WAR: RUSSIA BEGINS AIRSTRIKES IN SYRIA; WEST DISPUTES TARGETS

USA DISARRAY

Both from Drudge. From the first story:

Russia launched airstrikes Wednesday in Syria, sharply escalating Moscow’s role in the conflict but also raising questions about whether its intent is fighting Islamic State militants or protecting longtime ally, President Bashar Assad.

If ISIL is fighting Assad, and the Russians are trying to protect Assad, then who are the Russians bombing if not ISIL? And then from the second story which is essentially that Putin treats Obama as a no-account nonentity:

This would be a plain victory for Assad, who invited the Russians to join his battle to cling on to power, and a defeat for the United States, which has demanded he step down.

The attacks came despite President Barack Obama sitting down with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday at the United Nations for 90 minutes of what both camps called “business-like” talks.

Seriously, who would trust Obama or Kerry on anything? This is no longer the cold War so I no longer have any kind of reflex anti-Soviet bias in thinking about Russia, authoritarian state though it may well still be. Who any longer knows who’s on whose side in the Middle East. But my enemy’s enemy is my friend, in this business with ISIL that is more than ever the bottom line.