Details sketchy – However, as previously anticipated this action could easily be seen as Turkish President Recep Erdogan working diligently to keep the ISIS supply lines open.

Remember, Turkey is a NATO member – if they engage in hostile actions with Russia, it could draw in other NATO allies….. Not Good.  The insufferable Erdogan escaping Putin’s wrath by hiding behind the skirt of U.S., France, Germany and U.K

According to media reports (and video here) a Turkish F16 fighter has shot down a Russian made SU24 (also used by Syrian air force). Here’s the media outline from Reuters:

Turkish F-16 fighter jets shot down a war plane of unknown origin on Tuesday after it violated Turkish air space close to the Syrian border and ignored warnings, a Turkish military official told Reuters.

Separately, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office said he had spoken with the chief of military staff and the foreign minister about developments on the border. The statement did not mention the downed jet. (link)

Excl: 2 pilots ejected from Sukhoi24 along Turkish border N of Latakia after Turkish F16 fires air to air missiles, downing plane. @FoxNews

— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) November 24, 2015

(more…)

Russia leverages the terror-threat-vulnerability of France to take up measures supporting Putin’s strategic goals in Syria… and it works flawlessly.  Meanwhile President Obama is stomping his feet mad that Islam is being attacked and his only ally in support of the Islamic State is BFF Erdogan…

RUSSIA – The United Nations has called the states to fight “a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security” which is Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL, Da’esh). All 15 members of the UN Security Council voted to adopt the French-proposed resolution.

The resolution “calls upon member states that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures … on the territory under the control of ISIL … in Syria and Iraq.”

IS “constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security,” the resolution says.

Russia has repeatedly called for action to cut the terrorists’ financial lifelines, with President Vladimir Putin revealing on Monday that IS is receiving funding from 40 countries. (more…)

(Via Daily Mail) Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to hunt down and punish the terrorists responsible for downing a passenger jet over the Egyptian Sinai desert after it emerged a 1.5kg ‘home made’ bomb destroyed the aircraft.

Russian security services have admitted that they have found traces of explosives on a passenger jet which was blown up over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula killing all 224 people on board.

A $50 million reward has reportedly been offered for information leading to the killers.

The Airbus A321 disappeared 23 minutes after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh airport en-route to St Petersburg.  (more…)

We have discussed the potential for SAAMS (Surface to Air Missiles) MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) being used against passenger planes, specifically in the North Africa region, amid these pages for over 4 years.

Did it just happen?  …. and would they even tell us if it did?

ISIS is claiming responsibility for the loss of a Russian passenger aircraft killing 224 passengers and crew:

The Russian jet which crashed in Sinai killing all 224 people on board did not lodge an SOS call before it hit the ground, it has emerged.

[…]  The Islamic State group affiliate in Egypt has claimed it downed the aircraft, but has not said how it might have done so. Cairo and Moscow, however, have denied any possible terrorism link in the incident, one of the deadliest Airbus crashes in the past decade.  (link)

Here’s the case for how this can connect to the Libyan Uprising and Clinton’s Rebels.

In 2011 thousands of SAAM’s (Surface to Air Assault Missiles), and MANPADS went missing during the Libyan Islamist uprising.  Some went West and South, further into Africa as noted by Chad’s President Deby (asking for help), and some went East into Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

These points are not disputed.  They are widely accepted.  Here’s a few data images from the 2011 time-period when these missiles went missing. (more…)

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Russia and Syria unleashed a coordinated assault by land, air and sea on Wednesday, seeking to reverse recent gains by rebel groups that were beginning to encroach on President Bashar al-Assad’s last bastion of power.

Moscow said it had fired 26 cruise missiles on Syrian targets from naval vessels in the Caspian Sea, 900 miles away, though it was not immediately clear whether they hit targets in the area of the ground offensive.

The ground assault, and airstrikes, seemed to focus on an area of northern Hama Province and southern Idlib Province, around three villages that insurgents consider the first line of defense of the strategic Jebel al-Zawiyah area. (more…)

Russia only gave the United States an hour’s warning ahead of the strikes and did not specify where they would occur, riling many in the Pentagon who had been hoping for clearer and more detailed lines of communication.
A Russian general asked the U.S. to remove its planes from Syrian airspace Wednesday, just hours before Russian airstrikes began there.  It would appear Russia is creating a battle space to re-stabilize Assad…

SYRIA – The Russian three-star general, who was part of the newly formed intelligence cell with Iraq, Iran, and the Syrian government, arrived in Baghdad at 9 a.m. local time and informed U.S. officials that Russian strikes would be starting imminently—and that the U.S. should refrain from conducting strikes and move any personnel out. The only notice the U.S. received about his visit was a phone call one hour earlier.
The Russian strikes were centered about the city of Homs, according to initial accounts in the local press and in social media. That’s significant, because Homs is not known to be an ISIS stronghold. (more…)

Our favorite ideological cabinet member appeared on CBS this morning replete with new linguistic skills.  Listen to question at 01:58, and within the answer: “de-conflict” … it reappears a few minutes later in another retort.

Last night during the GOP debate the question of Syria was asked; none of the candidates spoke of an increasingly specific aspect to the Syrian reality.

Anyone who has a basic understanding of the current situation in the Mid-East must accept that Russia is playing chess, and the Obama administration is insufferably getting out-played.
It was only a few weeks ago when Egypt’s Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah went to Moscow and met with Vladimir Putin.
A little over a week later Putin begins putting additional Russian military forces into Syria presumably to assist Bashar Assad in removing his adversaries, various ISIS elements.
What Putin is inevitably doing right now is pushing out those elements within Syria who collectively create one side of the Syrian civil war.  He’s going to continue pushing those Syrian people into Turkey and, as a consequence of Erdogan’s unwillingness to be destabilized by those elements, ultimately they will travel into Europe. (more…)

Many people will look at this devastating sunlight upon the U.S Intel Community as a political embarrassment for the Obama administration.  However, I would disagree. 
This entire exposition smells more like a deflective shield targeted to give the White House an excuse for terrible Mid-East policy.   This “revelation” protects the White House more than it causes embarrassment; it gives Obama excuses for his failures…. and you’ll note this is surfacing at a time when Russia is entering Syria under the auspices of needing to fight ISIS, because the U.S. has failed.  There’s an obvious transparency to the timing…
(Via Daily Beast) More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.
The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence. (more…)

Rumor has it that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to un-friend Lavrov on Facebook.  Meanwhile, President Obama is strongly considering approval for a pointed #Hashtag campaign.  Follow-up To This Story

(Via Reuters) Secretary of State John Kerry told his Russian counterpart on Saturday the United States was deeply concerned about reports that Moscow was moving toward a major military build-up in Syria widely seen as aimed at bolstering President Bashar al-Assad. (more…)