituals.
Shia in Iraq have come under frequent attack by Wahhabi terrorists of ISIS who regard them as heretics and who still control some territory in Anbar province, to the west of Karbala, though attacks in the city itself are rare.
Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, is buried in Karbala, and Shia pilgrims pack the city each year for Ashura commemorations, which mark his martyrdom in the 7th century.
"Our forces from the army and local and federal police took strict security measures culminating today to protect pilgrims in and around Karbala," police spokesman Colonel Alaa al-Ghanimi said.
"Forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi have implemented security measures to control areas in the west of Karbala province," Ghanimi said, referring to an umbrella organization for pro-government militiamen.
According to Ghanimi, some 30,000 security personnel are taking part in efforts to guard the city and its surroundings. Ghanimi said there had been no security breaches so far, and while ISIS frequently targets Shia in Baghdad and elsewhere, Karbala is usually much more secure.
The number of pilgrims participating in the Ashura commemorations is expected to be huge, with Karbala deputy governor Ali al-Mayali saying it was expected to reach three million. Some 250,000 pilgrims have arrived over the past two days, Mayali said.
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Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Thursday said “a small holocaust” was taking place in Syria.
He has a point.
Yosef, during an inter-religious meeting with Palestinian Muslim clerics hosted by President Reuven Rivlin, said the world must not be silent in the face of the atrocities taking place in the country that has been consumed by civil war since 2011.
“Every day not far from here, as we sit here, men, women and children are murdered in Syria, and particularly in Aleppo,” Yosef said during the meeting. “Millions of refugees are homeless, hundreds of thousands of others are starved, under siege. They are not our friends, but they are human beings who are suffering a small holocaust.”
Yosef said that Jews in particular, who endured the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million people as “the world looked on and remained silent,” must not do so now.
“As Jews we must not stay silent. The call must be heard from here: A genocide will not be allowed to go by quietly — not in Syria and not anywhere else, and not against any people.”
At the meeting Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders issued a call against religiously inspired violence.
Also attending the conclave at the President’s Residence, hailed as the first of its kind, was Sheikh Mahmoud Habbash, the Palestinian Supreme Sharia Court judge and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Islamic affairs adviser.
“God created life and commanded life. Therefore, we denounce the killing of innocents or any kind of aggression against the other,” said a joint statement released after the meeting.
“We believe the deliberate killing of or attempt to kill innocents is terrorism, whether it is committed by Muslims, Jews or others. In this spirit, we encourage all our people to work for a just peace, mutual respect for human life and for the status quo on the holy sites, and the eradication of religious hatred,” the statement said.
The mayor of Aleppo on Thursday also described the intense bombing campaign by the Syrian and Russian militaries as a “holocaust.” He decried the inaction of the international community to stop the killing in the war-torn city.
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#1
Awesome! Now that's some serious Deep think, I must agree.
#3
Yosef said that Jews in particular, who endured the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million people as “the world looked on and remained silent,” must not do so now.
That's only if you see Holocaust as something exceptional in human history. That is, if you're an historical illiterate. However, if you are an historical illiterate, IMO, you don't have a right to an opinion.
#6
I'm a devotee of the Golden Rule, Shipman. And, if Arabs want to kill each other - more power to them. The way I see it, every Syrian killed is one less AK-47 pointed at my son's head.
The director-general of the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO signaled her dismay and opposition to her organization’s own members on Friday, a day after they adopted a resolution that rejects the historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem.
Though she did not explicitly mention the resolution, Irina Bokova made her disapproval of the motion clear, saying that efforts to deny history and Jerusalem’s complex multi-faith character harm UNESCO.
“The heritage of Jerusalem is indivisible, and each of its communities has a right to the explicit recognition of their history and relationship with the city,” Bokova said in a statement.
Bokova noted that the “cultural and spiritual traditions” of all faiths in Jerusalem “build on texts and references, known by all, that are an intrinsic part of the identities and history of peoples.
“To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list,” she said. “When these divisions carry over into UNESCO, an organization dedicated to dialogue and peace, they prevent us from carrying out our mission.”
It was not immediately clear what steps, if any, Bokova intended to take in light of her statement. The resolution was approved Thursday at UNESCO’s committee stage. It must still be validated by the Executive Board of UNESCO when it meets early next week, but the wording is unlikely to change.
Earlier Friday Israel informed Bokova that it was suspending its cooperation with UNESCO over the vote, with Education Minister Naftali Bennett saying the motion was a denial of history that “gives a boost to terrorism.”
Bennett, who serves as president of Israel’s National Commission for UNESCO, said all meetings with UNESCO officials, participation in international forums and professional cooperation would be suspended until further notice.
UNESCO’s draft resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries, referred to the Temple Mount and Western Wall only by their Muslim names and condemned Israel as “the occupying power” for various actions taken in both places. Israelis and many Jews around the world view the move as the latest example of an ingrained anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.
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#1
The Bulgarian Bokova is a U. of Maryland grad who has done a decent job at UNESCO. She has spent her career fighting anti-Semitism, and she is perfectly aware that the move to politicize Jerusalem will likely mean the end of crucial US funding (which has happened previously) should Trump win the presidency. (
Usual mishmash of comments by officials, all of whom speak off the record on condition of anonymity. Salt required.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet on Friday to consider their military and other options in Syria as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, U.S. officials said.
Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Islamic State, the officials told Reuters.
One set of options includes direct U.S. military action such as air strikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots or radar and anti-aircraft bases, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
This official said one danger of such action is that Russian and Syrian forces are often co-mingled, raising the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia that Obama has been at pains to avoid.
U.S. officials said they consider it unlikely that Obama will order U.S. air strikes on Syrian government targets, and they stressed that he may not make any decisions at the planned meeting of his National Security Council.
One alternative, U.S. officials said, is allowing allies to provide U.S.-vetted rebels with more sophisticated weapons, although not shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which Washington fears could be used against Western airliners.
The White House declined to comment.
The ultimate aim of any new action could be to bolster the battered moderate rebels so they can weather what is now widely seen as the inevitable fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo to the forces of Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It also might temper a sense of betrayal among moderate rebels who feel Obama encouraged their uprising by calling for Assad to go but then abandoned them, failing even to enforce his own "red line" against Syria's use of chemical weapons.
This, in turn, might deter them from migrating to Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front, which the United States regards as Syria's al Qaeda branch. The group in July said it had cut ties to al Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.
The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers will meet in Lausanne, Switzerland on Saturday to resume their failed effort to find a diplomatic solution, possibly joined by their counterparts from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but U.S. officials voiced little hope for success.
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Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad Khatami condemned the Saudi regime for its continued slaughtering of the civilians in Yemen.
Addressing a large and fervent congregation of the people on Tehran University campus on Friday, Ayatollah Khatami said, "The most recent Saudi crime in Yemen was horrendous; the Saudi fighter jets pounded a hall where a funeral ceremony was being held in four airstrikes with 800-kilogram bombs and killed over 400 civilians."
He reiterated that the US is helping the Riyadh government in its aggression against Yemen, and said, "The US drones are helping the Saudi regime round-the-clock."
He wished that the world of Islam would soon see the collapse of the Saudi regime.
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Useful to read what Assad is commenting on publicly. He's almost as much of a lying snake as David Brock...
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says Saudi Arabia had made a pledge to throw support behind him in case the Damascus government broke off all forms of relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“If we were to move away from Iran and announce that we were refusing all relations with Iran, they said they would help me,” Assad said in an exclusive interview with Russian-language tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda released on Friday.
He specified that the offer was made after the start of the conflict in Syria over five years ago.
Well, we see how that went...
The Syrian leader also praised Russian military operations in Syria, stressing that Takfiri terrorists have lost ground as a result of Russia’s military intervention in the conflict-plagued Arab country.
Turning to government forces’ push to drive militants out of Aleppo, Assad highlighted that the recapture of the strategic northwestern city, located some 355 kilometers north of the capital Damascus, will offer the Syrian army a springboard to liberate other parts of the country and send terrorists back to Turkey.
“It's going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now," Assad said.
“You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey to go back to where they come from, or to kill them. There's no other option. But Aleppo is going to be a very important springboard to do this move,” he commented.
Assad went on to say that Turkey's actions in Syria are international law and amount to an invasion.
He also described the ongoing foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria as a conflict between Russia and the West. Assad hoped that Russia could persuade neighboring Turkey to change its policy towards Syria in light of a rapprochement between Moscow and Ankara.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Syrian president drew parallel between Daesh, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) and the so-called Free Syrian Army terrorist groups, stating that they are not different from one another concerning their nature.
“When it (the Free Syrian Army) started to grow and it became impossible to hide the crimes of beheadings, the West was forced to accept the existence of al-Nusra Front. But it is actually the Free Syrian Army. It is Daesh. They have the same roots and move from one area to another,” Assad said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/15/2016 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
President Park Geun-hye’s advisory panel on unification policy has proposed a reintroduction of US tactical nuclear weapons and the constant stationing of other advanced strategic assets on the peninsula as deterrence against North Korea’s evolving threats. 
