February 15, 2018
By Maria Tsvetkova
Moscow (Reuters) - About 300 men working (click here) for a Kremlin-linked Russian private military firm were either killed or injured in Syria last week, according to three sources familiar with the matter....
The reporting ranges from 80 dead men to this report of 300 dead Russians. Evidently, Putin has engaged in growing his own Russian Blackwater or whatever Eric Prince is calling his Goons these days.
I have yet to read an accounting of any USA soldiers dead in this confrontation between REGULAR American troops and this private force of Russians. I will assume the Americans walked away unscathed at the moment.
If one recalls, one of the ambitions of Eric Prince in donating enormous amounts of money to Trump's campaign is to be able to have access to Russia and other countries to train more Good Squads. Prince is the brother of the Education Secretary, what's her name. Let's just imagine for a moment that happened under Trump and this confrontation occurred. What does anyone think would have happened?
Eric Prince is former USA military and has his own "al Qaeda like" training facility.
...Trump transition (click here) told The Intercept that Prince has been advising the team on matters related to intelligence and defense, including weighing in on candidates for the Defense and State departments. The official asked not to be identified because of a transition policy prohibiting discussion of confidential deliberations....
...“Waiting for the numbers to come in last night. It was well worth the wait!!!! #PresidentTrump2016.” Prince’s sister, billionaire Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education secretary and Prince (and his mother) gave large sums of money to a Trump Super PAC.
In July, Prince told Trump’s senior adviser and white supremacist Steve Bannon, at the time head of Breitbart News, that the Trump administration should recreate a version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination ring that operated during the Vietnam War, to fight ISIS. ....
My mistake, I gave Betsy too much credit for her age, she is Prince's mother, evidently.
But, at any rate, Eric Prince liked money so much he was willing to speak to a known White Supremacist Steve Bannon. So, we have to assume the White Supremacists in the USA are advised on military tactics by the likes of Eric Prince. I think that is called treason.
But, to underscore the Russian deaths, if they had received training from Eric Prince how many would be dead if any and what would be the body count of American soldiers in this encounter.
Putin pulled Russian fighting forces from Syria and gave these mercenaries a place under the guise of the Kremlin and turned them loose in Syria. It is easy for a Russian President to register mercenary deaths than Russian soldier deaths among the voting Russia public. Needless, to say, the Russian leadership outside the usual folks are not happy that any Russian is dead in Syria when they understood their troops were home.
Slightly changing direction, I want a full PUBLIC accounting of OCO Funds.
February 15, 2018
By Ben Brimelow
A simmering conflict (click here) between Israel and Iran in Syria could have erupted into another regional war were it not for the intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an Israeli investigative journalist.
On Saturday, an Israeli air force helicopter shot down what Israel says was an Iranian dronelaunched from the Tiyas Military Airbase in central Syria by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The drone was shot down a minute and a half after entering Israeli airspace, the investigative journalist, Ronen Bergman, wrote in an op-ed article in The New York Times this week....
Given the extremism of leadership in Israel right now, and the fact Jarrod Kushner advocates those positions from the inner circle of the White House, I want to know where the OCO Funds are going.
If Putin didn't step in with Bibi Netanyahu the global community might be looking at a re-ignited Syria without a return of refugees. That said, the fact Putin is in the middle of this mess, only tells me Assad is reinforced in which ever manner necessary by Russia. Is there a concern for Israel, regardless? Maybe. Is Israel facing a confrontation with Iran? I would think that was minimized by Putin, but, there is no way to know for sure that the Ayatollah is obeying every Russia command.
The thing is this: The Shia Crescent extend throughout Syria. It is one of the reasons Syria obtained a destabilizing force after the initial drought drove farmers into the cities. It didn't take long or much force to push Syria into a civil war due to the high diversity of Shia and Sunni in the borders of Syria. There is still borders to Syria, right?
If Netanyahu decides that Russia and Iran are a threat, that won't stop him and if Trump is having a spending spree of OCO Funds to support Netanyahu then the USA and Russia are in a full scale SOMETHING.
I strongly suggest before these issues get out of hand, President Putin begin a strong campaign for a peace initiative to return the refugees to their homeland and a UN resolution to establish borders that provide a space for everyone. I suggest the Shia Crescent be dissolved and land dedicated to the Shia be provided to prevent further violence. The land for the Shia is already eroded with drought and war, there is no good land in Syria. All the land will have to be rehabilitated and may very well require harnessing dams for flood control and at the same time providing a source of irrigation.
At any rate, if the USA soldiers are in Syria, I have to wonder why. See, Israel under extreme leadership is expansionists and it would be highly advisable for Trump to be moving borders when refugees have not been provided their homelands and way of a return to farming.
