Official: Russia knew in advance of Syrian chemical attack WASHINGTON — The United States has concluded Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack last week, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The official said a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment. Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons. https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBzFdx8?m=en-us
NATO does this in Western Europe. We need a similar organization of interested states in the Middle East to police the Middle East and I don't mean ISIS or whoever Russia and Iran would pick. OPEC won't cut it either for obvious reasons. The ME is going to be a burning hellhole forever if they can't get a regional security organization that actually secures things together. Having the US and Russia and Iran all sniping away at the edges just makes things worse.
I felt as though this was relatively obvious even if not official yet. Assad doesn't take a shit without notifying Putin first. His reign as leader of that clusterfuck of a country depends on it.
What's so difficult to understand? Russia backs one side, while the US backs another, with a bunch of little shit allies mixed in. I don't think it's that far fetched of a comparison. We can pencil in thousands of poor lives lost over absolutely nothing if we put troops on the ground. The larger difference is that the resistance to the Assad regime seems a lot less organized than South Vietnam was (although I could be wrong on that. Perhaps @Brook! could provide some insight on the anti-Assad organizations).
the biggest difference is that no one cares enough, the USA or Russia, about Syria to make it the quagmire that Vietnam was. Both countries are just waving their dicks around right now but it's not even remotely close to what Vietnam was. Plus Russia is a lot weaker than they were in the early 1960's.
The Russians don't care about Syria or Assad per se but their involvement there has resulted in them establishing a powerful airbase which (more important to them) gives Russia unfettered access to the warm water Mediterranean. Putin has re-established the 'Soviet' presence in the Middle East and if Sec. of State Rex Tillerson thinks that Russia's going to go along with him telling them that "support for Assad, Iran, etc. is not in their long-range best interests" he's out of his mind.
