With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 07/19/2017 - 12:59pm

It's not a secret that NATO ally Turkey has been unhappy with our aiding and arming the Syrian Kurds.
Speaking of "not a secret", our troop locations are no longer secrets either.

In reports published in both Turkish and English on Tuesday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency provided detailed information about 10 U.S. bases in northern Syria, including troop numbers and a map of the U.S. force presence in the Turkish version. The reports noted that the military outposts are “usually hidden for security reasons, making it hard to be detected.” It said they were located “in the terrorist PKK/PYD-held Syrian territories,” a reference to Kurdish groups that Turkey’s government considers terrorist organizations.
Despite a tight military alliance dating back to the Cold War, Turkey and the U.S. have been at odds for years now over the U.S. partnership with Kurds in Syria who are affiliated with separatist movements inside Turkey. The Turkish government probably leaked U.S. troop locations to Anadolu as retaliation, according to Aaron Stein, a fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington.
“The U.S. takes force protection seriously, obviously,” Stein said by email on Wednesday. “The Turkish government knows this, and still decided to leak the locations of U.S. bases in Syria. Hard not to see this as a F-you.”

Wow. I think the Turks should have included directions to yo' mama's house, because she's so ugly, while they were at it.
Meanwhile, Turkey's jihadist proxies are engaged in bloody clashes with U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, while Turkey is considering an all-out assault.

Finally, Trump has managed to kill almost as many innocent civilians in six months that Obama did in two years.

The NGO, which monitors the international air war against Daesh, said coalition airstrikes in Syria and Iraq overseen by former President Barack Obama likely killed 80 civilians each month, amounting to approximately 2,300 casualties. However, in the six months since Trump was inaugurated, the US-led coalition has killed 360 civilians per month, 2,160 civilians in total.

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Comments

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Wed, 07/19/2017 - 1:39pm

I wrote Turkey off when Erdogan was caught aiding ISIS

months ago. But then again we've been caught aiding everybody so wtf?

In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA

https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pe...

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 07/19/2017 - 4:06pm

Pentagon is furious

rightly so

Spokesmen for Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, and for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, asked The Daily Beast not to publish the detailed information reported by Anadolu.
“The discussion of specific troop numbers and locations would provide sensitive tactical information to the enemy which could endanger Coalition and partner forces,” wrote Col. Joe Scrocca, coalition director of public affairs.

“Publishing this type of information would be professionally irresponsible and we respectively [sic] request that you refrain from disseminating any information that would put Coalition lives in jeopardy.”

Col. John Thomas, spokesman at the Central Command, also asked The Daily Beast to refrain from publishing details of coalition operations, on the grounds it would be “potentially harmful to the lives of those involved.”

In fact, Anadolu had already published the information Monday on its Turkish language service and then issued it on its English language services Tuesday.