{"id":37571,"date":"2018-09-10T06:02:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T11:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37571"},"modified":"2018-09-10T06:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T11:02:24","slug":"moscow-has-upped-the-ante-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37571","title":{"rendered":"Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/09\/09\/moscow-has-upped-the-ante-in-syria\/\">Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>As Syrian forces backed by Russia launch the final showdown in Syria against jihadist extremists in Idlib province, the potential for a U.S.-Russia confrontation has never been greater, as VIPS warns in this memo to the president.\u00a0<span id=\"more-30030\"><\/span><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_1726228808\"><span class=\"aQJ\">September 9, 2018<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>MEMORANDUM FOR:<\/strong> The President<\/p>\n<p><strong>FROM:<\/strong> Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/p>\n<p><strong>SUBJECT<\/strong>: Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria<\/p>\n<p>Mr. President:<\/p>\n<p>We are concerned that you may not have been adequately briefed on the upsurge of hostilities in northwestern Syria, where Syrian armed forces with Russian support have launched a full-out campaign to take back the al-Nusra\/al-Qaeda\/ISIS-<wbr \/>infested province of Idlib.\u00a0 The Syrians will almost certainly succeed, as they did in late 2016 in Aleppo.\u00a0 As in Aleppo, it will mean unspeakable carnage, unless someone finally tells the insurgents theirs is a lost cause.<\/p>\n<p>That someone is you. The Israelis, Saudis, and others who want unrest to endure are egging on the insurgents, assuring them that you, Mr. President, will use US forces to protect the insurgents in Idlib, and perhaps also rain hell down on Damascus.\u00a0 We believe that your senior advisers are encouraging the insurgents to think in those terms, and that your most senior aides are taking credit for your recent policy shift from troop withdrawal from Syria to indefinite war.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Big Difference This Time<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Russian missile-armed naval and air units are now deployed in unprecedented numbers to engage those tempted to interfere with Syrian and Russian forces trying to clean out the terrorists from Idlib. We assume you have been briefed on that \u2014 at least to some extent. More important, we know that your advisers tend to be dangerously dismissive of Russian capabilities and intentions.<\/p>\n<p>We do not want you to be surprised when the Russians start firing their missiles.\u00a0 The prospect of direct Russian-U.S. hostilities in Syria is at an all-time high.\u00a0 We are not sure you realize that.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria As Syrian forces backed by Russia launch the final showdown in Syria against jihadist extremists in Idlib province, the potential for a U.S.-Russia confrontation has never been greater, as VIPS warns in this memo to the president.\u00a0September 9, 2018 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6963,21569,542,694,776,21058,21057],"class_list":["post-37571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-idlib-province","tag-moscow","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-veteran-intelligence-professionals-for-sanity","tag-vips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37572,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37571\/revisions\/37572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}