EDITOR—The rules of war continue to change rapidly in the Ukraine battlefield, notes Scott Ritter, as drone and missile (and other new or revised) technologies redraw the battlefield. Ukraine has definitely lost the war, notes Ritter, and the West will have to adapt to this reality as Moscow sets the term for the peace and the future of the region.
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MOA—Erdogan had planned to only occupy a 10 miles deep strip along the Syrian-Turkish border. Some 15,000 Turkish controlled ‘Syrian rebels’ stand ready for that. He would need some 50-100,000 troops to occupy all of east Syria northward of the Euphrates. It would be a hostile occupation among well armed Kurds who would oppose it and an Arab population that is not exactly friendly towards a neo-Ottoman Turkey. Erdogan knows this well.
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PAUL EDWARDS—After decades of proven baldfaced crime, deceit and the dirtiest pool at home and abroad, the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Justice Department and the whole foetid nomenklatura of sociopathic rats, are portrayed as white knights of virtue dispensing verity as holy writ. And “progressives” buy it.
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FEDERICO PIERACCINI—The F-35 program has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars and will soon reach the exorbitant and surreal figure of over 1 trillion dollars. It has already been sold to dozens of countries bound by decades-long agreements. The F-35 has been developed as a multi-role fighter and is expected to be the future backbone of NATO and her allies. Its development began more than 10 years ago and, despite the countless problems that still exist, it is already airborne and combat-ready, as the Israelis insist. From the US point of view, its employment in operations is played down and otherwise concealed. The less data available to opponents, the better; though the real reason may lie in a strong fear of any revelation of potential weaknesses of the aircraft damaging future sales.
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Jordan, for its part, [as a longtime satellite of the West in the region] has also acknowledged that it allowed the UN to arrange for the entry and passage of 800 Syrian “civil defense workers,” according to Reuters, citing Mohammad al-Kayed, spokesman for the Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry. The Jordanian authorities later revisited the numbers, saying that only 422 White Helmets members have actually made it into the country.
