Syrian Chaos: Can this end well?

They've got a long ways to go to beat this guy:

He's a bard. Not a good comparison.

But such panache!

I also think that bard is smoking the largest roach in the world.

Not directly related but pretty funny news. Must have been horrific for the passengers though.

I would have loved to have been the pilot making the descent into Damascus.
"Ladies and gentlemen... I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we're not going to die in the near future. It's always helpful to remember that, when it's true. The bad news, though...."

Reports are cropping up that Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharie has defected.

StG 44 spotted.

Looks like Anti-Bunny's going for a Big Year again. The competition better watch out!

Seems more likely that it would be a Yugoslavian made copy from the 1980's - according to wikipedia they exported them to the middle-east.

Surreal.

That is...kinda awesome really. In a crazy way. Kickstarter freezes their project though.

Yeah. I can see how Kickstarter doesn't really want to get into funding civil war though.

Something interesting from the local Public broadcaster - Syrian "businessman" going through

Also apparently the going rate for AK bullets is now $2.50 EACH due to scarcity!

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3583715.htm

Heh, AK Bullets.

Anyone know what an AK47 bullet normally costs? Is it feasible to manufacture your own?

Here in the US (assuming it's the 7.62x39 round), it's anywhere from $.20 to a dollar per round depending on the make and how much you buy at a time.

That's a really impressive zipgun.

Not good.

Assad's regime may yet survive by the application of brute force. The rebels are outnumbered and outgunned, and with Iranian support the Syrian army can just keep hammering them until there's nothing left. I'm not sure how his government would go about restoring any kind of legitimacy, of course, but I'm sure he sees that as better than ending up like Gadhafi.

As far as war photography goes (or rather video) these stills are extraordinary - spoiler tag because it depicts people dying, albeit non-graphically:

I can't bring myself to "like" something so... tragic... I feel sick looking at them laughing a few minutes before, knowing they leave devastated families behind.

But the shots themselves are extraordinary. Breathtaking. I've never seen anything like it.

Video and story on the group here:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...yria/120912/video-aleppo-syria-tracey-shelton

Everyone's favorite War Tourist Caro is now in Syria.

By the way, for all of you that predicted a messy civil war in Syria with no clear good guys (although there is at least one bad guy), please come by the front desk to pick up your prize.

Syrian cross-border mortar strike kills Turkish civilians.

The report says five are dead on the Turkish side including a mother and her children. Turkey is now sending it's own mortar fire back over the border and it's a big question mark whether Turkey will invoke the NATO charter.

On the one hand it was only three mortar rounds which was very possibly an accident as the shelling is routinely close to the border. On the other hand with civilian blood spilled the Turkish government is going to need a much stronger response than when their military jet was shot down.

I'm betting it doesn't go "full NATO" over this but I'm wondering what counter measures Turkey is now going to feel forced to take.

Turkey has retaliated with artillery strikes: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/10/2012103181110169706.html

It will be interesting to see if it stops here, but I just don't know that it will. Turkey may step it up now, which may force NATO into the situation forcing the U.S. into a very ugly situation.

It's reprehensable what's happening in the region, and I don't mean to diminish it by turning it into political fodder... but this may be the beginning of an October Surprise in the U.S. Presidential election.

Without specific scenarios or a clarification of which of the many October Surprise versions that are out there you mean and how that might apply, there's not much to work with here. It wouldn't be "diminishing it" except that at least one half of the election equation in the US has proved unable to engage with foreign policy outside of cartoonish gestures and fundraising, and I'm not sure how much more an actual emergency would do to enhance that.

The media sure seems focused on the idea that Syria could have an impact on the election, but I just don't get it. At this point it seems like polls show the majority of Americans are sick of our involvement in the region as a whole, not interested in making a big show of support for the Syrian rebels. Especially after the violent backlash from that stupid video showed that public views of the US in arab countries still aren't that great even after Libya and Egypt. Yeah, it probably excites the neocon elements of Romney's base, but it seems to me he is walking a fine line in suggesting he would make the US more involved in the situation.

Friedman has an interesting op-ed in the nytimes about Syria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/friedman-obamas-nightmare.html?src=me&ref=general

I don't agree with his analysis at all. Namely, this part:

He seems to think that violence in the Mid-East is inevitable, and it's best when an outside power mitigates it, in a sense. But "frequent" is not the same as "inevitable", and I haven't read a good argument for the inevitability of violence there.

But whether you care for his final analysis or not, it was this bit that I really liked for the perspective it gave on why Syria matters. To pretty much everyone.

On the other end of the spectrum from homemade zipguns, lets see what Syrian rebels have captured recently...



At which point the thoughts running through your head should be: heh, SA-24s will totally rustle Syrian Air Force jimmies and wow, are those bad to have in general circulation....

Not to get your hopes up, or down, or sideways: but MANPADS in general are not terribly good at taking down military jet aircraft. The point is more to have something on hand that presents a credible enough threat to keep aircraft outside the standoff range of the missile and, failing that, to force the pilot to choose between an effective ground attack run and self-preservation. If you can force the enemy air force to break off attack runs you win; if you can force them to do stupid things with their jets you win; and if you can force them to strap a $22 000 guidance package on to a $3000 bomb in order to effectively attack infantry you win.

What about helicopters?

Taibbi had a write like Friedman contest using that op-ed as the basis:

Original post.
Winners post.

Depends. Helicopters can't really outfly a missile one way or another. Syria flies a combination of SA 342s and Mi-24Ds in roughly equal parts. The former has little protection from weaponry of any sort, would be perforated all over the place by fragments, and would probably explode or plummet in short order. The latter is designed to be proof against .50 BMG from all aspects (a number of early WWII tanks would not meet this standard), and may very well be able to eat anything short of a direct hit and still fly.

I wouldn't completely discount them downing jets either. Sometimes people do dumb things, like fly slowly in front of a HMG, as may be seen earlier in this thread.

Dang, mine was "Go and shave right now you goddamn hippie. Also take off that stupid headband!"

Didn't one of the older variants of the Hind have this crazy vulnerability where if you shot it--with pretty much anything, I believe the mujahideen said the Mosin-Nagant was quite adequate for this--in the fuel cap, it would start an uncontrollable leak?

If you can see the fuel cap of a Hind you are way too fucking close.

Besides which, the Mosin-Nagant is a pretty serious rifle.

Also, gravity. Gas is on the bottom of the tank, cap is on the top.