"To the extent that there are still staunch backers of Assad, they will point fingers in all manner of directions - blaming the crippling sanctions and the loss of Syria’s east for the economic strangulation of the regime, crying about treachery among the army’s officer corps for failing to fight, bemoaning the failure of Iran and the “axis of resistance” to come to Assad’s aid. The reality is that the Syrian regime had clearly reached the point of exhaustion: unable to adequately pay its soldiers, uproot corruption in the army, or motivate men to fight for it. This was a checkmated regime with a fictional army, and it is not surprising that Iran and Russia decided to wash their hands of it before it became an unbearable geostrategic albatross around their necks."
-- Big Serge
...there was a sober silence in the room. Samuel Adams, a key figure in the American Revolution and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, spoke up to say,
“We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”
Colonel Douglas MacGregor predicts a continuation of the Iran war soon, once all sides have replenished missile stocks.
"Washington’s political class manifests much less regard for the long-term strategic interests of its own citizens—their security and prosperity. As a result, Washington pays an exorbitant price in reputation and treasure for policies that confront Palestinians with the choice of death or expulsion from their homelands.
"Assumptions of tacit acceptance or rapid capitulation are implicit and dangerous.
[The Muslims will not 'do a deal.']
"When Hitler was briefed on the expected Soviet reaction to Operation Barbarossa, Major General Ernst Koestring, a Prussian officer fluent in Russian from a family that had lived in Moscow since the reign of Catherine the Great, advised: “Initially, German forces will advance rapidly. The various peoples on the Soviet periphery will likely welcome the German forces. Resistance will be weak. But when the Germans advance into ...