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Russia Arms Su-34s with Air-to-Air Missiles in Syria for First Time
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
4 15:34 borgboy [2] 
3 22:27 JosephMendiola [3] 
26 22:41 JosephMendiola [1] 
1 09:50 JohnQC [3] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
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1 16:41 Skidmark [3]
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2 16:33 Shipman []
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11 22:33 JosephMendiola [7]
4 11:41 trailing wife [5]
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4 12:13 regular joe [5]
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4 10:55 g(r)omgoru [4]
7 14:48 rjschwarz [6]
Page 2: WoT Background
5 21:15 Frank G [1]
6 16:47 Shipman [4]
1 17:35 swksvolFF [2]
1 08:46 Pappy [2]
4 17:03 Shipman [4]
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1 16:46 Skidmark [1]
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1 16:40 Skidmark [6]
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2 09:05 Procopius2k [2]
1 16:50 Skidmark [9]
Page 3: Non-WoT
10 19:50 JosephMendiola [4]
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Page 6: Politix
10 19:59 JosephMendiola [4]
1 11:40 Ebbang Uluque6305 [2]
-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Academic job opportunity opening soon
[Fox] A chapel sermon on love left a student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University feeling “offended” and “victimized.”

But instead of capitulating to the offended young scholar, OWU President Everett Piper pushed back with a blistering rebuke of what he called “self-absorbed and narcissistic” students.
Posted by: Skidmark || 12/01/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Dr. Piper made some great points and there is a a fair amount of narcissistic, self-absorbed behavior in universities today. However, there are also a fair number of students who contribute to society and the country and do think of others, quite often before themselves.
Posted by: JohnQC || 12/01/2015 9:50 Comments || Top||


Europe
Syrians are a Terror Threat, Here are the Numbers
[SultanKnish] Syria is a terror state. It didn't become that way overnight because of the Arab Spring or the Iraq War.

Its people are not the victims of American foreign policy, Islamic militancy or any of the other fashionable excuses. They supported Islamic terrorism. Millions of them still do.

They are not the Jews fleeing a Nazi Holocaust. They are the Nazis trying to relocate from a bombed out Berlin.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 01:13 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This article includes an opinion poll of Syrian refugees. the numbers are truly frightening.

Al
Posted by: frozen al || 12/01/2015 12:23 Comments || Top||

#2  the numbers are truly frightening.

Especially, if you remember taquia.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 12:54 Comments || Top||

#3  FYI ION "NUMBERS" NEWS ... ...

* TOPIX > [CNS] REPORT: 71 ARRESTED IN US ON "ISIS-RELATED CHARGES" - 56 IN 2015 ALONE.

* SAME > [Daily Caller] DOZENS OF ISLAMIC STATE SUSPECTS WARRANT 24/7 FBI SURVEILLANCE.

48 OF THE "MOST SERIOUS" SUSPECTS OF AN ESTIMATED 1000 IN THE US ARE BEING EXTENSIVELY OR ROUTINELY MONITORED.

* Also from DAILY CALLER = ...
> [GW University Report] REPORT: ISIS RECRUITMENT AND RADICALIZATION IS BOOMING IN THE US.
> ISIS TERROR CELL PLANNING TO TAKE OUT THE POPE JUST GOT BUSTED, by Italian + Kosovan authorities.

* TOPIX > [The Day] "HORDES OF MUSLIMS" ARE INVADING GERMANY.

Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/01/2015 22:27 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Former Military Intel Chief: Iraq War Was A 'Failure' That Helped Create ISIS
[Huffpoo] Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, former U.S. special forces commander in Iraq and Afghanistan who was the country's highest ranking military intelligence official, says that the George W. Bush administration's Iraq war was a tremendous blunder that helped to create the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS.

"It was a huge error," Flynn said about the Iraq war in a detailed interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel published Sunday.

"As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him," Flynn went on to say. "The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision."

When told by Der Spiegel reporters Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark that the Islamic State would not "be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad," Flynn, without reservations, said: "Yes, absolutely."
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/01/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Islamic State

#1  Abandoning the battlefield to the enemy was the main factor in the rise of ISIS. Whomever is supporting them knew American pols did not have the stomach for the kind of fight ISIS would bring.

Neither did their supporters/paymasters.
Posted by: badanov || 12/01/2015 0:26 Comments || Top||

#2  Lets be specific...Maliki created the conditions for ISIS birth by provoking the Ahl al Sunna. He was enabled by the deliberate indifference of President Obama when Obama first signaled his weakness by caving to Maliki on the detainee Daqduq issue. Sensing this weakness Maliki followed up by telling Obama that he was going to arrest the Sunni VP and his body guards... Pissed off the Sunni and Maliki reaped the consequences...
Posted by: Tennessee || 12/01/2015 1:12 Comments || Top||

#3  See also WORLD NEWS > OBAMA ADMMINISTRATION'S GUN-RUNNING WAS ARMING ISIS.

Artic read = the "Fast-N-Furious", etc. smuggling schemes NOT starring Vin Diesel or Michelle Rodriquez + Friends.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/01/2015 1:17 Comments || Top||

#4  Better late than never.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 1:26 Comments || Top||

#5  LtGen Flynn NEVER commanded ANY SF units. He was NOT SF. He was intel and his last job was HMFIC at DIA.

Maybe it's just me but when journos fail at biography 101, I tend to dismiss what follows.

I do like the muslims killing muslims angle though.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy || 12/01/2015 7:32 Comments || Top||

#6  GWBs main mistake was thinking he could build Switzerland in the Muzzie world.

The shampoo strategy needed a try out.....lather, rinse repeat as necessary.
Posted by: AlanC || 12/01/2015 7:58 Comments || Top||

#7  Quibble point: the conclusion of the Iraq war, etc.
Adequate start, poor follow through.
Posted by: ed in texas || 12/01/2015 8:15 Comments || Top||

#8  "As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him," Flynn went on to say. "The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision."

System administrators and bureaucrats always value stability above all else.
Posted by: Pappy || 12/01/2015 8:57 Comments || Top||

#9  Gee, things were peachy keen when Obama and Biden were crowing about the success before pulling everything out. See - rewriting history. The Instaprof has a series making sure that record doesn't go down the memory hole.

BTW, IIRC the historian AJP Taylor blamed the US for WWII cause we didn't hang around, join the League of Nations, etc at the end of WWI. Just another version of that gambit.

Remember we sat on the Germans and Japanese many years afterward and had to deal with Soviet subversion at the same time. Someone this time didn't have the patience.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 12/01/2015 9:03 Comments || Top||

#10  A similar thing happened in Yugoslavia. Dictator kept the tribes from killing each other. Remove the dictator and tribes resume centuries old conflict.

W's Democracy idea was noble and assumed the best of a people who proved lacking.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 12/01/2015 10:54 Comments || Top||

#11  I wanted to believe that Bush was right. Back then I wanted to believe in something. I still do. I still think maybe it was right to kill Saddam because he took a shot at Bush Sr. and tin pot dictators the world over need to know that taking a shot at POTUS will get them killed. Besides, after 9/11 we had to take it out on somebody. Saddam was handy.

And maybe it was a noble experiment to see if democracy could actually take root in an Arab/Muslim nation. So now we know better.

Bush's mistake was the assumption that his successor would maintain a military presence there. He should have factored into his calculations the irresponsibility of Democrats. And Iraq is not Germany or Japan. They just don't have that kind of character.

But this point I no longer care whether the Arab world is stable or not. Let them figure it out. They're not worth any more or our blood and treasure. Just keep the damn refugees out of here.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 12/01/2015 11:32 Comments || Top||

#12  This narrative forgets that Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey had a major stake in making sure Iraq did not turn into a democracy. All of them had their fingers in the pie, and W did not warn them off.

If you are going to change the Middle East, you're going to have to go in balls to the wall and be there for a generation.

Al
Posted by: frozen al || 12/01/2015 12:36 Comments || Top||

#13  This is blaming bush crap yet again. ISIS is just another head of this multi headed dragon. We are not fighting Isis or aq or isil We are fighting the Islamic cancer that is creeping west. Europe is on its way through becoming the next Beirut and we are still playing Waco a mole with named factions that mean nothing. Until we define the enemy and meet them with a greater level of violence we will soon be Islamic.
Posted by: 49 pan || 12/01/2015 12:44 Comments || Top||

#14  Let's see - regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya was a bad idea. Well, we can all see how it's worked out so far. Libya was on Champ's watch, I believe.

But Champ is still pushing regime change in Syria? And he expects he's going to get Putin to dump his buddy, Assad? And if Assad goes down, who does Champ think will pick up the pieces, George Washington (Carver)?
Posted by: Bobby || 12/01/2015 13:12 Comments || Top||

#15  W's Democracy idea was noble and assumed the best of a people who proved lacking.

I feel like the will to *win* vanished far too early. The destruction of war should have continued until the will to resist us ceased to exist. Only then would a democracy had any chance to emerge.
Posted by: Crusader || 12/01/2015 13:27 Comments || Top||

#16  Chaos after Saddam was predicted by Rumsfeld - c.f. the J curve and the wise advice that the quicker you descend through the chaos the sooner a new stability could be brought into being.

Colin Powell, State Dept. and the Demo insisted on trying to impose stability via a massive bureaucratic Coalition Provisional Authority, which busied itself devising new currenCy etc before the Iraqis had committed to becoming a country. Powell and his supporters have a lot to account for.
Posted by: Wheagum the Rasher of Bacon8442 || 12/01/2015 14:11 Comments || Top||

#17  "I feel like the will to *win* vanished far too early. The destruction of war should have continued until the will to resist us ceased to exist. Only then would a democracy had any chance to emerge."

Ditto. My 2c, two crucial matters GWB and his orbit failed to address:

1- They failed to attack Islam as the political movement masquerading as a religion that it is

2- They failed to bring the nation as a whole into the fight, resolved to compel the enemy to surrender (renounce his will to aggress) and occupy his heartland, Iraq, until his women share the rights, status and activities of full citizenship and his men let their children grow in peace and quiet.

They were right to hit Saddam. He was behind both attacks on the WTC as well as the DOD and anthrax attacks. But they were not serious about the larger enemy or the depth and breadth of his order of battle. They essayed to fight a global war against an enemy they failed to define -- but knew they were fighting -- with < 1% of their population, encouraging > 99% to live unconnected to the < 1% who were fighting, as if at peace. This is called being not serious.

GWB is a good man who had numerous bad advisers and as POTUS was unequal to the responsibilities powers of being threw at him.

My 2c.
Posted by: TopRev || 12/01/2015 14:31 Comments || Top||

#18  An essay on statecraft that connects the compulsion of surrender with the necessity of occupation ("culture-splicing" I call it) and contemplates a nascent grand strategic goal and structure: http://theological-geography.net/?p=21909
Posted by: TopRev || 12/01/2015 14:44 Comments || Top||

#19  Iraqi Shi'ite militias pledge to fight US forces if deployed
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 15:16 Comments || Top||

#20  But they were not serious about the larger enemy

And here, in a nutshell, is the past, current and future problem.

The larger enemy is Islam and all it entails. The west will not say that and the elites in there land of pink unicorns will never even see it.

Short of glazing the Muslim world I don't know what can be done but I'm sure that if we had the will we would find a way. Whatever way was found would require a clear statement of who the enemy is....and it ain't "terrorism".
Posted by: AlanC || 12/01/2015 15:23 Comments || Top||

#21  If the Iraqi Shia would fight us rather than assist us in fighting ISIS then I see no reason to do anything more than provide ammo to both sides and sit back and eat popcorn.
Posted by: Glenmore || 12/01/2015 15:48 Comments || Top||

#22  provide ammo to both sides

Let Saudis & Iranians, respectively, pay for the ammo
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 16:05 Comments || Top||

#23  Who speaketh of Davies and his J Curve?

Posted by: Ominous1 || 12/01/2015 17:06 Comments || Top||

#24  They tried to take a pot shot at Dad.
That's all you need to know.

Don't mess with Texans.
Posted by: Shipman || 12/01/2015 17:09 Comments || Top||

#25  Don't mess with Texans.

A shimmering limerick beckons, way off in the swamp. Texterminated... Erminated. I'll be right back. [cue "Chloe"]
Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 || 12/01/2015 17:52 Comments || Top||

#26  OTOH LUCIANNE > [US,USDOD] TOP US MILITARY OFFICER CONTRADICTS OBAMA, SAYS ISIS "NOT CONTAINED".

US JCS Chair Gen. Joseph Dunforth, USMC before the House Armed Services Cmte alongside US DefSec Ashton Carter.

"NOT CONTAINED" = GUESS WE KNOW WHY THE ISIS + ALIGNED JIHAD WILL BE HITTING EUROPE + AMERIKA SOON ENUFF.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/01/2015 22:41 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
What if
Snip. Opinion piece that you can read over at the link or at Instapundit.

We assume you read other blogs. Rantburg is (mostly) for the War on Terror. Thanks.

AoS
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 04:30 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  About damn time. I would prefer to slap the shit out of these sniveling little shits.
Posted by: chris || 12/01/2015 7:52 Comments || Top||

#2  IMO, if you win this war--you, automatically, win the other, AoS.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/01/2015 13:06 Comments || Top||

#3  It takes a churchman to do this.

President Piper's original letter to OWU: http://theological-geography.net/?p=23491 or here: http://www.okwu.edu/blog/2015/11/this-is-not-a-day-care-its-a-university/
Posted by: TopRev || 12/01/2015 14:04 Comments || Top||

#4  @AoS

"There is nothing outside of the text." J. Derrida

"There is nothing outside of Rantburg." Jack (Borgboy)
Posted by: borgboy || 12/01/2015 15:34 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
23[untagged]
5Govt of Pakistan
4Islamic State
2Govt of Syria
1Govt of Iran
1Govt of Iraq
1Haqqani Network
1Houthis
1Jamaat-e-Islami
1Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami
1Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh
1Palestinian Authority
1Taliban
1al-Qaeda
1Ansar al-Sharia
1Arab Spring

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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2015-12-01
  Russia Arms Su-34s with Air-to-Air Missiles in Syria for First Time
Mon 2015-11-30
  Suspected Jihadists Attack Cash Truck in Burkina Faso
Sun 2015-11-29
  Pakistan Airstrikes Kill 17 Militants
Sat 2015-11-28
  ISIS top dawg dies in Tal Afar
Fri 2015-11-27
  Top Pakistani extremist killed in 'shoot-out' with police
Thu 2015-11-26
  Drone strike kills Taliban shadow district governor in Nangarhar
Wed 2015-11-25
  One Russian pilot killed, other returned to Russia airbase in Syria
Tue 2015-11-24
  Tensions rise after Turkey shoots down Russian jet, says it will take the issue to the UN, NATO
Mon 2015-11-23
  Chinese police use a flamethrower on 'Muslim terror suspects'
Sun 2015-11-22
  Abu Sayyaf leader killed in Tawi-Tawi clash
Sat 2015-11-21
  Mali hotel attack: 27 dead with no more hostages
Fri 2015-11-20
  Gunmen take 170 hostages in Radisson Blu hotel in Mali capital
Thu 2015-11-19
  Video - Russia destroyed 500 fuel trucks of Islamic State in Syria
Wed 2015-11-18
  Soddy cops seize 500+ pounds of hashish
Tue 2015-11-17
  Kurds repel attack near Mosul, 60 ISIS Bad Guys die


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