OF THE
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Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!"History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way," Trump promises, accompanying that carrot with another stick. "It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen."
The treatment of the missive, which sparked quite an uproar both in the US and Turkey, was reported by what the BBC described as "Turkish presidential sources."Two Russian officials commented on the letter:
"President Erdogan received the letter, thoroughly rejected it and put it in the bin," sources were cited as saying.
A similar account was reported by the Middle East Eye, which cited anonymous Turkish officials. Some Turkish journalists reported the letter being treated in that fashion.
The Senator from Perm Krai Aleksey Pushkov has called the contents of Trump's letter to Erdogan 'weird', adding that the inauguration procedure in the US, the publication of letters from world leaders, and former Vice-President Biden's demands to remove the Prosecutor General of Ukraine from office show that "the US administration cannot deal with its own problems, let alone with the global ones."Turkish troops (and their jihadist mercenaries) are already behaving like barbarians. Here they are executing two unarmed prisoners on the side of a road. (Here are some Turkish soldiers beheading some Kurdish fighters sometime within the last 2 years.) This is the same sort of behavior the "moderate rebels" have been guilty of for the entirety of the Syrian war. But only now are the Western MSM taking notice, "because Trump." Better late than never. Maybe their hatred of Trump can cause them to muster some support for the Syrians and Russians, who have been fighting these crazies for years. They're the ones "protecting the Kurds" now, after all. Moon of Alabama comments:
Earlier today, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the language of US President Donald Trump's letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shortly before Turkey's operation in Syria was "unusual."
"Such a language is rarely found in the correspondence of state leaders. A very unusual letter," Peskov told reporters.
Turkey still insists on a corridor of some 20 kilometers depth to prevent a PKK build up in the area near its border. At that depth Turkey would occupy the M4 highway which is a main economic corridor in the northern area. Under the Adana agreement from 1998 Turkey is allowed to make temporary incursions at the border up to a depth of 5 kilometer to fight any PKK concentration. Anything beyond that infringes on Syria's sovereignty and can not be tolerated.Here are the Turks moving some jihadis from Idlib to southeast:
Under the same treaty Syria is obligated to prevent any PKK camps or training areas in Syria. The U.S built 'Syrian Democratic Forces' are nothing but the PKK with a few drafted Arabs mixed in. The SNC will soon be dissolved into the Syrian Arab Army and the autonomous Kurdish administration will be removed. All that will alleviate the Turkish concerns and remove its justification for any occupation of Syrian land.
The mainstream borg is up in arms that Turkey uses Jihadis to attack their beloved anarcho-marxist PKK terrorists group. They have conveniently forgotten the history of the U.S. war on Syria, its arming of those Jihadis and its pampering of al-Qaeda.
The U.S. did not betray the Kurds any more than it betrayed Turkey and the Jihadis which the Obama administration armed throughout the war. Those were also U.S. 'allies' that were left hanging. Raina Khalek made a good video narrative that debunks much of the false Syria narrative the main stream media is now using.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday downplayed the escalating tensions in the Middle East in the aftermath of his abrupt withdrawal of American troops from northeastern Syria, referring to the area as "not our border" and to Kurdish forces as "no angels."This is rich:
"If Turkey goes into Syria, that's between Turkey and Syria," he said to reporters in the Oval Office. "It's not between Turkey and the United States, like a lot of stupid people would like us to — would like you to believe."
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"If Russia wants to get involved with Syria, that's really up to them," Trump said. "They have a problem with Turkey. They have a problem at a border. It's not our border. We shouldn't be losing lives over it."
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"No, President Erdogan's decision didn't surprise me because he's wanted to do that for a long time. He's been building up troops on the border with Syria for a long time, as you know," Trump said to reporters.
"And I say: 'Why are we protecting Syria's land?' Assad's not a friend of ours. Why are we protecting their land?' And Syria also has a relationship with the Kurds, who by the way, are no angels."
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"By the way, everybody hates ISIS," Trump said. "Some were released just for effect to make it look like, 'Oh gee, we gotta get back in there,'" he added, making light of reports that some ISIS members had escaped from captivity.
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In response to Trump's comments Wednesday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of Trump's closest allies in Washington who has also emerged as an outspoken critics of his Syria decision, said that the move could be "a complete and utter national security disaster in the making."
Trump later addressed Graham's criticism at a press conference, telling reporters that Graham "would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years," and applauding himself for not caving to party pressure, noting that it was "probably just politically better for me" to leave U.S. troops in Syria.
Trump boiled it all down to keeping his 2016 campaign promise.
"I campaigned on bringing our soldiers back home, and that's what I am doing," he explained.
Democrats and 129 of the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to pass a non-binding resolution disapproving of President Donald Trump's pullout of US troops from Syria - never authorized by Congress to be there.Here's footage of the Syrian army entering Kobani (Ayn al-Arab), thus blocking the Turks from occupying the city:
The House Joint Resolution 77 describes the presence of US troops in northeastern Syria as "certain... efforts to prevent Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces," and formally voices opposition to their withdrawal, but does not offer an alternative. Instead, it demands the White House present a "clear and specific plan for the enduring defeat" of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
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The House resolution asks the White House to continue providing "humanitarian support" to the Kurds and ensure that Turkey "acts with restraint," while also demanding of Ankara to stop its "unilateral military action" in Syria.
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Congress has never voted to authorize the US troop presence in Syria, which is not sanctioned under international law and is based only tenuously on old resolutions allowing military action against Al-Qaeda terrorists following the 9/11 attacks. Damascus considers the US presence a violation of its sovereignty, unlike the Russian force that was invited back in 2015.
While the resolution does little to change the situation in Syria, the fact that so many Republicans chose to back Democrats against the sitting president from their party is being held up as a possible barometer for the Democrat-led impeachment process, even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly refused to hold an actual floor vote on the matter.
Everyone involved recognizes that this is a win-win-win-win situation. Erdogan could show that he was fighting against the PKK terrorists and prevented their attempts to become a proto-state. Trump could hold his campaign promise of removing U.S. troops from useless foreign interventions. Syria regained its northeast and the important economic resources of that area. Russia gained global prestige and additional influence in the Middle East.For more analysis and commentary, see:
Everyone is happy but the PKK Kurds. They are the biggest losers of this game but only in the sense that they are back to where they started. They had entered into a cooperation with the U.S. to eliminate ISIS. When that was done they got greedy and tried to rule over Arab land. It was always an unsustainable situation. After the defeat of ISIS the U.S. had no strategic reason to further pamper them. Only some wannabe imperialists in Washington DC and in Israel were urging to continue the relation.
Turkey has agreed to temporarily halt its military operation against Syria's Kurdish-led militias, allowing them to withdraw from the country's border, US Vice President Mike Pence said during a visit to Ankara.Trump is pretty pleased with himself:
"Today the United States and Turkey have agreed to a ceasefire in Syria," Pence said during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The ceasefire between the Turkish military backed by affiliated militants and the Kurdish-led fighters is set to last 120 hours, according to Pence. This time will be spent on the withdrawal of the Kurdish forces from the 20-mile strip along the Syrian border, where Turkey wants to set up a "safe zone."
The agreed stop of hostilities has been described as a "temporary" one. When a "permanent" one comes in place, US President Trump will cancel the executive sanctions against Ankara, VP explained.
The process of the Kurdish militias withdrawal will be "facilitated" by the US, Pence stated without elaborating.
"More likely to be informed is Hong Kong garment and media tycoon Jimmy Lai, billionaire publisher of the pro-democracy Apple Daily, the city's Chinese Communist Party critic-in-chief and highly visible interlocutor of official Washington, DC, notables such as US Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and ex-National Security Council head John Bolton.Jimmy Lai is telling you what the strategy is here. The goal is to thoroughly undermine China's standing on the world stage and raise that of the U.S. This is economic warfare, it's a hybrid war tactic. And the soldiers are radicalized kids in uniforms bonking old men on the heads with sticks and taunting cops.
"On September 6, before the onset of the deranged vandalism and violence that have defined Hong Kong "pro-democracy protests" over the past several weeks, Lai spoke with Bloomberg TV's Stephen Engle from his Kowloon home.
"He pronounced himself convinced that - if protests turned violent China would have no choice but to send People's Armed Police units from Shenzen into Hong Kong to put down unrest.
"That," he said on Bloomberg TV, "will be a repeat of the Tiananmen Square massacre and that will bring in the whole world against China..... Hong Kong will be done, and ... China will be done, too."
The New York Times previously claimed that the Russian Air Forces had bombed several hospitals in Syria back in May. The newspaper said that local journalists had filmed the bombing and proved the incident via a radio recording of a ground controller giving the coordinates of the facility to the pilots.
The Russian Ministry of Defence stated on Monday that the "bomb-destroyed" hospital in Syria mentioned in the NYT reports was actually a terrorist base in a cave, adding that 80 journalists saw it.
The Russian military representative pointed out that "the hospital for civilians" was located in an area far from settlements in an "isolated cave", where medics couldn't have upheld any standards for treating injured people.
According to Gen. Major Igor Konashenkov, the media fell for another disinformation stunt, propagated by the British intelligence services, masked as news from "activists".
He also dismissed claims about "eavesdropped" dialogue between pilots and ground controllers, stressing that the military does not use open radio channels to transmit coordinates.
Comment: RT reports: And some footage from today:
See also: 'Catalonia Separatists Bad, Hong Kong Pro-democracy Protesters Good' - Western Media Treating Orwell's 1984 as User Manual