Global SITREP A26-13: The Syrian Crisis Phase Two

CVN-68 USS NIMITZ Carrier Strike Group Eleven (CSG-11)

2 September 2013: The Labor Day holiday weekend is still in full-swing in the United States, but our Sailors, Marines and Combat Pilots are still in the thick of the potential conflagration in the Middle East this morning. One little known secret is that should push come to shove in Syria or in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, our military forces will come under fire from within the Syrian air and sea defense systems by Russian "volunteers" who have recently taken up stations manning those Russian-made defense systems for Bashar al-Assad's government as a part of Russia's commitment to defend its Syrian ally.

Key Syrian government forces of Bashar al-Assad (land and air) and their Iranian and Hezbollah allies have mostly gone into an underground and heavily fortified redoubt. This redoubt is a just completed 32 by 36 mile contiguous bunker complex in the Coastal Mountain Range just northwest of Damascus. It can accommodate more than one million individuals plus the entire Syrian army. It has supplies for a three-year siege and an integrated hydro-electric power grid. There are underground airbases within this complex, as well as missile silos and artillery positions. It will prove to be a tough nut to crack being a much larger and natural version of Hitler's Atlantic Wall of WWII. This Syrian military redoubt will make any adventure begun by Obama a very long and expensive one that he cannot afford. The only effective response to missiles fitted with Syrian chemical warheads launched  from within this 1,152 square mile fortified under-mountain defensive position might well prove to be a nuclear response.

As I predicted a week ago, CVN-68 USS Nimitz (also known as CSG-11) has been moved into a position in the Red Sea from which a strike on Syria can be launched. This is a move that may or may not involve a transit into the already crowded eastern Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal and deeply troubled Egypt. It is no secret that President Obama is in very hot water with the Egyptian interim government for his unwavering support of the Muslim Ikhwan (Brotherhood).

For the record, the other ships of CSG-11 with the Nimitz now in the northern Red Sea are the  USS Princeton (CG-59); USS Stockdale (DDG-106); USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110); USS Shoup (DDG-86) and the USS Higgins (DDG-76). The embarked airwing of CVW-11 includes (VFA = Fighter Strike Wing) VFA-146, VFA-147, VFA-154; (VAW = Carrier Early Warning) VAW-117, (VAQ = Electronic Attack Squadron) VAQ-142; Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Six, and VMFA-323 (Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323). It should also go without saying that US nuclear submarines are a part of this mix.

The military forces of more than a half-dozen nations are now crowded into the Middle East, from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, and from the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf, are on tenterhooks in anticipation of hostilities erupting without further notice. Frontline nations Turkey (which is on high alert and still wanting payback for the 2012 shoot-down of one of its reconnaissance aircraft by Syria) and Jordan have a mix of both NATO and Arab land combat and antimissile forces arrayed, as does Israel, the most powerful and nuclear-armed nation in the entire region. And it could all erupt should U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama decide to fire a "warning shot" without US Congressional approval and with the vast majority of We The People of the United States of America against such action being taken.

3 September 2013: The results of an ongoing poll at the DrudgeReport.com as of 06:20 this morning to the question:  

GIVE OBAMA AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATION IN SYRIA?

YES: 8.35% (20,247 votes)

NO:  91.65% (222,175 votes)

Total votes: 242,422

This is a poll in which the IP of the voter is recorded; a second attempt to vote by that IP is not accepted. That means the votes reflect an accurate sampling of how individual Americans are responding to the question. These results clearly indicate a 10:1 ratio AGAINST Obama conducting any military operation in Syria.  By the way, the Administration has not preliminarily briefed members of Congress about a single strike, but on their plan for a continuing series of strikes against Syria.

In this extremely tense military environment, reports are just coming in from both the US, Israel and Russian military sources that the US and Israel have just conducted and completed a ballistic missile interception test with at least two objects being tracked and having fallen into open waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Sending a message to al-Assad and the Ayatollah no doubt.

Another item that is dated but extremely important to know is that the Obama Administration is issuing a bald-faced lie when they say that the Syrian rebels do not possess chemical weapons. To the contrary, the rebel faction aligned with Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, was caught red-handed with 2kg (4lbs) of sarin gas. The sarin was seized from them by Turkish authorities during a raid as reported on 30 May 2013 by the Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman.

This is extremely important because Russia intends to use this incident to prove before the whole world, most likely in the UN Security Council, that the Obama Administration is hiding the truth and politicizing intelligence to suit its own aggressive agenda against Syria. In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted that the Obama Administration would do exactly this less than three months ago when he demanded that the Turkish government release all of the information regarding its seizure of the rebel jihadists sarin gas. Said Lavrov, “I do not rule out that some force may want to use it [Syrian chemical weapons] to say that the “red line” has been crossed and a foreign intervention is needed.” This statement was carried in the Turkish media but it was not picked up or repeated in Western media, particularly in the United States.

According to an excellent and extremely well-connected source comes new intel that Russia intends to fight for Syria. Russia has dispatched (re-routed actually) some very significant firepower from its Northern Fleet which has been exercising in the Atlantic. The Slava-class guided missile cruiser Moskva (image above) with Admiral Aleksandr Vitko, Commander Black Sea Fleet, embarked is enroute via the Strait of Gibraltar (with three other major surface combatant platforms) to take command of the entire Russian Mediterranean Sea flotilla off Syria. The Russian Mediterranean Sea flotilla will soon also include the extremely silent water-jet propelled hunter-killer (modified Kilo-class) submarine Alrosa.