That's not so good.

Maybe it's just a cover story for some other thing.

Made me wonder when Trump pulled all our forces out, and left the Kurds and Turks to do what they will with thousands of ISIS prisoners.

I could be wrong, but I doubt we are getting the real story here.

Gee,........I won't sleep a wink tonight after hearing that.

I always hate it when Zeros buds escape.

How Obama’s team set up Trump’s Syrian dilemma

October 8, 2019 | 8:44pm

It’s bats- -t crazy,” Susan Rice said Monday on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” The former national security adviser, who served under President Barack Obama, was referring to President Trump’s decision to pull US troops from northern Syria. She was particularly dismayed by what she depicted as a dangerous betrayal of The People’s Protection Units, also known as the YPG, the Kurdish force that helped the US-led coalition ­defeat Islamic State.

“These are the people who for the last four years have been fighting on our behalf, with our equipment, to defeat ISIS,” she said. “And they have done it with enormous efficacy, and they have sacrificed immensely, and we basically just said to them, ‘See ya,’ and let the Turks, who are like the hungry wolf trying to kill the lamb, go for it.”

Over the last few days, a host of former Obama officials have been repeating this story, which is highly misleading, to say the least. Rice and her colleagues would have us believe that Team Obama created a highly effective plan for stabilizing the Middle East by working through groups like the YPG, and Trump, mercurial and impulsive, is throwing it all away by seeking a rapprochement with Ankara. That’s nonsense.

In fact, the close relationship with the YPG was a quick fix that bequeathed to Trump profound strategic dilemmas. Trump inherited from Obama a dysfunctional strategy for countering ISIS, one that ensured ever-greater turmoil in the region and placed American forces in an impossible position.

To be sure, the YPG are good fighters, and the American soldiers who have fought alongside them hold them in very high esteem. But the decision to make them the primary ally for defeating ISIS came at a hidden cost: the alienation of one of America’s closest allies. The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group in Turkey.

Designated as a terrorist group by the State Department, the PKK has prosecuted a long war against the Turkish Republic, resulting in the death of some 40,000 people.

The Turks beseeched the Obama administration not to align with their sworn enemy, but the Obamaians told them, in effect, to sit down and shut up. Why? The American relationship with the YPG was a direct outgrowth of the greatest blunder of the Obama administration: the effort to reach a strategic accommodation with Iran.

It all began in 2014 with the siege of Kobani, a Kurdish town in Northeast Syria that was surrounded by ISIS fighters. Because the plight of the town was well-reported in the American media, Obama came under political pressure to intervene militarily to break the siege.

Until then, however, he had strenuously avoided involvement in the Syrian civil war. To be sure, he sought to avoid a quagmire, but he also was eager to avoid alienating the Iranians and the Russians.

By now, the negotiations that would lead to the Iran nuclear deal were underway. But Damascus was the close ally of both Russia and Iran, so any American intervention in Syria risked upsetting the new relationship that Obama was attempting to forge with Moscow and Tehran.

This factor is the hidden key to understanding why Team Obama gravitated to the YPG to solve its problems. The group had a long history of cordial ­relations with the Russians and the Iranians, and, best of all, it had no intention to topple the Assad regime. Every other group that Obama might have used to defeat ISIS had an anti-Assad agenda.

So, no, Trump is not betraying the YPG. He is seeking to restore balance to American foreign policy.

The YPG knew from the ­beginning that its relationship with Washington was temporary and transactional. It didn’t fight as a favor to the United States. America armed, trained, equipped and funded the YPG. We gave it strong military support, including aerial bombardment, which allowed it to vanquish all foes in its neighborhood. Thanks to this assistance, the power, influence and territorial reach of the group expanded beyond its wildest dreams. In the meantime, America also held Turkey at bay.

The YPG benefitted enormously from the effort, and the Turkish-American relationship suffered in equal measure. To paraphrase Susan Rice, this was a bats- -t crazy way to solve the ISIS challenge. If she and her Team Obama colleagues want to blame anyone for this mess, they might consider looking in the mirror.

Russia gets Kurds to ally with Assad against Turkey???
Who wins that one?
WW1 type powder keg.

Just another consequence of Trump playing to his own self interests instead of the National Best Interests.

I wonder if Turkey will throw in a tax break on his Istanbul twin trump towers?

You guys will talk yourselves into anything to continue believing in trump while he sells out our country.

Funny how some (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc.) worry so much about a border that is half way around the world, but could care less about their own citizenry on our own border and the invasion of cartels transporting drugs and gangs, which have killed far more US citizens. Plus they cheer Kurds in this new endeavor but despise US Border Patrol and ICE. What a joke, hypocrites with TDS.

Don't confuse proximity with importance. Which group, starving Guatemalans or ISIS terrorist fighters are most likely to terrorize and kill Americans?

This is a hard question, so think about it carefully. You might look at the past history of each group and the number of Americans that they have killed.

Just another consequence of Trump playing to his own self interests instead of the National Best Interests.

I wonder if Turkey will throw in a tax break on his Istanbul twin trump towers?

You guys will talk yourselves into anything to continue believing in trump while he sells out our country.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/syria-isis-supporters-escape-camp-kurds

Hundreds of ISIS supporters escape camp in Syria as Turkish troops approach, Kurds say.

Hundreds of people affiliated with the Islamic State escaped a camp where they were being held on Sunday after Turkish forces approached the Kurdish-held town, Kurdish officials said.

About 950 ISIS-connected foreigners managed to leave the camp, located in Ain Eissa, roughly 20 miles south of the border, after detainees apparently attacked the camp's guards and gates and fled, the Kurdish-led administration said in a statement.


The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said Turkish warplanes struck villages near the camp on Sunday. They didn't provide the exact number of residents who fled the camp, but said clashes broke out between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and Kurdish forces.



Roughly 12,000 people, including nearly 1,000 foreign women with links to ISIS and their children, live in the camp. The town of Ain Eissa is also home to one of the largest U.S.-led coalition bases in northeastern Syria.


The Kurdish forces, who partnered with the U.S. in the fight against ISIS, say they may not be able to maintain detention facilities holding thousands of militants as they struggle to stem the Turkish advance.

Turkish forces have been pushing toward the town as part of their offensive against Kurdish-led forces — fighters which Turkey believes are terrorists because of their links to the insurgency in its southeast. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey won't stop until the Syrian Kurdish forces withdraw at least 20 miles from the border.


Turkey launched an operation to carve out a "safe zone" along the border earlier this week after President Trump moved U.S. forces aside, saying he was committed to getting out of America's "endless" wars.

The Trump administration has been criticized for abandoning the Kurds, who have been steadfast allies in the five-year-long fight against the ISIS terror group.

On Saturday, the president announced the release of $50 million in aid to human rights groups and other aid organizations in Syria in an apparent attempt to counter the criticism he's received about the pullout.


“Other presidents would not be doing that, they’d be spending a lot more money but on things that wouldn’t make you happy," Trump said while addressing a gala dinner. "The U.S. condemns the persecution of Christians and we pledge our support to Christians all over.

Fox News' Morgan Phillips and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Just another consequence of Trump playing to his own self interests instead of the National Best Interests.

I wonder if Turkey will throw in a tax break on his Istanbul twin trump towers?

You guys will talk yourselves into anything to continue believing in trump while he sells out our country.

Sycamore how many tours in the military did you or kids do in the Middle East wars?

Agreed. Trump is a disaster. We're playing right into Putin's hands. Nice!!!

consider who is against this and what the realities are and you might think differently. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs reminded everyone on Thursday that our actual ally, Turkey, had been a NATO ally for the past 70 years. On Sunday, the new secretary of defense gently corrected his Sunday news show host, when she casually referred to our YPG partners as allies. “The Kurds have been very good partners,” the secretary affirmed. There’s a difference between a 70-year ally and a regional partner, no matter how distasteful you find your ally’s actions to be or how loyal you believe your partner to be.

Link to a great article...
link

https://www.foxnews.com/world/syria-isis-supporters-escape-camp-kurds

Hundreds of ISIS supporters escape camp in Syria as Turkish troops approach, Kurds say.

The entire region is shackled by the Muslim adage that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Ties and alliances are so twisted and tangled among splinter groups that aligning the US with ANY of them is sure to cause friction - if not actual conflict - with one or more of the others. The situation gets even more complicated when alliances with other countries and treaty organizations come into play.

Obama did what he did best: he announced a grandiose plan that cured all ailments, but which in reality did nothing. Or made everything worse. Examples are legion.

There really is no way out of this for us or Russia, except by voiding a lot of long-held alliances and allowing the whole region to self-destruct. And that's not a good plan, either.

This is the reality. People don't seem to get the strategic relationionship we've had with the Turks that goes back to early Cold War era. I'm still waiting for someone who doesn't like this "abandonment of the Kurds" explain to me how they are anything but the Middle Eastern version of Basque Separatists.

Not to mention the fact Trump has ONCE AGAIN co-opted the hapless democraps. Now he has them in favor of supporting war in the Middle East!

Gabbard is a n ignorant pretentious C U N T who oversells her REMF "warrior" status as bad as John Kerry did...She got "banned" because she doesn't have the numbers. PERIOD.