Real World Event Discussions

Russia invades ...

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 13, 2026 05:41
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SIGNYM

Friday, September 4, 2015 9:41 PM

Syria?

According to Zerohedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-31/russian-military-forces-arriv
e-syria-set-forward-operating-base-near-damascus

Which is according to Ynet (an Israeli paper)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696268,00.html

which according to the author is a VERY RELIABLE source, Russia has set up the equivalent of a FOB (forward operating base) in a Syrian-government-controlled airbase.

The Russians issued a carefully worded denial (at least, it sounded pretty carefully worded to me!) which ruled out soldiers and Russian airplanes, but didn't rule out technicians, intelligence officers, and trainers. Meanwhile the USA and European MSM stayed pretty quiet about the whole thing for four days. The thought of Russians in Syria is just now beginning to leak out now, coming into the holiday weekend.

Now, I'm certain that the USA and the EU know exactly who's where, just as they know exactly who shot down MH17 (but will never come forward with that data).

There were two possibilities to point to:

Israel was whining YET AGAIN about how it was being invaded, or was going to be invaded, or was going to be nuked, or whatever it needs to do to keep its paranoid fantasies/military readiness/Netanyahu government going, or

Western governments had their own reasons for keeping this dark, mainly that they want to fight ISIS/IS but can't be seen helping Assad.

So while all this was pretty dark in the western press, and has definitely NOT been the subject of official government press releases or news conferences, I wondered if - just like detente with Iran, this marked a turning point in Russia-USA relationships, and yet another break with the Saudis over ISIS/IS (and a deep underlying fracture with Israel, which has lived under Saudi tact protection for decades). Again, since everything is connected to everything, all of this has implications for oil and for the petrodollar, which the USA now seems not terribly committed to. The Saudis have cranked open the production spigot once again; I'm not sure if they're trying to drive Russia out of business or US shale oil or simply trying to maintain market share, but they are certainly driving the price of oil down!

So, assuming this is really happening:

Russia fighting ISIS/IS.

Good thing? Bad thing?

BTW- Whatever this is, it is NOT an invasion of Syria! I just used that title since other people are so free with the word "invasion" I thought I'd pique their interest.

SIGNYM

Saturday, September 5, 2015 9:38 PM

Russia says Syria's Assad ready to share power

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/04/us-russia-forum-putin-extrem
ism-idUSKCN0R408L20150904

Quote:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is ready to hold snap parliamentary elections and could share power with a "healthy" opposition.

Russia, along with Iran, has been Assad's principle international ally in the war that has raged in Syria for four-and-a-half years and has claimed a quarter of a million lives.

Moscow has made clear it does not want to see Assad toppled and has seized on gains made by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to urge his foreign foes, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, to work with Damascus to combat the common enemy.

"We really want to create some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism," Putin told journalists on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, saying he had spoken to U.S. President Barack Obama on the matter.

"We are also working with our partners in Syria. In general, the understanding is that this uniting of efforts in fighting terrorism should go in parallel to some political process in Syria itself," Putin said.

Meanwhile. in contrast, General "Has-Been" Petraeus and former CIA director thinks we should arm Al Qaida.

David Petraeus' bright idea: give terrorists weapons to beat terrorists
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/02/david-petraeus-br
ight-idea-give-terrorists-weapons-to-beat-isis

What is he, nuts???

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SIGNYM

Saturday, September 5, 2015 9:59 PM

What Putin and others have to say (maybe).

The MSM is staying far, far away from the story of Russian troops in Syria. Here is one interpretation

Quote:
Russia is providing “serious” training and logistical support to the Syrian army, Vladimir Putin has said, in the first public confirmation of the depth of Russia’s involvement in Syria's civil war.

Commenting on reports that Russian combat troops have been deployed to Syria, the Russian president said discussion of direct military intervention is “so far premature,” but did not rule out that such a step could be taken in future.

“To say we're ready to do this today - so far it's premature to talk about this. But we are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency quoted Mr Putin as saying when asked about Russian intervention in Syria during an economic forum in Vladivostok.

"We really want to create some kind of an international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism," Mr Putin said.

"To this end, we hold consultations with our American partners - I have personally spoken on the issue with US President Obama."

Help? Yes.
Troops? Nyet.

Quote:
Russia has repeatedly used its UN Security Council veto to support Bashar al-Assad throughout the four and a half year-long war, which is believed to have claimed some 250,000 lives. Russia has also been a long-term supplier of arms to the Syrian government, something it now justifies by the need to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

Let's not forget the protective naval blockade that Russia set athwart USA plans to bomb Syria. That was an unmistakable show of force. Nobody had to read the tea leaves to figure out what was happening.

Quote:
Speculation is growing that Russia has significantly expanded its involvement in recent months, including with deliveries of advanced weaponry, a raft of spare parts for existing machines, and the deployment of increasing numbers of military advisers and instructors.

Last week Syrian state television released images showing an advanced Russian-built armoured personnel carrier, the BTR-82a, in combat. Videos have also appeared in which troops engaged in combat appear to shout instructions to one another in Russian.

Last week the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth cited western diplomatic sources

Such honest guys! I'm sure they can be believed!

Quote:
saying that Russia was on the verge of deploying “thousands” of troops to Syria to establish an airbase from which the Russian air force would fly combat sorties against Isis.

Russian analysts called the Yedioth report far-fetched, pointing to Russian wariness of repeating the American experience in Iraq and the current strain on the Russian military from a covert war in Ukraine.

By Russian analysts, they don't mean RUSSIAN analysts, they mean western analysts who at times bloviate about Russia.

Quote:
Most government-connected analysts have previously insisted that Russia’s support for Mr Assad is “strictly political”, and have dismissed reports of military involvement as “madness”.

“It is a canard. A deployment of that size would require approval from the Federation Council [Russia’s upper house of parliament],”

What size is that? Sounds like a dodge to me!

Quote:
said Yevgenny Buzhinsky, a retired Russian general who now heads the PIR analytical centre in Moscow. “As far as I am aware any advisers there do not engage in combat.”

But Mr Putin’s comments chime with experts who say the Russian government would be willing to supply substantial logistical support and advice even if it shies away from large-scale intervention.

“Such things are kept very secret, but there is definitely an adviser and instructor mission there, possibly numbering in the hundreds,” said Pavel Felgenhaeur, an independent commentator on Russian military affairs.

“It definitely includes technical advisers and

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SIGNYM

Sunday, September 6, 2015 9:39 PM

Quote:
The Internet is flooded with rumors about a Russian military intervention in Syria. It all began with an article by Thierry Meyssan in Voltaire Net and now this rumor made it to Zero Hedge. Finally, the Israeli website Ynet also joined the rumor mill. Here are the two main assertions made by these sources:

1) Russia has just created a Russo-Syrian Commission and has begun supplying weapons, sharing intelligence, and sending advisors. All of this is more or less coordinated with the White House.
2) Russia has begun its military intervention in Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base, in order to launch attacks against ISIS and Islamist rebels; US stays silent.

What is interesting in these rumors is that they appear to come from two very different sources. Meyssan gets his information from Syrian sources while Ynet quotes “western diplomatic sources”.

Finally, I will readily admit that there could be a Russian rationale for an intervention in Syria: the Russian security establishment is united in the belief that the US plan is to eventually turn Daesh (aka ‘ISIS’) against Russia and this one of the reasons it is so important to assist the Syrians: it is better to fight Daesh in Syria than it is to fight it in southern Russia.

So the rumor about a Russian intervention is at least credible. And yet, I don’t buy it.

I will gladly admit that I cannot prove a negative and that I have absolutely no privileged access to any special Russian sources. All I can offer are my conjectures and nothing more, and there is a good chance that I might be wrong. But having said that, here is my personal reaction to this rumor.

First, I don’t believe that there is much public support in Russia for a foreign military intervention. It is one thing to be ready to defend your own country or your own citizens when the latter are directly attacked (as in 08.08.08) and quite another to intervene 1’200km away from your national border. And we are not talking about just anywhere 1’200km away from Russia, but very much inside US controlled territory: the US controls Turkey via NATO and the entire Middle-East (except for Iran) via CENTCOM.

Do you remember when the Russian paratroopers moved from Bosnia to Kosovo and took over the Pristina Airport? Russia was unable to resupply them because the US basically controlled the entire airspace between Russia and Serbia. The situation is similar today in the sense that the resupply and support of a Russian contingent in Syria would largely depend on the US goodwill. Yes, the Russian could also use their Navy to resupply and support any Russian contingent through the Mediterranean, but that could be very time consuming and difficult. I have said it many times on this blog: the Russian military is not designed to operate further than roughly 1’000km from the Russian border and a military intervention in Syria, while possible, would definitely stretch this self-imposed limit.

Second, while the first part of the rumor (sending advisors, sharing intelligence and supplying weapons) does not represent a major Russian commitment, the second part of the rumor would represent a major political and military commitment from Russia.

Russia still has a very painful and, I would say, even traumatic recollection of what a “limited military intervention” looks like. After all, this is exactly how the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan was presented to the Russian public, as a “limited military intervention” to protect a friendly country from subversion, foreign intervention and destabilization. How is that different from what is happening today in Syria?

“Limited military intervention” have a strong tendency to lead to an open-ended escalation, and the Russians are quite aware of this. [AS THE USA AND SAUDIS SHOULD BE AWARE BY NOW!] I strongly believe that the Russian withdrawal from Georgia after 08.08.08 is largely explained by this awareness: the Russians could have easily invaded all of Georgia (the Georgian milita

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SIGNYM

Monday, September 7, 2015 9:02 PM

The gears of war are clanking in the USA, Britain, and France.

Quote:
BEIRUT (Reuters)
State news agency SANA said the foreign ministry had sent two letters to United Nations chiefs which objected to "brazen standpoints" taken by British officials, and accused Britain and France of a "colonialist" agenda.

On Saturday, finance minister George Osborne said Britain and Europe had to find a way to tackle the conflict in Syria, which has fueled Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War Two, and described the government of President Bashar al-Assad as "evil."

"You've got to deal with the problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the ISIL (Islamic State) terrorists, and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria," Osborne told Reuters in an interview.

The Sunday Times newspaper said British Prime Minister David Cameron wanted to hold a vote in parliament in early October to pave the way for air strikes against IS in Syria, joining an international coalition led by the United States which has been carrying out such strikes for the past year.

http://news.yahoo.com/syria-slams-british-meddling-intervention-signal
-140701535.html

Greece considers U.S. request to close airspace to Russian aid flights [to Syria]

Quote:
Greece received a request from the United States to deny Russia the use of Greek airspace for aid flights to Syria, a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Athens said on Monday. The spokesman said the request was being examined. Greece has sought to foster closer ties with Russia during the economic crisis that nearly forced it out of the euro zone.

Russian newswire RIA Novosti earlier said Greece had refused the U.S. request, citing a diplomatic source, adding that Russia was seeking permission to run the flights up to Sept. 24. The Russian foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment. Russia is a long-time ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose rule the United States and other western powers favor ending via a political transition.

The request from Washington comes after it expressed concerns to Moscow on Saturday about reports that Russia was moving toward a major military build-up in Syria widely seen as aimed at bolstering Assad.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/07/us-mideast-crisis-greece-rus
sia-idUSKCN0R714O20150907

The USA and its Western and Gulf State allies appear resolute in their quest to destroy yet another non-wahhabi state.

What seems to have lost traction in western press: Assad Ready to Share Power

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SIGNYM

Saturday, September 12, 2015 9:45 PM

Quote:
On Thursday evening, we chronicled the latest in the drama that is Syria’s horrific civil war, noting that, according to an Israeli defense source, “hundreds” of Iran’s

Oh? Iran too?

Quote:
Revolutionary Guards are on the ground in Syria fighting alongside the Russians to support Bashar al-Assad’s depleted forces as they battle to regain control of the country.

If true, that would answer the following question which we’ve been asking for quite some time: will Iran remain on the sidelines and allow the Houthis to be routed in Yemen and Assad deposed in Syria, or will Tehran, like Moscow, finally decide that the time for rhetoric has come to an end?

The Saudis, lest anyone need reminding, are destroying the Houthis to expand the reach of their fundamentalist wahhabism. This has been their decades-long project. My god, they've made such a mess of their region!

Quote:
Reports of Iranian involvement come on the heels of rampant speculation about the scope of Russia’s military buildup near Latakia where US “intelligence” and a series of unnamed “Lebanese sources” claim Moscow is essentially preparing for a full-on push to rout any and all domestic opposition to the Assad regime.

And Saddam had WMD. I've never known USA intelligence to be honest. They will say whatever they think they need to say in order to get the effect they want. I'm trying to find more reliable sources.

Quote:
The question, of course, is what happens when foreign opposition to the Assad regime isn’t willing to accept the restoration of the strongman’s rule.

Because, of course, it's up to other nations to decide which leader that want in power, and to destroy the ones they don't like.

Quote:
Predictably, there’s been no shortage of back-and-forth banter between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov over the past several days. Here's how Lavrov characterizes the exchange:

“Kerry was also pushing the very strange idea that supporting Bashar Assad in his anti-terror fight only strengthens the positions of ISIS, because the sponsors of ISIS would pump even more arms and money into it,” Lavrov said.

Considering that the USA partly armed ISIS, and that both the USA and Saudi Arabia have been shipping arms to Syrian jihadists to destroy Assad, maybe the best way towards peace is convince the Saudis to turn off the arms-tap?

Quote:
... “It's an absolutely upside-down logic and yet another attempt to appease those who use terrorists to fight dissenting regimes,” the Russian FM said, mentioning US attempts to cooperate with various extremist groups in Syria over the past few years.

“It's a colossal mistake that the US-led [anti-ISIS] coalition never considered interaction with Syria, not even information exchange,” Lavrov said. “I cannot comprehend this logic, or rather absolute lack of logic.”

“We help not only Syria, we also provide weapons to Iraq and other countries of the region that find themselves on the frontline with the terror threat. Equally for Iraq and other countries, we do so without any political preconditions,” Lavrov said.

And on Friday, Lavrov took it up a notch with a series of very serious-sounding (albeit hilariously overstated, we hope) soundbites delivered at a news conference in Russia. Here’s Reuters:

At a news conference, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was sending equipment to help Assad fight Islamic State. Russian servicemen were in Syria, he said, primarily to help service that equipment and teach Syrian soldiers how to use it.

Russia was also conducting naval exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, he said, describing the drills as long-planned and staged in accordance with international law.

Lavrov blamed Washington for cutting off direct military-to-military communications between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine crisis, saying such contacts were "important for the avoidance of undesired, unintended incidents".

"We are always in favor of milit

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KPO

Sunday, September 13, 2015 6:16 AM

Quote:
A political solution is required.

The Syrian rebels (non-ISIS) will never accept a political solution that does not involve Assad stepping aside. And the rebels will always have support from the countries in the region. Thus an obvious solution is for Assad, slaughterer of so many civilians, to step aside - but Russia and Iran are not willing to lose their man, so the war grinds on. The only positive is the Realpolitik of Russia and Iran getting dragged into the bloody mire that they have facilitated. Captured and IS-beheaded Russian soldiers would be a disaster for Vladimir Putin.

It's not personal. It's just war.

SIGNYM

Sunday, September 13, 2015 9:46 PM

Quote:
The Syrian rebels (non-ISIS) will never accept a political solution that does not involve Assad stepping aside.

Well then, the non-IS Syrian rebels are jackasses and don't deserve our support. Because, as hard as it is (for you) to imagine, Assad represents a significant portion of the Syrian population - religious minorities and women - just as Yanukovich and Qaddafi did.

Those "non IS" rebels are - for the most - part dyed-in-the-wool Sunni religious nut-jobs who are one step away from Al Qaida/IS themselves. They want to turn Syria into a Sunni theocratic state, and that explains the ease with which they morph from one group to another. The number of "rebels" who are fighting for YOUR vision of western democracy and "freedom" is vanishingly small. You clearly don't understand the population that you're talking about, which is - amazingly!- not at all like the nice western "liberal" Atlantacists that you're used to.

So you can forget all of the nonsense that you might have heard about democracy and freedom - to them (and to our respective governments) those are just magic words which conjure up unthinking support for THEIR cause.

What is "our" cause?

Why does the USA want so very desperately to do away with Assad?? Why the fuck are we even in Syria???

Because Assad represents a barrier to a western-controlled Qatar-to-Mediterranean gas pipeline, which would destabilize Russia's gas supply to Europe. You might have noticed ... well, maybe not ... all of the wrestling going on with Russia's South Stream Pipeline, which would allow Russia to pipe gas into southern Europe while bypassing Ukraine? The EU has done it's very best to block the pipeline route, putting pressure on Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, and all potential pipeline routes, and changing the rules in the middle of the game to require that Gazprom divest itself of ownership and operation of th pipeline. Russia in turn has shifted its intended route from Bulgaria etc to Turkey, and from Turkey to maybe nowhere. Meanwhile, Russia and Germany are still jointly expanding the northern pipeline route, and (last I heard) Russia still intends to shut off those trans-Ukrainian pipelines in 2019. So, good luck with those winters, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and Spain!

This is all geopolitics, son. Please, eliminate the words "democracy", "freedom", "responsibility to protect", and "human rights" from your thought processes. Neither our government, not yours, care a shit about that.

Israel would also like to see Assad gone, because they hope to gain permanent and total control of the Golan Heights, which is a main source of water. Don't forget, it was a long-term drought in northeast Syria that set this off ... fighting over water will soon become more important to the people there than fighting over oil or gas routes.

Quote:
And the rebels will always have support from the countries in the region.

They have the support of the religious nut-jobs in Saudi Arabia, which has spread its sectarian poison everywhere, with the direct financial and military assistance of the USA, Britain, and France since the USA fostered the "mujahideen" in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Withdraw western assistance and see how far that goes.

Quote:
Assad, slaughterer of so many civilians

You DO realize that it was IS which used chemical weapons in Syria, right?

Quote:
Thus an obvious solution is for Assad, slaughterer of so many civilians, to step aside

Assad has already agreed to early parliamentarian-style elections. I'm not sure of the details, but I'm sure something can be worked out.

Whatever happens, I would NOT want to see a Sunni theocracy installed in Syria, it would be a disaster for most of the people there (at least 65%, if you include women).

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns. But

SIGNYM

Sunday, September 13, 2015 10:28 PM

Psychopaths are running the world

Quote:
"All of these players, these politicians are nothing more than puppets, they don't serve the people there is no real democracy, they serve the rich and powerful who run the world and that would be the bankers who control the money supply. The bankers make huge amounts of money....wars are great for them and ultimately they control the politicians. Psychopaths are running the world."

Ken O’ Keefe is a former US Marine turned anti-war campaigner who appeared on a Press TV debate called Syria: War of Deception, and absolutely owned his opponent in such an awesome way that you’ll be cheering at his every comment.

Recorded in August 2013, this interview is now two years old, but in light of the current European refugee crisis it’s more relevant today than ever before. Passionate, articulate and knowledgeable about the subject matter, O’Keefe is the perfect guy to step up and tell these home truths- and boy, does he do a good job.

This guy nails so many crucial points about the Syria situation in one interview, he’ll have you jumping around and punching the ceiling.

“We have tortured and killed and maimed and raped around this planet; who in their right mind would consider the United States or the West in general to be in any position to punish anybody?” the veteran begins angrily, going on to outline the evidence for Syria being a false flag attack (Note: leaked emails showing how Assad was framed by the USA are detailed in this cached Daily Mail report from January 2013, which was published online briefly before being removed). http://web.archive.org/web/20130129213824/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/n
ews/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html

He rightly points out that the USA dropped more bombs in Vietnam than during the whole of WW2 combined, that it regularly arms terrorists (but the mainstream press refer to them as ‘freedom fighters’ when it suits them) and the former marine also points out how the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is nothing more than a well-planned strategy to be in a “perpetual state of war to destabilize the region for the Greater Israel plan.”

“We don’t operate under international law; we have the law of the jungle in which the rich and powerful basically determine what goes and what doesn’t go.” O’Keefe shouts. He correctly points out that Bush and Blair would be “rotting in prison cells” if the law were administered equally to all, or even “executed if their own rules were applied to their own crimes“. He also acknowledges that these men are nothing more than puppets who “serve rich and powerful bankers who control the money supply.”

O’Keefe rants about the hypocrisy of the West, who are arming terrorist organizations in the name of ‘freedom’ for civilians in geo-politically strategic countries while turning a blind eye to vile human rights abuses in countries like Saudi Arabia. The only people who still fall for all this crap, O’Keefe passionately points out, are “bought-off prostitutes [our politicians] or the dumbest of the dumb.”

I agree with the sentiment, altho O'Keefe tends not to make best use of factual material.

However, just this past week, Wikileaks' Assange said that cables from US Ambassador to Syria showed that as far back as 2006, the USA was ALREADY planning to overthrow Assad.

Quote:
The United States had planned to topple the Syrian government long before conflict broke out in the country in 2011, says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange made the comments during an interview about his new book, the WikiLeaks Files. A chapter of the book refers to a cable from US Ambassador William Roebuck, who had been stationed in Damascus in 2006, about plans for overthrowing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there’s a coup,” RT quoted Assange on Wednesday.

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SIGNYM

Sunday, September 13, 2015 11:18 PM

The "good news" just keeps rolling in. Obama fiddles with removing Assad (and playing footsie with Saudi Arabia) while Rome burns:

50 Defense Dept. Whistleblowers Slam "Stalinist" Pentagon Officials For Lying About ISIS

Quote:
Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

The Pentagon has erupted in “revolt” amid claims from 50 intelligence analysts that senior defense officials manipulated intelligence reports to downplay the severity of the Islamic State’s increasing upper-hand in the Middle East. According to allegations made in an official complaint with the Department of Defense Inspector General, the officers in question doctored reports — among other things — in order to maintain the Pentagon and president’s narrative that the war against the Islamic State, as well as Al Qaeda in Syria, is succeeding. To the contrary, the dissenting analysts — now effectively whistleblowers — have repeatedly attempted to warn that the situation is far more dismal than what authorities are revealing to the public.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official told the Daily Beast, which broke the story late Wednesday. Two senior analysts at CENTCOM — the U.S. military’s central command Middle East and Central Asia — filed the formal complaint with the Defense Department’s Inspector General in July (the analysts are formally employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s dedicated spy wing).

Other analysts are willing to back up allegations with “concrete examples.” 11 of 50 intelligence analysts spoke anonymously with the Daily Beast, detailing various methods senior defense officials have used to downplay the terrorist groups’ influence and power. This is particularly concerning considering the story told to the public is already pitiful, portraying grave threats to the United States.

In some cases, analysts allege reports that portrayed the war in too negative a light were simply prevented from moving higher up the chain of command. In other cases, they were sent back down to analysts, prompting many to self-censor their reports out of fear of rejection or punitive action.

Most sordid, perhaps, are claims that senior officials blatantly altered reports ”…to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress.” Additionally, protesting officials told the Daily Beast that

“…in some cases key elements of intelligence reports were removed, resulting in a document that didn’t accurately capture the analysts’ conclusions.” They allege “…the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.”

Many analysts said that because of these practices, they felt they could not provide an honest, unbiased analysis of the situation in Iraq and Syria — a task they were hired to perform. Others expressed this was because of the career ambitions of high-ranking officials who did not want negative reports about the conflict to compromise their chances of further advancement.

This leadership was also accused of creating an unsustainable work environment. “One person who knows the contents of the written complaint sent to the inspector general said it used the word ‘Stalinist’ to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM’s analysis,” the Daily Beast reported (This should come as little surprise considering the free reign the United States military has enjoyed not only since 9/11, but throughout the 20th century. That officials are eager to bolster their own personal power seems inevitable within an institution that has projected the same megalomania around the world).

Two analysts who spoke to the Daily Beast said complaints about ignored and doctored reports warning of the grimness

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