This piece describes the Russian war plan for Syria, even though author Jamie Dettmer is wrong about fortunes being reversed. The overall strategy — to crush the more moderate armed factions in the opposition, leaving the extremists — is straight out of the Chechnya playbook, say military analysts. So too are the scorched-earth indiscriminate tactics…
World War I soldiers versus the Islamic State
March 15, 2015
On Twitter a man claiming to be a member of the Islamic State tried to engage me. He said he was a combat veteran of fighting against the US and Israel. Literally everything he tweeted was factually incorrect, and he wrote in perfectly fluent, colloquial American English. I’m sure he’s a fake, but I blocked…