This appears to be a video of one of the Russian pilots who parachuted:
[youtube]https://youtu.be/GPmmtrMJyHs[/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/uACIYGF0Z8g[/youtube]
Turkmen rebels are claiming they shot and killed two Russian pilots who ejected from a jet shot down by the Turkish air force over the Syrian border. “Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air,” a deputy Turkmen brigade commander, Alpaslan Celik, told Reuters. Videos online purport to show rebels gathered around the body of one of the pilots, yelling “allahu akbar!”
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
So, now NATO is taking the side of ISIS in a war?
That’s how Russia’s TASS news is spinning this:
According to [Putin] the president, the attack against Su-24 plane in Syria goes beyond normal struggle against terrorism, and it is “a stab in Russia’s back” delivered by “terrorism accomplices”
“So, does this mean that they want NATO to serve the Islamic State?” Putin noted.
http://tass.ru/en/politics/838825
The local news claims Russian pilots were both shot at as they tried to descend by parachute.
Turkey is a transit point for ISIS oil sales to their customers.
Cut Aid to this country they have not been helpful to the effort, warring with the Kurds, who by the way have welcomed and protected the Christian refugees from Mosul.
In a BBC interview, PKK leader Cemil Bayik went further, accusing Turkey of attacking the PKK in order to “stop the Kurdish advance against [IS]”. So Turkey, he said, was actually “protecting IS”.
Just cause he said it doesnt make it true, Turkey has named the PKK a terrorist group.
How bout booting Turkey from NATO.
Call it even for the airliner Ukrainian rebels, operating under Russian guidance, shot down. Putin, you have no room to complain.
@Nanny G:
For decades whatever country would sell us cheap oil was our bff.
ISIS sells at 1/2 price !!
Cheaper than the Saudis !!
We can fight on the side of Russia/Syria/Iran OR the Saudi/ISIS/Israel/ side.
Or stay out of it altogether
History, in 1683 between September 11-12 the muslins were stopped at the Battle of Vienna, ending the Ottoman advance in Europe. In 1905, the last ruminants of the Empire became turkey. Oh-9/11 has some historical conceptualization.
Turkey is not a friend of the USA. 72% of the population is Sunnis-do the math, look at history and surprise.
@john: So, why don’t we develop our own resources? OH! That’s right!! LIBERALS!!
KGBully and his horde of trolls are whining like someone shoved a rocket up their commie asses.
War is not fun anymore, huh? This is not Europe, ruskies. Violating foreign air space can have consequences here.
Ugh! Sorry Curt and FA. This was meant to be a Most Wanted. Also see that in failing to proof-read, the video did not post.
@Nanny G:
NATO created ISIS. Turkey was flying CAP for them.
@Rasputin: Wow. You ignorant, Obama-worshiping, fact-ignoring liberals are simply going to have to face up to the FACT that your god-like Chosen One has been at the helm for 7 years, taking responsibility for anything that he can spin into a positive and is fully and completely responsible for the collapse of defense in Iraq and the rise and spread of ISIS. Not Bush, not NATO, not anyone but Obama and his rush to declare the war on terror over so he can pursue his dream of turning the United States into Greece.
@Bill #10:
Are you ALL off your meds?
The Middle-East has been a hot-spot of religious fanaticism for THOUSANDS of years, quite possibly beginning with the Jewish invention of the idea that THEIR “GOD” was the ONLY god. (Until that insulting little idea showed up, “they” had “their” gods, and “we” had “ours,” and there was no theistic reason for people of different faiths to rush at each others’ throats.)
Middle-East conflict isn’t a product of “liberal” policy. It is not the product of ANYTHING associated with the tenants of WESTERN CIVILIZATION. While Greece – where “Democracy” initially germinated – is near-by, The Middle-East never caught that bug, and to this day doesn’t APPRECIATE “democracy” in the sense that Western Civilization does. The Middle-East is caught up in notions of fairness and justice that are foreign to us, and their blood-feuds and their revenge accounts go back thousands of years and will last FOREVER.
Turkey is our friend?
Turkey ISN’T our friend?
Good GOD, people? How simplistic can you get?
(Just for an example: Putin (our ENEMY) is in Syria $hitting all over the Syrian rebels WE are (weakly) supporting. (Putin’s token slaps at ISIS have been little more than PR, even as ISIS took down the Russian airliner…) Putin’s REAL purpose in Syria is to foil US influence in the region, and he’s doing rather well…
So in steps Turkey, a NATO “ally,” and shoots down a Russian warplane that may or may not have momentarily strayed into Turkish airspace. Why? Actually because that warplane was part of Russia’s efforts to crush Turkish-backed rebels in SYRIA, not because Turkey is obsessed with the virginity of its airspace. On the surface of this, Turkey’s action would seem to fill the “The-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” rule, a “rule” that carries a lot of weight in the Middle-East. It doesn’t matter to the clowns playing war over their that Turkey’s action inched the rest of the World a tiny bit closer to nuclear Armageddon. “Honor” is at stake, and we should be already painfully aware that as far as the Middle-East goes, death is a whole lot LESS important than honor.
Stop “aid” to Turkey? That’d have about as much beneficial effect as rubbing your dog’s nose in poo he misplaced on your bedroom floor… A YEAR AGO!
Politicians all over the globe are posturing this way and that, showing “solidarity,” rattling sabers and engaging in similar dangerous nonsense that has only one, real purpose, and that is to maintain a balance of power between the real super-powers on the Planet: Russia and the United States. All of the calls for military action against ISIS destabilize that balance, since to date, Muslim extremism has disproportionately focused on disrupting OUR side. Putin knows this, and so he pushes us to his advantage. Obama also knows this, and so he resists being pushed in a direction that we cannot win.
Y’all’d do yourselves a great favor if you could open your eyes a little bit wider and see that the Middle-East is an eternal “Tar-Baby” that we’d best not get ourselves irreversibly stuck in. It could be the end of us all.
Here’s a good one: Ask Ben Carson what we should do. His kindergarten fantasy perspective on foreign policy might give you the black-and-white kind of solution that you seem to want.
And for the record, the “Your comment is awaiting moderation” did not come from me.
@George Wells: Remember what Iraq was like when we left? Looked at it lately?
I KNOW the area is full of lunatics, but strength and power is respected and keeps them in check.
@Bill #12:
Remember what Iraq was like BEFORE we went in?
Yeah, Saddam kept the crazies in check (barely – he had to employ genocidal tactics from time to time, but that’s what it takes when you’re dealing with crazies on such a scale) and that meant that mischief – like the water it mimics following the path of least resistance – had to foment in wholesale quantities elsewhere. So what? There has never been a shortage of safe harbors for terrorists in the Middle-East, and there isn’t a shortage of them now.
(I am getting the impression from your comments that you are comfortable with policing every last corner of the globe for the rest of eternity to keep a thumb on them… is that your plan?)
As I recall, it was OUR Saudi ex-“employee” Bin Laden who had “camped ” in Afghanistan (not Iraq) (and with the Taliban’s blessing) who stirred up our 9-11 wake-up call, not any native of either of those two countries that we invaded. Doesn’t that tell you clearly enough that the mischief in the Middle-East isn’t locked down – not by repressive regimes and not by timid Western military adventurism? No matter what you decide to call them – “Islamic Terrorists,” “J-V murderers” or “Impassioned Jihadists” – they go anywhere that’s convenient: Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Iran… and Putin is there offering to help the “host” country resist our efforts to gently persuade them otherwise. Logistically speaking, the mountain he has to climb is no way near as high as the one we face, and he has no significant political opposition to deal with, unlike ourselves.
Our involvement in this eternal hornet’s nest (the Middle-East) is the height of folly. Theirs is a battle that cannot be “won,” with or without our help. Several thousand years of Middle-Eastern History should have taught us that, but somehow it didn’t. We insist on deluding ourselves into believing that a few years of American-assisted repression will cause these insane-by-Western-standards people to forget their past and “don’t-worry-be-happy,” and that’s just not going to happen. Ever.
The only solution to the Middle-East is the “final solution.” Nuclear annihilation. The end of life on this planet as we know it. For my money, they’re not worth that ultimate sacrifice.
Very interesting.
@Redteam #14:
What is interesting is that when a bunch of people who were busy blaming a problem that has existed continuously for several thousand years on “liberals,” “progressives,” “Obama,” “Democrats” and even the United States – that are all such relatively recent flashes in the pan – get their noses rubbed in that error of logic, they cut and run.
If the United States wanted to start a nuclear war and end civilized life on this planet, we could. So could Russia. We won’t, and they won’t. We’ve both got good reasons to live. The PROBLEM is that there are over 1.6 billion Muslims in the World, and a whole lot of them seem to NOT have a reason to live, and sooner or later, some of them are going to have nuclear weapons. Once that day comes, all bets are off.
@George Wells:
I agree with that, and that, I suspect is a major reason we don’t want Iran to get a nuke.
@Redteam #16:
Unfortunately, what WE want doesn’t really count for much in the Middle-East. We don’t have the capital to prosecute the War against Islam that would be necessary to de-fang this rabid animal. So we can want this or we can want that like a young girl wants a pony and a princess dress, but like the Stones said: You can’t always get what you want.
We’ve wanted to stop the spread of nuclear weapons all along (once we got them for ourselves) and still the only countries that DON’T have nuclear weapons are the ones that didn’t want them in the first place. “Nuclear Non-proliferation didn’t stop Indian or Pakistan from getting them, nor North Korea, and the recent astonishingly transparent effort to trick the American public (into believing that diplomacy can accomplish anything that isn’t backed by the gold-standard of military might and the willingness to use it) won’t stop Iran from getting the bomb either. That isn’t Obama’s fault, any more than he can be blamed for the entire fiasco that is the Middle-East. As I EXPLAINED in my post #13, $hit’s been happening over there on a regular schedule for thousands of years, and anyone who believes that from ten thousand miles away we can stop that $hit from happening needs to have his (or her) head examined.
@George Wells:
Except that the nuts in that region decided to export their craziness.
I wish you leftists could make up your minds; are you FOR butting into a country’s affairs for humanitarian (“compassionate” is the term in vogue right now) or not? Democrats supported deposing Hussein… before he posed a national security threat to the US with his support of terrorism and his WMD’s. Then, they opposed it (I’m sure the juxtaposition of Democrat and Republican leadership was only a coincidence). Whether Hussein kept his citizens tamped down with gas and bullets or not, our intelligence indicated he could pose a dire threat to our safety.
These are details the left seems to revel in ignoring, forgetting or denying. None of that matters; it’s still fact.
Now, there’s a war on terror afoot. We didn’t start it, we didn’t incite it and we didn’t create it. Radical Islam started it and we MUST fight it, capital or not. It is our survival (as opposed to spending trillions on climate change feel-good).
We don’t use our nuclear weapons to blackmail or wipe out ideological infidels. We have used them only to bring about and maintain peace. You can make a moral equivalency between us, the Russians, N. Korea and Iran having nukes, but I wonder if you can honestly admit who is more likely to use them for evil in the world?
@George Wells:
George, we have large paper mills turning out tons and tons of currency paper every day. If the country needs more money, we just run the printing presses a little longer each day. There is no accounting for that money. If someone gives me a hundred dollar bill, I accept it as 100 dollars, I don’t ask them if the government has anything to back it up. So capital is no problem.
I think there are several countries that recognize that Iran does not need a nuke and it will be a while before they get one. A helluva lot longer if Trump is elected than if Bernie were elected.
@Bill: Good comments Bill
@Redteam #19:
Israel being at the top of that short list for the obvious reasons. A “while” before they get one? How long, exactly, does this “while” have to be before it is actually significant? Are you SUPPORTING the absurd and virtually meaningless “agreement” with Iran that Obama orchestrated? If Iran gets the BOMB in ten years or in twenty instead of next year, it doesn’t make a hill of beans worth of difference in the historical perspective. Sooner or later, Iran will get the BOMB, and sooner or later, they’ll use it.
On the face of it, this statement may be slightly correct, in that a President Trump might actually stumble into doing something that would temporarily delay the inevitable that Sanders wouldn’t dream of doing even though, with his heritage, Sanders would seem to have a better reason for protecting Israel than Trump has. But your statement is moot, as NEITHER of these clowns is going to be the next president.
@Bill #18:
Congrats on producing a marvelously delusional paragraph!
First sentence: “YOU LEFTISTS,” as if I am a “leftist.” I’m not. You persistent fantasy that I AM a “leftist”is sooooo tiresome… I have NEVER been in favor of butting into another country’s internal affairs “for humanitarian reasons.” The key there is the word “internal.” So long as Hitler confined his mischief to within his own borders, I’d have left him alone. When Saddam gassed a bunch of ethnic Kurds in the Northern reaches of HIS country, I’d have left him alone, too. I respect a nation’s sovereignty a whole lot more than I respect the notion that the United States is somehow responsible for underwriting the fair treatment of every person in every country on the planet.
Last sentence: “OUR INTELLIGENCE” – as if the product of our BIG GOVERNMENT could actually get something right enough to warrant the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis. We KNOW that our intelligence was wrong, and that should give you COMFORT – you keep wanting LESS government precisely because it does such a poor and wasteful job of everything you ask it to do, and yet you base an argument on our government’s reliance on exactly that wrong data? And you think I can’t make up MY mind? YOUR mind seems to be on vacation.
Try THIS on for size:
“our intelligence indicated he could pose a dire threat to our safety.”
Apply that statement to Israel – it has spied on us, and at some point, were we to elect a president who was particularly hostile to Israel, they have enough nukes that they “COULD pose a dire threat to our safely.” Same with France. It is already lousy with Muslims. Suppose one of them gets elected President of France. He’s got his finger on the button, doesn’t he? Any country with nukes has that “COULD POSE” option, and a whole lot more realistically than Saddam had with his “might-some-day-maybe-maybe-maybe” option as IMAGINED by SOME or our “intelligence” (sic) community. How many oxymorons did you have to line up in a row to reach that conclusion? Bully Bush wanted to pick a fight with someone 1% his strength, and the so-called intelligence community gave him the excuse he asked for. He was their “commander-in-chief” – it was their job to grant him his wish. We’ve the lot of them to thank for the egg on our collective face. And you’re proud of that? Figure it’s one of our finest moments?
Pppfffttt!
@George Wells:
Talk about delusional.
The intelligence we gather is what we have to make decisions on. Look at how Bush has been blamed for being President for 9 months and not stopping 9/11… had he blown off the intelligence that showed attacks being planned, Hussein having WMD’s, Hussein supporting terrorism, al Qaeda operating in Iraq, and our wide open borders and an attack occurred, what do you suppose the reaction would have been? We would have been RIGHT to blame him for dereliction of duty.
The intelligence being faulty was a problem and on that Bush worked to remedy. Obama has undone much of that progress.
We have one.
@Bill #23:
Thanks for making my point. Or weren’t you following?
YOUR logic – that because Saddam MIGHT have been hostile enough to harm us warranted our invasion of his sovereign borders – can be used to justify invading Israel. Israel has harmed us often enough, in spite of our pouring Billions of dollars into that little scrap of parched dirt. Netanyahu has done everything he could to sabotage Obama from day one, and OUR president – THIS one – would be withing the scope of YOUR criteria for at LEAST invading Israel, if not preemptively nuking them. But no, that’s not right… BECAUSE… you don’t RATIONALLY extrapolate from the possibility that a opponent MIGHT possess the means to harm you or that he MIGHT possess the will to do so and logically conclude that you have to assassinate him, or invade his country, or depose him. That’s not even cowboy justice. It’s grand-mal paranoia at its worst, where the psychotic patient has the means (thanks to our stupid voters’ preference for drinking partners) to harm himself and/or others.
Bush worked to remedy faulty “intelligence?”
Wouldn’t a better time to work on THAT problem have been PRIOR to invading Iraq?
@George Wells: No, by your logic, any nation could be a threat… Switzerland, Denmark, Madagascar… I speak in rational, logical, sensible terms of what might actually be deemed a threat.
Oh, you mean while he had intelligence in hand, which even Democrats were supporting, showing the US is under threat of a WMD attack in a major populated area? That’s Obama-speak, translated to “I’m more worried about my legacy than the safety of American citizens”. Bush doesn’t speak that lingo.
Part of the problem with not being able to be forewarned about the attacks was the separation Clinton and Reno had put between the intelligence community and the FBI. Bush corrected that problem, but Obama, with his usual penchant for screwing up things working just fine, dismantled it. But, on the positive side, he did ramp up the spying on non-terrorist citizens.