[N_Fiddledog]

I'm anti-ISIS. That doesn't make me pro-Russia or pro-Iran. I don't trust them. I don't support them. That's where I stand.

[Thanos]

I'm just tired of trying to differentiate between all the lunatics in that part of the world. I see no logical reason why the West should keep letting the barbaric antics that come out of there guide our decision making. We get nothing out of it at all except to be dragged further into their morass. As soon as I hear some politician or pundit go on about our "duty" over there I automatically turn in the other direction. I learned my lesson about how wrong my early retarded support for invading Iraq was. It isn't our responsibility to save these silly people from themselves. We'd have better success trying to turn a wolverine into a docile house pet than we ever will in succeeding in whatever the fuck it is we're supposed to be trying to do over there.

[N_Fiddledog]

[N_Fiddledog]

The image above is from this article.

Russia 'reducing air strikes against Syrian rebels' as intervention fails

Where they talk about how Russia is going to start cutting back on its airstrikes but also this:

$1:

The statement said air force jets had hit targets in the provinces of Damascus, Idlib, Hama and Aleppo and Deir Ez-Zor.
Those claims could not immediately be verified – although Moscow has repeatedly claimed to be hitting targets linked to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), munitions have mostly struck rebel groups fighting around the western heartland of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

and this:

$1:

Recapturing territory north of Homs would help the regime reassert control over the main population centres of western Syria, as well as securing territory linking Damascus to the coastal heartland of his minority Alawite sect.

Under cover of Russian air power, government and Hizbollah troops have launched ground attacks on three separate rebel fronts in recent days.

Experts warned on Thursday that these were unlikely to bear fruit for several weeks, and that gains will not necessarily be sustainable.

So far, progress has been limited – only six villages and towns have fallen, and significant military hardware has been lost along the way.

In the central province of Hama last week, fighters from the Free Syrian Army claimed to have destroyed as many as twenty regime tanks and armoured vehicles with US-supplied weapons.

Iran has also suffered several high profile casualties, among them Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, one of the most senior figures in Tehran’s war effort.

"Operations against the Syrian opposition will likely prove harder and slower than anticipated by Russia or Iran," warned the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War in a research note published on Thursday.

It warned the two nations that they may be forced to commit considerably more resources to a conflict.
"The expanded interventions of both Russia and Iran will likely incentivise the Syrian regime to prioritise a military solution ... protracting the conflict and leading to further bloodshed," it said.
Syria's war has claimed more than a quarter of a million lives to date and more than half the population has been displaced.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... fails.html