"272 Syrian rebel fighters and 447 civilians"
That requires a bit of editing:
"272 Syrian rebel fighters and 447 camp followers"
Leaving behind 35,000 civilians who should now enjoy a bit a peace.
That the rebels previously avoided such deals because they believed Obama, Kerry, Cameron, Hollande, et al. when they said that Assad had to leave before the transition confirms in my mind that Obama, Kerry, Cameron, and Hollande are primarily responsible for the dead in Syria.
There are suggestions that the prisoner exchange deal mentioned was funded by the Qataris - what better way to fund a bunch of terrorists you support while feigning innocence.
Perhaps the French government should take a leaf out of the Russian play book and build and staff a few mosques itself instead of relying on the takfiris in Saudi Arabia to fund and staff them.
You seem to be saying that both Russia and the United States want to see the break up of the EU and that the United States is using Putin to carry out that act. Geez, that must be pure morphine you're using - I had it once when a nurse practitioner tried to reset a dislocated ankle and broken leg. Happy times...............
Obama also believes the fantasy/propaganda that the Soviet Union broke up because of the "quagmire" that was Afghanistan. The reason that the Soviet Union failed was because its economic policy didn't work, so it had no other option than to withdraw from Afghanistan. As for whether or not Afghanistan was a quagmire, that is doubtful. For instance, in the nine and a half years the war lasted, the Soviet Union lost about 14,500 dead which was about the same as it lost on average in two days (YES, TWO DAYS) during World War 2. As for who came of worse from the Soviet-Afghan war, it was undoubtedly the Afghans but the United States probably came off second worse. Because it suited the Americans to claim "victory" over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the real foot soldiers of the "victory", the jihadis funded by Suadi Arabia, came away with the mistaken idea that they had defeated the Soviet Union and went for their next enemy, the United States's.
As for continuing to "make gains", Putin is just out to make sure Russia and Europe don't lose out big time by maintaining a cordon sanitaire between the jihadi, salafi, and takfari mad dogs sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Europe/Russia.
Thank you Michael for the best laugh I've had today. It take's a special level of stupidity, far below imbecility or idiocy, to believe your own propaganda so comprehensively, but you are there. Pravda had nothing on you and I'm sure that Goebbels would have been jealous.
The Soviet Union was never going to invade Western Europe because its leaders were exceptionally cautious men who knew that there was no point. The reasons that the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe, were two fold, firstly because most of the countries in Eastern Europe had fought on the side of the Germans and had participated in the German invasion of the Soviet Union so why should they be trusted by the Soviet Union and secondly to ensure that any subsequent war was not fought on or near Soviet territory, instead for geographical reasons, it would most likely be fought in Germany. Bear in mind that even before the end of hostilities in Europe where most of the fighting was done by the Soviet Union, there were voices in America calling for the Germans to be turned, rearmed, and for the western allies to invade the Soviet Union again.
"And it was a missed opportunity of tragic proportions that the West did not reciprocate by dissolving NATO once that military alliance’s bête noire and raison d’être was no more."
NATO was created in 1949, while the Warsaw Pact was created in 1955 following the integration of Germany into NATO so NATO had nothing to do with the Warsaw Pact.
BTW, perhaps someone should launch a reality TV show called, say, "Target of Opportunity" where they publish details of ISIS and Al Qaeda targets in Syria, allow people to phone in and vote on what targets should be destroyed and then provide details of the winning targets to the United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia. They could include "instant games" with a drone flying above a moving target, say of oil tankers, and the winner is the country that destroys it. The subsequent program would start with seeing which country destroyed which target.
My response is "so what"? That is the way with this type of warfare where there is no solid front line. Sometimes one party concentrates enough forces to capture ground and then the other concentrates its forces to recapture it. Without the massive quantities of men, aircraft,and material the United States poured into Iraq, it's what would have happened in Iraq.
Try finding Tal Bajer on Google or Bing maps. Sure, al-Eis is there as well as Banes ans Al-Hadher (aka Al-Hadar), but no I can't see Tal Bajer which means it's not really a town, more likely a village or hamlet. So why would the SAA and its allies waste soldiers defending a collection of buildings that have no strategic and most likely tactical value? Is Al-Qaeda going to leave its tanks there to protect this "high-value" target. I doubt it but I hope they are stupid enough to do so as they will be cheap fodder for close air support. BTW, since these are Al Qaeda tanks, you would have thought that the USAF would be desperate to destroy them, you know, 9/11 and all that' but some how I doubt it because they are now "moderates" (OK, compared to ISIS they probably are but not by much).
Perhaps he should ask Cameron as well -since Cameron seems to think there are 70,000 moderate rebels in Syria - with a force that big, ISIS would be gone in days.
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Thingamajig