Syrian War Report – February 16, 2017: Pentagon To Deploy Conventional Ground Forces To Syria?

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Syrian government forces have liberated the villages of Rasm al-Kama, Rasm al-Kabir and Shuwaylekh from ISIS terrorists in the province of Aleppo. The operation was heavily supported by the Russian air power. ISIS-linked sources say that over 40 airstrikes were recently delivered in the Kuweires Airbase countryside.

The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces have reportedly liberated the Western Bayarat village from ISIS in the province of Homs. Government troops are now in about 23 km from the ISIS-held ancient city of Palmyra.

The military situation in the Eastern Ghouta region near the Syrian capital of Damascus remains tense. Clashes between the joint forces of Jaish al-Islam and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and the Syrian army have been ongoing at Nashabiyah and Hazrama.

The Pentagon is considering sending conventional ground troops, additionally to US Special Forces already operating in northern Syria. “It’s possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time,” one defence official told CNN on February 15. The possible deployment of ground troops are clearly linked to the ongoing campaign to isolate and to retake from ISIS the group’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah. The US-baсked Syrian Democratic Forces, predominantly Kurdish YPG units, have little chances to retake the city without heavy casualties and time expenditure if they even can do it without massive supplies of heavy military equipment and other weapons. These supplies will clearly deepen the rift between Washington and Ankara which sees Kurdish insurgency as a threat to its sovereignty. In turn, the Pentagon’s idea would significantly alter US military operations in Syria if approved and could put troops on the ground within weeks.

On February 16, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov was set to hold a meeting in Baku. The agreed agenda included discussion of the military cooperation between Russia and the US, as well as issues of prevention of incidents related to the military activities of the parties. The possible deployment of US ground troops to Syria, a military situation over al-Bab and the Kurdish-Turkish tensions were also clearly set to be a part of the agenda.

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northerntruthseeker .

If the US is stupid enough to go into Syria directly without the approval of the Bashar al-Assad government in Damascus, then it will be same as the US declaring war on Syria!

I hope the Russians and others are advising the US government against this folly…

Jens Holm

No, its not. Seems like You want to keep ISIS alive there. The alternative seems only to arm SDF with heavy stuff. Can they handle that without much training – And afterwards, who think they should keep it.

Assad & The mafiosas named Baads are not leader of any state. Thats the reason for the uprise. Look at the map. How many years will it take for the russians, Iranians and Hesbollah to take, what those have had and has killed 1000`s and 1000`s in, so all normal possition is killed.

last estimate on a prison by amnesty: 11.000 dead. Gas. Bombardment with no limits Aleppo, Idlib a.s.o. Terrible that You even can propose Assads as leaders of all them.

Estimate 400.000 killled.Estimate 8-10 mio. refugees of estimated 25 mio. in The French Protectorat of Syria. This i no state. Has never been.

I have no best solution, but the power should be diveded out from Damaskus very much, so people all have responsibility for it.

PZIVJ1943

SDF are in no hurry to take Al Raqqa, but are making some gains to the east.
Best way to destroy ISUS is to push them on all fronts.
Talk of more US boots on the ground is just talk.
Daesh is being hit on their front lines and reserves.
Air and arty are making a difference.

Jens Holm

I dont think SDF can take Raqqa as You say. Urban warfare is tuff, and Im sure its well fortified. Even not so many troops from them make loses. Its 3 times as big as Manbij and it might be me, but I have some kind of fear for those channels.

I hope they get some better support from the outside and they are much weaker then I think now.

Im a night person and has checked my scooter and its fine again. Fuel filled up. I have also prepared for spring in some boxes. No seed in them Yet the next 2 months. The sea keep the spring away here until the middle of april, but it also keep us warm in autum, so its fine to grow a lot, but not things which use high temperatures.

I wish You good night – and good morning as You wish.

Tudor Miron

Cmon Jens, pushing NWO agenda on this site… Assad is this and that ballshit – we don’t buy it here. At list while US keeps supporting “democratic” vahhabi leaders of Saudi Arabia. There will be no uprising if not for US/SA/Catar illigal activities.

Jens Holm

Yes, we should have removed saudis and others at that peninsula many years ago. But too mnay have fear for, what will happen next is worse. I dont.

Im have been against all invasions by us. We have no friends there and it doesnt matter who kills who.

But the worst illusion are, there will be peace and kind of progress, if we were not in it. Im so tired listening to the babling rhetoric You are all innocent and are not responsible for anything.

If we are, why dont You let us or the Ottomans take over again and do as told. Same about the jew thing.

If a small dot like Israel can make catastrofes in the muslims world from Norocco to Djacarta – is it worth saving as it is. Jews didnt write the Khoran and the rest. You did.

I makes old mens rules by autodictators from the are born being raise ad´s being high about wóman. You can see it all over all debate sites and compare with fx “west”.

All is competisions a la: My dick is bigger than Yours and fokus on dicks in stead of brains. The woman are not at thise sites, because they are raised to important things are non of the buisness. You can see the in the rhetoric, where they also are rduced to cunts and words like “motherfucker”.

Many men here dont know half of the population and their high normal skills are reduced to domestic matters, where their brightness is og no use. What a waste in BNP and all. I dont think we have done that too. We have moved away from it and our woman has got more power and real respeckt then Yours have mos of the places.

We have our own problems. Things are not perfect here. But we can do something about it. Reforms are not to find another page going centuries back. Mine is to support, we get independent from oil as soon as possible.

I also see, many of You calling us for having a jewish system. Well, we use it because its the best and not because its jewish and dont deel its connected to Mecca and Medina stupidities 1400 years ago and kept so.

Same things with newssites. Well newspapers are not owned by jews.They are all more or less own by stockholders like me. All things are.

Even when muslims come here, they dont understand, that 80% of our capasity are not in the falily buisness owned by fx some jews. We work by contract with money pr our and have jobs after qualifications and not after status in the family.

Big parts of Your sometimes despotic family systems are replaced by high tax, where the money comes back more neutral to single persons.

Paulo Romero

What Nonsense!!. Are you speaking for the Syrian people?? What you are painting is a present Libya-like picture with no end in sight to the war. Assad and his family may not have been the best for Syria but they kept the country together. As per the Syrians themselves , before the war , the economy was beginning to pick up , the government was going to ease restrictions to attract more investment and nobody cared about each other’s religion. It was a fairly secular nation similar to Libya under Gaddafi. The Wahhabis and their US and Zionist backers could not have this ever , so the war started and the country has been shattered and divided ever since. Did anybody really ask the Syrian people whether they wanted Assad gone and this terrible , horrific chaos in return , did you??

Jens Holm

Its well desribed, what I say. Its a majorty regime,where 70 can and do, what they wish with the rest. The rest are no protected by the constitution and all opposition is systematicly eliminated in all kinds of proven terrible ways.

Why do I have to write this at all. Thiose facts are well known and well desbribed. Its not all right having majority rule like that.

Paulo Romero

At least there was a constitution. What made Syria a worse case for war , than Qatar , the UAE , Bahrain and Saudi Arabia??. None of them have a fair constitution or democracy for that matter. All are Sunni Muslim Theocracies ruled by single autocratic families. Jens you know that this was a shambolic war , started for profit and now backfiring horribly for the instigators. The Syrian people , every one of them are victims of greed , callousness and the religious fanaticism of the Sunni Muslim Wahabbis and their Zionist masters.

Bill Rood

It’s well described by a corrupt, lying corporate media, and you buy it hook, line and sinker. The lies they’ve told are well-documented and are generally admitted years later. There’s been an endless string of them: Francis Gary Powers; the Tonkin Gulf non-incident; the poor, Kuwaiti incubator babies; Niger yellow cake, mobile biological weapons labs, aluminum tubes unsuited to centrifuge work, artillery balloons and all the other sub-lies about Iraq’s non-existent WMD; fear-mongering about a slaughter in Benghazi that was never going to happen, followed by silence when jihadis started slaughtering black Libyans they assumed had supported Qaddafi. All that, and you’re still a sucker for all the lies about Assad and Syria.

The “facts” you talk about are not well known among Syrians living in government controlled areas, and there’s no documentation of them either. Go read a few of the reports from Vanessa Beeley or Eva Bartlett, two western reporters who have actually been to Syria multiple times and talked to the people there. Or read some analysis by Stephen Lendman or John Pilger. Can you disprove them?

You have been shamefully and deliberately misinformed in order to shape your thinking. Your ignorance is no sin, but should you choose to remain ignorant and misinformed, that will be a sin, especially if you continue to blather on in ignorance on this and other sites.