So a week back, Bayou Renaissance Man had some thoughts on "Russian Mercenaries" attacking a joint US/Syrian Coalition base.
It seems things weren't just bad for Team OPFOR, they were bad in a biblical way, per Johnny Ringo on FB:
1. Sov... err... Russians built a bridge over the Euphrates which was the designated 'deconfliction line'. Why? Reasons. 'Commitee of Nations' or something.Even more at the original source Johnny Ringo FB link .RTWT.
2. 'Hybrid' force of mixed Russian contractors including multiple non-ethnic Russians (Serbs, Khazak, other non Slavics) as well as local Syrian Army 'commandos' attacked across temporary bridge. The 'Russian' side were 'Blackwater' equivalent mercenaries from a company generally called 'Wagner' which is the nom de plume of the boss. (Like if you called Blackwater 'Prince'.)
3. Unit was partially mechanized, battalion strength. (One thing everyone agrees upon is 'about 600-700 personnel.') Had some towed artillery as well as 'T-55 and T-72 MBT as well as armored personnel carriers.' (Type unknown.) Full on 'we're taking that position and you're not stopping us' full court press.
4. Unit crossed bridge, arty deployed.
5. Arty opened fire while most of unit was still in approach column formation. (Normal) One portion moved to flanking positions.
5A. Minute the arty opened fire SHIT GOT REAL, REAL QUICK.
6. Reapers took out artillery and most of armor with Hellfire. From the few videos, pretty much before they knew what hit them. There had to be quite a few Reaper drones up or they were feeding guidance to Hellfire from Apaches (see below.)
7. F-15E Eagles came in for clean-up and to check for anti-air defenses.
8. Warthogs showed up just to go BRRRRRRT!
9. AC-130 Spectre started fucking up their day for the hell of it.
10. To add insult to injury, B-52s which, you know, just HAPPENED to be in the area, just minding our own business, just passing by from Diego Garcia which is a few thousand miles away, on our way to... somewhere... nothing to see here... decided to prove they could drop their entire load as precision guided weapons and just more or less DID A JDAM ARCLIGHT ON THEIR ASS. At that point, more or less because CENTCOM said 'Why not? ARCLIGHT is always pretty to watch...'
11. The whole thing being so over it was ridiculous, AH-64 Apaches basically did 'hostile Bomb Damage Assessment' and complained there were no targets left.
12. Oh, and then the Kurds, to just really fuck with these guys, released water from a dam upstream and broke their bridge. So they had to ford back with their wounded.
13. Nobody knows how many dead and wounded. Russians are saying 'only 8 Russian citizens' but that doesn't quite cover the whole of who may have been involved. One repeated number is 200 dead (remember, mixed Syrians, Russians and other ethnics) as well as pretty much the rest of the force wounded. (Not to mention pretty thoroughly demoralized.) One Kurd wounded. Probably fell off a stool laughing to tell truth.
Level II Beverage Alert issued.
Here's a good YouTube compendium:
More details here at Red State link.
16 comments:
Cuz Murica! Fuck yea! :-D
Hopefully, Putey Pute, Nochin(Assad), and duh Mullahs, now have an understanding that a new Sheriff is in town...and when he says BTFO, you BTFO. That was pure comedy!
Too bad they did take out the "Friends of Israel" troops. The truth is Israel needs a hard comeuppance, via B-52s.
Aesop, I appreciate the details on this 'event'. I knew of the number of "russkies" killed.
The epic beatdown (blowed-up??)is not discussed in the typical news blurb...
The American military presence is neither constitutional nor authorized by the U.N. Charter to which we are a signatory and bound to observe as the supreme law of the land. Why are you so gleeful about our disgraceful involvement in Syria and our arrogant presumption that we have some kind of a right to determine who should rule Syria?
The men attacked by all those military assets were there legally. The attack on them by U.S. forces was a war crime. Not metaphorically speaking. An actual de jure war crime.
So riddle me this. By what right are U.S. forces present in Syria?
A little less jingoism, Maestro.
Agree with B. Bunny. Answer the question: Why the fuck are we there? Exactly
Please provide a link to those war crime indictments from the Hague, or the activation of the War Powers Act by an enraged US Congress.
I'll wait.
I've Googled it, but nothing appears anywhere.
As they've been there for some years, I'm hoping we can bring HopeyDopey in on that indictment.
Meanwhile, last I heard, The Euphrates River was a well-agreed deconfliction line in that part of Syria no longer under the government's control for some number of years, for forces in the region supposedly co-operating to wipe out the ISIS transnational criminal terrorist "state".
And as the forces in question were neither the uniformed forces of either Syria nor the Russian federation, the presence of such a well-equipped armored battalion of stateless militia must have been ISIS, and clearly constitutes an unauthorized military unit under international law, and a target of opportunity for all legitimate forces in any region, and any target of such a terrorist militia, by definition, has the right to the means of self-defense.
Perhaps Ivan and Assad should get a better handle on such stateless rogues running around with all the equipment of a mechanized infantry battalion. And I'm sure they're relieved that such an unsanctioned bunch of hooligans isn't around to trouble them in their own territory anymore, either.
You remember the scene at the end of Hunt For Red October where the Russian ambassador comes, hat in hand, to let the White House know that another one of their submarines was missing?
Art imitates life: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, etc. etc.
Bummer that those rogues appear to have shelled a unit and commenced an assault on a group with both US JTACs attached and air assets on call, but some mistakes in wars, particularly in a regional dissolution, you don't get to make twice.
Perhaps next time, they'll stay on their own side of the river, where the rogue state in question thought nothing of letting a battalion of "militia" tanks and artillery, plus infantry and combat engineers sufficiently advanced to have equipment to bridge a river like the Euphrates, apparently run wild.
You know, like legitimate nations do all the time everywhere else.
Neither Assad nor Ivan seem to want to claim ownership of the deceased, so clearly this was a bunch of rogue "mercenaries". Like the ones who "spontaneously" assaulted the US consulate in Benghazi, killed the ambassador and several security personnel, and torched the place. Over an obscure YouTube video. Coincidentally, on 9/11.
Cry me a Euphrates River of tears over this recent loss to that stateless band of "mercenaries".
And welcome to realpolitik, where one actual air strike is worth 10,000 sharply-worded letters of protests at the Talk Shop in Oyster Bay.
You want to question why we have troops there, elimination of ISIS seems like a good reason, but I've only seen videos of them on YouTube riding in and shooting up everything with legs in towns and major cities at will in three countries, two of which are nominally friendly. And I'm just spitballing, but since neither the UN nor Congress seems to have gotten upset some years back when HopeyDopey sent them in, I'm guessing this is not the war crime you pretend.
Had the Russians and Syrian "mercenaries" overrun, killed, and/or captured actual US troops, I suspect you'd be a lot less mock-outraged, but in any event, TPTB decided that a repeat of something like Mogadischu or Benghazi wasn't a good tactic, and blowing the hell out of a "rogue" armored battalion attacking our people and allies on the ground was a good message to send.
And a wise investment of high explosives.
QED
The US is a lawless country, attempting to overthrow the Syrian government and hand the country over to Al Qaeda affiliates so that Qatar can build a pipeline and Israel can seize the northern part of the country...It's not going to work, and is a disgraceful action that involves mostly killing civilians, at enormous cost to the taxpayer. Even the Gay Mulatto was better than this....
The Gay Mulatto sent the troops in question. Perhaps you missed that memo.
It's also going to be hard to build a pipeline anywhere if you can't get west of the Euphrates.
And Israel - all 8M of them - are going to overcome 18M Syrians (well, closer to 17,999,300 now, after this little soiree) and then "seize the northern part of the country"??
Really???
The part up way up there by Turkey????
The part that's not even contiguous to Israel?????
Maybe geography isn't your game, Ike.
And if the US wanted to overthrow the government of Syria, that air strike would have done it in about 90 minutes.
I think we'd be perfectly happy if the Syrians themselves take Assad out and hang him from his balcony though.
Exactly, They have been killing each other for centuries. All I can say is keep up the good work and save us the trouble. Save that money and spend it on securing America. You know the country we are from?
Ninth Air Cav: "Arclights are good for you; See what they can do; Bombs falling all around . . . "
We could just claim that they were attacking Egyptian targets.
One wonders what goes on in the good col. head. Who cares what the UN has to say? The presence of troops in Syria is unconstitutional? Under what article sir? While I have no use for military adventurism, I have less tolerance for Russian military adventurism and still less for Barbara Streisdan style whinning from the good Col.
Our troops are there because of that faggot Kenyan and his posse. They are there because they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq and did everything they could to built Tehrean's military power, inclduing dropping off 150 billion which was neither constitutional nor authorized by the UN.
So Col. bugger off like a good little toad.
You are no stranger to confusion I see, Anon.
Aesop, legality is not determined by official nonfeasance. The criminal conduct of Hillary Clinton is her handling of classified emails and obstruction of justice is not made legal because a grand jury has not handed down an indictment of her. Yet.
Nor is any kind of a line on the battlefield an indication of legality when one of the parties purporting to establish the line has no legal authority to be in that country or involve itself in the internal affairs of the country. Albania may presume to establish a deconfliction line along the Missouri River but by what legal right could it do that?
The inability of the Syrian government to exercise control over areas occupied by jihadis does not diminish the sovereignty of Syria. That inability is directly the result of arms, ammunition, equipment, money, intelligence, training, and personnel provided by the U.S. and/or by its allies or coalition “partners.” It’s pretty rich for the U.S. to claim some right to be present or do something in Syria because of absence of government control when the U.S. has done all that it can to ensure that that control is denied to the government.
Those coalition “partners” that the USG loves to talk about are not “co-operating to wipe out the ISIS transnational criminal terrorist ‘state.’” They are responsible for it and have actively expended enormous resources to ensure its successful takeover of Syria and Iraq. That support is undiminished though I’ve read that the gulf sponsors have ended or reduced their support for ISIS but not al Nusraqaida. I’ll believe that when it crashes through my windshield. The U.S. “effort” against ISIS was a pretend war. We allowed ISIS oil tankers to move freely and in great numbers on Syrian roads. The Russians put a stop to that within weeks if not days of their arrival. All of our surveillance assets just couldn’t find those large convoys moving to and from the oil fields to the Turkish border.
It matters not whether the forces attacked by the U.S. were uniformed or not, “stateless” or not. An illegal U.S. presence is the issue and, being there illegally, the U.S. is not entitled to attack anyone. The U.S. cannot claim any right to “self defense” when its forces have no legal right to be where they are. If a burglar enters my home and tries to shoot me as I prepare to shoot him, he can’t claim self defense.
They idea that they were well-equipped so therefore they “must have been” ISIS is absurd. The U.S. has humint, sigint, satellite, AWAC, JSTARS, and drone coverage of Syria and our military knew who those guys were and where they came from. They started from somewhere on that day and that somewhere was known to the U.S. in excruciating detail. The presence of river-crossing equipment in the hands of the “stateless rogues” is like a kloo that this was no ordinary unit. The “bunch of guys” hypothesis looks pretty weak.
(cont'd . . .)
(cont'd . . .)
This is an exact replay of the deliberate attack on the Syrian Arab Army positions southwest of Deir ez-Zor. We lied through our teeth that we “thought” they were an ISIS positions. The attack had been preceded by intense aerial surveillance and I have zero doubt that the sigint signature of the forces attacked was plain-vanilla Syrian Arab Army. The U.S. lied to the Russians about which positions they intended to attack and it was pure dishonesty when the U.S. officer manning the hotline with the Russians said he was away from his duty station. That sounds like how our military really works.
So forgive me if I put my money on the U.S. lying about these “stateless militia” as you put it.
Please. Those “stateless rogues” with the equipment of a mech infantry battalion were clearly part of the Syrian government’s effort to take care of business and deal with enemy forces seeking to dismember Syria.
I don’t know what your HfRO anecdote establishes but if there’s any lying going on you can be sure it’s the U.S. that’s responsible for it.
Your fascination with the stateless mercenaries is peculiar in light of the fact that that description fits the jihadis fighting to bring down the Syrian government.
Ridding the world of ISIS is terrific but we’ve been supporting ISIS (see Deir ez-Zor discussion above and this source). This is well established. At a minimum, the U.S. can’t be allied with scum like the Saudis and Qataris who absolutely are supporting the head-choppers in Syria and then claim it has no moral responsibility of jihadi terror and the 400,000+ civilian deaths and massive destruction in Syria. Get that? We’re not fighting anything but a pretend war against ISIS. We’re supporting them in aid of our new objective of balkanizing Syria to make our Israeli “allies” happy.
Again, congressional cowardice (i.e., nonfeasance) does not establish the absence of war crimes, to wit, inter alia, aggressive war against a sovereign state.
I wish for no U.S. troop to be injured or killed. What I do want is for the U.S. military to operate to vindicate U.S. interests and legally. Neither of those things is happening.
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