Russia's reaction in case of US/West attack to Syria

ahmedfire wrote:But Putin says he will help Syria Militarily and Humanitarian !
So what kind of military help ?

I didn't see/hear/read that statement.
I've only read 'We'll help Syria if the US attacks'.
Putin didn't say military nor humanitarian help...I think he was deliberately vague in that statement.
Let me know if you have more info on that.

AlfaT8 wrote:I think you mean they'll "try" to bomb it.

Hear hear...

macedonian wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:But Putin says he will help Syria Militarily and Humanitarian !
So what kind of military help ?

I didn't see/hear/read that statement.
I've only read 'We'll help Syria if the US attacks'.
Putin didn't say military nor humanitarian help...I think he was deliberately vague in that statement.
Let me know if you have more info on that.

AlfaT8 wrote:I think you mean they'll "try" to bomb it.

Hear hear...

I just took the statement " we will help " as a general one , but he did not say that Literally

GarryB wrote:Just because they are doing it in a way that perhaps you would not does not make them liars.

No, but doing it in a way that makes it physically impossible to use as reactor fuel WOULD make them liars...

The US has a history of using weapons inspectors to mark/find targets for the USAF or cruise missiles. In fact in Iraq not so long ago they were using them to try to track down Saddam so they could kill him. When he mentions on his expensive encrypted Swedish cellphone that he will visit mistress X and an hour later the US bombs mistress X's apartment then you kinda have to put two and two together and realise the US owns the IAEA and they can't really be trusted.

If you're assuming that it was somehow the inspectors grabbing the intercepts there are a handful of capabilities that you may be underestimating. Significantly.

You are missing the point... Imperium US didn't have to invade Iraq and take direct control of the oilwells to benefit. All they needed to do was enforce an embargo for 12 years and then bomb the crap out of them again. A poor starving Iraq with smashed infrastructure is not going to sink into the sea... it is going to rebuild. How is it going to pay for that rebuild?  Pumping oil. It matters not where this oil goes... what matters is that they will be selling it on the international market so they can fix what the US military broke and that is the payoff... cheap oil is good for the US and not so good for Russia... a double bonus...

Remind me when oil prices start to drop back towards sensible levels, then. After the price drop off when Bush said he'd raise drilling bans, it's been up and down but largely trending back upwards again ever since then.

Attack why?

It was only a comment on the legality. It makes no difference if people refuse to acknowledge that a material breach in the UN cease-fire authorized continued military action. However, again as to the legality, that did not authorize occupation or regime change. Which was the only point I was making.

They do have scuds and chem/bio weapons. They also have a friendly neighbour that might lend them some support in the form of F-14s...

The rebels will get help from Iran? Because that's who I was talking about.

It seems that US planners believe the sht coming from the US marketing departments. They seem to think that everyone just wants a McDonalds and to become a consumer of disposable gadgets... even in the US look at the Mormons and you can see that isn't even true in the US.

That is not an inaccurate assessment!

Come on Sean... this is weak... what?, over the last 20 years would have given Assad the impression that the west DIDN'T want to stick their noses into the running of his country and every other country in that region?

No, genius, I mean stick our nose in as in blow something up! Last time I checked the only people consistently blowing things of Assad's up recently were either insurgents or Israeli.

So the rebels use chemical weapons and it is ignored because there is no proof, but when the wind changes direction it is Assads forces?

It's not proof but it is highly amusing. Plus that March incident was believed to be Assad's doing, and he refused UN access afterwards, so what proof was going to be collected of who did anything exactly?

I hardly think the west has the moral high ground on this anyway... all those US Vietnam vets claiming disability pensions over agent orange... how much did the US government spend on aide to Vietnam after dumping millions of tons of toxic waste on their country?  Whining about the plight of a few old vets when people still live where all that crap was dumped and it is still in the ground water there...

That has what to do with this how? If we're always to be held responsible for every misdeed, real or perceived, then that should apply across the board. This would also necessitate the adoption of the mind-blowingly asinine concept that political ideologies of a given nation are set in stone for all time. Hell, we used to have segregation, but eventually enough people caught on to the idea that it wasn't right and it got changed. Far too slowly, to be sure, but it still represents a fundamental change. We gonna be hoisted up for that, too? It's like the slavery reparations idea. Every time I hear about it, I have to ask why the hell this has anything to do with me, since my ancestors came here from Ireland after the Civil War. But hey, since I'm a white guy, it must be my fault! Idiots.

Could be amusing if you wanted to make this a legal thing, though. I wonder how much cash we could argue Northern Europe should get. Do we get to monetize brutality and oppression as well?

Actually I would not totally agree with that... Russia has a few defence contracts with Syria, but at the end of the day Assad jnr was sucking up to the west and reducing his purchases of Russian kit. The actions of the west are actually driving Assad into the Russian MIC and I suspect more than a few other leaders of countries are taking note of the result when the west turns on a little country and are perhaps realising that Russia as the bad guy was a western cold war thing and the cold war is over.

Assad was basically sucking up to stay out of the spotlight post-9/11. Prior to that, and after 2003, Syria and the US at least did not enjoy cordiality.

Do you really think US actions are expanding western political influence?

Please. I'll be the first to tell you that the idea of "spreading democracy" is completely asinine.

Do you think whatever would take Syria from Assad will be pro western?

Is Iraq currently pro western?

No and no, obviously, but there's more to it than just getting bombed, which I won't go into here.

It is about cheap energy. Bombing Iraq and letting them sell oil to fix it means cheaper oil.

...at some undetermined point in the future, apparently.

Recently Prince Bandar the Saudi Intelligence Chief as per news reports have threatened Putin that terrorist in Chechenia will grow if Russia did not stop supporting Syrian and didnt stop vetoing UNSC proposal on Syria.

How credible are his threats to Russia on rise of terrorism , I think reports also mentioned that Sochi Olympics would be the target of such threat.

Was that Report credible at all?

Kind of seemed like BS to me.

If true, Tu-160s should blow the fuck out of every palace in Saudi Arabia. Nobody would miss those shit-stains of humanity.
Ok ok, only in my dreams...

As Sa'iqa wrote:SAA air defence pretty much doesn't matter. Israel has conducted successful attacks against Syria without even entering its airspace. US Navy can fire about 500 Tomahawk missiles from 1000+ km range - greater than the range of even the most formidable anti ship missiles Syria possesses.

Don't forget about the Millennium Challenge since it demonstrated that a great deal can be accomplished by a low tech force using creative ways to engage a vastly superior enemy in an asymmetrical fashion.

American exercises are scripted to guarantee American victory and assure the validation of American tactical and strategic doctrine.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red".


Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.[1]

At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"[2] After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action.

After the wargame was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and was not allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.[3] Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered that the location of Red Force units to be revealed.[4]

This led to accusations that the war game had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise intended to end in an overwhelming American victory,[3] alleging that "$250 million was wasted".[5]



Due to his criticism regarding the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the war game's purpose had shifted to reinforcing existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serving as a learning experience.

Van Riper also stated that the war game was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing.[4] He was quoted in the ZDF–New York Times documentary The Perfect War (2004)[6] as saying that what he saw in MC02 echoed the same view promoted by the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara before and during the Vietnam War, namely that the U.S. military could not and would not be defeated.

Responding to Van Riper's criticism, Vice Admiral Marty Mayer, who ran the war game and who was charged with developing the military’s joint concepts and requirements, stated the following:[4]
“
Gen. Van Riper apparently feels he was too constrained. I can only say there were certain parts where he was not constrained, and then there were parts where he was in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment and certain exercise pieces that were being done.
”
—Vice Admiral Marty Mayer
Navy Captain John Carman, Joint Forces Command spokesman, said the war game had properly validated all the major concepts which were tested by Blue Force, ignoring the restrictions placed on Van Riper's Red Force that led them to succeed. Based on these findings, John Carman stated that recommendations based on the war game's result on areas such as doctrine, training and procurement would be forwarded to General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[4]

Note that this website does get into some conspiracy issues and I will vehemently dispute that the Red force was Iraq as Iraq has never had much in the way of naval capabilities, especially in regards to advanced/modern anti-ship missiles, although they did do some damage to a US destroyer with an Exocet missile fired from an aircraft during the 1980s.


http://rense.com/general29/soubts.htm



'Millennium Challenge' War
Game General Doubts
US Military Capability
By Julian Borger
The Guardian - London
9-6-2

If the US and Iraq do go to war, there can only be one winner, can't there? Maybe not. This summer, in a huge rehearsal of just such a conflict - and with retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper playing Saddam - the US lost. Julian Borger asks the former marine how he did it...

At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and $250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.

What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's defence establishment and raised questions over the US military's readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper.

In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt.

What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US "victory".

If the Pentagon thought it could keep its mishap quiet, it underestimated Van Riper. A classic marine - straight-talking and fearless, with a purple heart from Vietnam to prove it - his retirement means he no longer has to put up with the bureaucratic niceties of the defence department. So he blew the whistle.

His driving concern, he tells the Guardian, is that when the real fighting starts, American troops will be sent into battle with a set of half-baked tactics that have not been put to the test.

"Nothing was learned from this," he says. "A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future." The exercise, he says, was rigged almost from the outset.

Millennium Challenge was the biggest war game of all time. It had been planned for two years and involved integrated operations by the army, navy, air force and marines. The exercises were part real, with 13,000 troops spread across the United States, supported by actual planes and warships; and part virtual, generated by sophisticated computer models. It was the same technique used in Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator. The soldiers in the foreground were real, the legions behind entirely digital.

The game was theoretically set in 2007 and pitted Blue forces (the US) against a country called Red. Red was a militarily powerful Middle Eastern nation on the Persian Gulf that was home to a crazed but cunning megalomaniac (Van Riper). Arguably, when the exercises were first planned back in 2000, Red could have been Iran. But by July this year, when the game kicked off, it is unlikely that anyone involved had any doubts as to which country beginning with "I" Blue was up against.

"The game was described as free play. In other words, there were two sides trying to win," Van Riper says.

Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran clearly takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, "so I decided I would attack first."

Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.

It was at this point that the generals and admirals monitoring the war game called time out.

"A phrase I heard over and over was: 'That would never have happened,'" Van Riper recalls. "And I said: nobody would have thought that anyone would fly an airliner into the World Trade Centre... but nobody seemed interested."

In the end, it was ruled that the Blue forces had had the $250m equivalent of their fingers crossed and were not really dead, while the ships were similarly raised from watery graves.

Van Riper was pretty fed up by this point, but things were about to get worse. The "control group", the officers refereeing the exercise, informed him that US electronic warfare planes had zapped his expensive microwave communications systems.

"You're going to have to use cellphones and satellite phones now, they told me. I said no, no, no - we're going to use motorcycle messengers and make announcements from the mosques," he says. "But they refused to accept that we'd do anything they wouldn't do in the west."

Then Van Riper was told to turn his air defences off at certain times and places where Blue forces were about to stage an attack, and to move his forces away from beaches where the marines were scheduled to land. "The whole thing was being scripted," he says.

Within his ever narrowing constraints, Van Riper continued to make a nuisance of himself, harrying Blue forces with an arsenal of unorthodox tactics, until one day, on July 29, he thinks, he found his orders to his subordinate officers were not being listened to any more. They were being countermanded by the control group. So Van Riper quit. "I stayed on to give advice, but I stopped giving orders. There was no real point any more," he says.

Van Riper's account of Millennium Challenge is not disputed by the Pentagon. It does not deny "refloating" the Blue navy, for example. But that, it argues, is the whole point of a war game.

Vice-Admiral Cutler Dawson, the commander of the ill-fated fleet, and commander, in real life, of the US 2nd Fleet, says: "When you push the envelope, some things work, some things don't. That's how you learn from the experiment."

The whole issue rapidly became a cause celebre at the Pentagon press briefing, where the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, got the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, General Peter Pace, to explain why the mighty US forces had needed two lives in order to win.

"You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?" General Pace asked.

Van Riper agrees with Pace in principle, but says the argument is beside the point.

"Scripting is not a problem because you're trying to learn something," he says. "The difference with this one was that it was advertised up front as free play in order to validate the concepts they were trying to test, to see if they were robust enough to put into doctrine."

It is these "concepts" that are at the core of a serious debate that underlies what would otherwise be a silly row about who was playing fair and who wasn't. The US armed forces are in the throes of what used to be called a "Revolution in Military Affairs", and is now usually referred to simply as "transformation". The general idea is to make the US military more flexible, more mobile and more imaginative. It was this transformation that Rumsfeld was obsessed with during his first nine months in office, until September 11 created other priorities.

The advocates of transformation argue that it requires a whole new mindset, from the generals down to the ordinary infantryman. So military planners, instead of drawing up new tactics, formulate more amorphous "concepts" intended to change fundamentally the American soldier's view of the battlefield.

The principal concept on trial in Millennium Challenge was called "rapid, decisive operation" (RDO), and as far as Van Riper and many veteran officers are concerned, it is gobbledegook. "As if anyone would want slow, indecisive operations! These are just slogans," he snorts.

The question of transformation and the usefulness of concepts such as RDO are the subject of an intense battle within the Pentagon, in which the uniformed old guard are frequently at odds with radical civilian strategists of the kind Rumsfeld brought into the Pentagon.

John Pike, the head of GlobalSecurity.org, a military thinktank in Washington, believes the splits over transformation and the whole Van Riper affair reflect fundamental differences of opinion on how to pursue the war on Iraq.

"One way is to march straight to Baghdad, blowing up everything in your way and then by shock and awe you cause the regime to collapse," Pike says. "That is what Rumsfeld is complaining about when he talks about unimaginative plodding. The alternative is to bypass the Iraqi forces and deliver a decisive blow."

Van Riper denies being opposed to new military thinking. He just thinks it should be written in plain English and put to the test. "My main concern was that we'd see future forces trying to use these things when they've never been properly grounded in an experiment," he says.

The name Van Riper draws either scowls or rolling eyes at the Pentagon these days, but there are anecdotal signs that he has the quiet support of the uniformed military, who, after all, will be the first to discover whether the Iraq invasion plans work in real life.

"He can be a real pain in the ass, but that's good," a fellow retired officer told the Army Times. "He's a great guy, and he's a great patriot, and he's doing all those things for the right reasons."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,786992,00.html

TR1 wrote:Was that Report credible at all?

Kind of seemed like BS to me.

If true, Tu-160s should blow the fuck out of every palace in Saudi Arabia. Nobody would miss those shit-stains of humanity.
Ok ok, only in my dreams...

I would put it in the "maybe" pile, but it depends on who you ask.

Bandar is a real POS, I wouldn't put it past him, but the leaks from his meeting with Putin were from an "unnamed Russian official". I guess we'll just have to wait to see what unfolds.

AFAIK the Russians havent denied those reports of Bandar ...and the news is all over the place so there may be some truth to it.

Austin wrote:Recently Prince Bandar the Saudi Intelligence Chief as per news reports have threatened Putin that terrorist in Chechenia will grow if Russia did not stop supporting Syrian and didnt stop vetoing UNSC  proposal on Syria.

How credible are his threats to Russia on rise of terrorism , I think reports also mentioned that Sochi Olympics would be the target of such threat.

I say fight fire with fire. Help shias to deal with saudis. Many would love to see that.

I am quite fine with Russia helping the Shia Militarily , Economically and Diplomatically as long as its in Russian interest and in interest of UN ....since US and its allies openly do that by helping Saudis , Baharain and others.

But Russia should not put boots on ground in Syrian or Iran conflict .... but just empower them to fight their own wars.

General Wesley Clark in this interview to CNN says , US needs Exclusion Zone for Freedom of Action and should tell the Russians to stay out of the way so that we dont accidentally hit them with Cruise Missile ......seems like a warning in a form of advise  

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/06/on-gps-sunday-what-should-u-s-do-about-syria/

Clark saying dumb things is nothing new

He made an ass of himself back in the Balkans, at it again I see.

Some how I feel Putin should stay out of this war , What has Russia to gain by supporting Syria ?

Russia is only obliged to protect CSTO countries by Legal treaties .......so why should Russia really worry about Syria or Iran what has it got to loose ?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his country will help the Syrian government in the event of a foreign military intervention.

Putin made the remarks on Friday at a news conference on the final day of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg.

The Russian president, however, did not elaborate on how Moscow would help Damascus.

It was not clear if Moscow planned to defend Syria and increase military assistance.

"Will we help Syria? We will. We are helping them now. We supply weapons, we cooperate in the economic sphere, and I hope we will cooperate more in the humanitarian sphere ... to provide help for those people - civilians - who are in a difficult situation today," Putin said.

He added that Washington and Moscow have not bridged their differences over the issue of possible military action in Syria, noting that any such attack is considered counter-productive and will only further destabilize the region.

Putin noted that allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian army were fabricated by foreign-backed militants in a bid to pave the way for an external military intervention.

US President Barack Obama used the meeting to push for his strike plan against Syria, despite strong opposition from China, Russia and many other countries.

Washington’s war rhetoric against Syria intensified after militants operating in the country claimed that the Syrian army had carried out a deadly chemical attack on the suburbs of Damascus on August 21, which killed hundreds of Syrians.

Damascus has repeatedly said the deadly attack was a false-flag operation carried out by the Takfiri groups in a bid to draw in foreign military intervention.

The Russian navy has sent four more ships to the eastern Mediterranean, near the Syrian coast, as the United States considers launching a military offensive against the Arab country.

The SSV-201 Priazovye reconnaissance ship, escorted by two landing ships, Minsk and Novocherkassk, had already passed through Turkey's Bosphorus Strait, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a source from the Saint Petersburg-based central naval command as saying on Friday.

A third landing ship was just making a short stop to lift “special cargo” in Novorossiysk in the Black Sea, the report added without elaborating on the cargo.

"The ship will make call in Novorossiysk, where it will take on board special cargo and set off for the designated area of its combat duty in the eastern Mediterranean," the source said.

The news agency added that Moscow will also send destroyer Smetlivy to the eastern Mediterranean soon.

Russia’s anti-submarine ship Admiral Panteleyev, the Neustrashimyy-class frigate and three landing ships, the Alexander Shabalin, the Admiral Nevelsky, and the Peresvet, are already in the eastern Mediterranean, the report revealed.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hosted a G20 summit in St. Petersburg, said on Friday that Moscow will help Syria if it comes under attack.

“Will we help Syria? We will. We are already helping, we’re sending arms [and] cooperating in the economic sphere,” Putin stated.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Russian president said that a great majority of the world leaders gathered in St. Petersburg opposed unilateral military offensive against Syria.

“I can tell you who favored military action. It is the US, Turkey, Canada, Saudi Arabia and France, while the British prime minister’s support for the US was not shared by his citizens,” Putin said. “Now, who were categorically against: Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Italy.”

Last week, the British parliament voted against military intervention in the Arab state despite calls by Prime Minister David Cameron.

On Tuesday, Putin said Moscow has its own plans to deal with the possible US war on Syria.

"We have our own ideas about what we would do and how we would do it if the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise," he said. "We have our plans, but it's too early to talk about them."

The war rhetoric against Syria intensified after foreign-backed opposition forces accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of launching a chemical attack on militant strongholds in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.

Damascus has vehemently denied the accusations, saying the chemical attack was carried out by the militants themselves as a false-flag operation.

On August 31, US President Barack Obama said he has decided that Washington must take military action against the Syrian government, which would mean a unilateral military strike without a UN mandate.

Obama said that despite having made up his mind, he will take the case to US Congress. But he added that he is prepared to order military action against the Syrian government at any time.

On Wednesday, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 10-7 in favor of a resolution authorizing the Obama administration to attack Syria.

The resolution would limit military action against Syria to a period of 60 days, with the possibility of a 30-day extension. It also bans the use of US ground troops.

Obama administration officials have embarked upon an extensive lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill, where US lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on a military action against Syria after they return from recess on September 9.

Russia is only obliged to protect CSTO countries by Legal treaties .......so why should Russia really worry about Syria or Iran what has it got to loose ?

As a UNSC member it has an obligation to ensure the rule of international law is followed.

That means vetoing US attempts at imperialism.

It doesn't mean sending troops unilaterally anywhere.

Russia should give syria s-400 air defence systems 2 protect syria from american attack due 2 which cia rebels carried out false flag chemical attack in syria nd then blame it on syrian government just like these american thugs did in iraq nd libya now they want 2 attack syria. Russia should also give syria anti ballistic missile defence systems 2 protect syria nd syrias infrastructure nd people of syria from american cruse missile attacks ontop of tht russia should give syria latest anti ship missiles like sunburns etc tht can take out american air craft carriers ships nd submarines etc. Russia should b ready for world war 3 if syria is attacked russia should shower america with thermonuclear icbms nd destroy nd massacre nd wipe america from the face of this earth. This country america full of lies nd deceit nd propoganda should b wiped out from the face of this earth. Thanks

Russia will turn the so called UNITED STATES OF AMERICA= UNITED SNAKES OF AMERICA 2 hell nd wipe america from the face of the earth RUSSIA SHOULD SHOWER THERMONUCLEAR ICBMS IN AMERICA. Bring it on we r ready for WORLD WAR 3. PAKISTAN will help their brother SYRIA. FROM PAKISTAN

connect2raza wrote:Russia will turn the so called UNITED STATES OF AMERICA= UNITED SNAKES OF AMERICA 2 hell nd wipe america from the face of the earth RUSSIA SHOULD SHOWER THERMONUCLEAR ICBMS IN AMERICA. Bring it on we r ready for WORLD WAR 3. PAKISTAN will help their brother SYRIA. FROM PAKISTAN

If putin is thinking like you , you and me wouldn't be exist till now  

The prince didn't say anything like that , the goal of these rumors is to make the russian people hate saudi people and vise versa ,

I remember a week ago some internet arabic sites put new that Russia warns Saudi prince that it will boomb Saudi Arabia if that last didn't stop supporting rebels in syria !

So lets go forward and not looking so much at these rumors .

Kerry portrait of Syria rebels at odds with intelligence reports

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-syria-crisis-usa-rebels-idUSBRE98405L20130905

(Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry's public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements.

At congressional hearings this week, while making the case for President Barack Obama's plan for limited military action in Syria, Kerry asserted that the armed opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "has increasingly become more defined by its moderation, more defined by the breadth of its membership, and more defined by its adherence to some, you know, democratic process and to an all-inclusive, minority-protecting constitution.  

"And the opposition is getting stronger by the day," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

U.S. and allied intelligence sources and private experts on the Syrian conflict suggest that assessment is optimistic.

While the radical Islamists among the rebels may not be numerically superior to more moderate fighters, they say, Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-aligned Nusra Front are better organized, armed and trained.