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In 2006, officials from North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) closed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex after determining that “Russia was no longer a threat.” However, this week, the Pentagon announced that the military compound would reopen with $700 million worth of improvements. So what has changed? Is Russia now considered a big enough threat that the Cheyenne Complex, which is built to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear bomb, is being utilized by U.S. military once again?
Who gives a fuck about Russia with a disaster like Obama in the White House?
Political activist and blogger Ruslan Leviev says he knew something was brewing in Syria when families of Russian soldiers started contacting him in early August. "That's when we first started getting messages that our Russian military contractors are being sent to Syria," he said. Leviev says Russia has moved a small but significant military force into Syria in recent weeks. "After our first investigation we published the number of military equipment we thought was there," he said. "Based on the images of soldiers being brought to Syria on military ships, we thought that there was no less than 1,000 of them."
According to the New York Times, satellite images from the Syrian port city of Latakia show Russia has also moved about half a "dozen T-90 tanks, 15 howitzers, 35 armored personnel carriers, 200 marines and housing for as many as 1,500 personnel." "All this shows is that Russia has made a qualitative shift in its behavior," Russian political analyst Vyacheslav Matuzov said. Moscow has denied that it is building up its military presence, saying that it instead wants to help Syria's President Bashar al-Assad fight the Islamic State terror group. "I would like to say that we are supporting the government of Syria in the fight against a terrorist aggression and are offering and will continue to offer it necessary military-technical assistance," Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
And Assad needs the help. He's been losing territory to ISIS a lot faster this year than when the war started four years ago. Troop morale is also down significantly. But Pentagon officials say Moscow's sudden military moves into Syria aren't just about fighting ISIS. They believe Russia is ultimately trying to protect Assad, a longtime Russian ally. Putin agrees. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" that Assad must remain in power to avoid another Libya.
However, the U.S has repeatedly called for the Syrian dictator to step down. And the U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter says Russia's moves to defend Assad will only encourage the radical Islamic views of ISIS. "To pursue the defeat of ISIL without at the same time pursuing a political transition is to fuel the very kind of extremism that underlies ISIL. And if that's the Russian view that's a logical contradiction," Carter said.
Russia's intervention has forced a meeting between Putin and Obama in New York next week. The two haven't met in 15 months and the U.S wants to know what Russia's long-term military intentions are in Syria.
Plot Thickens as Russia Expands Syria Presence - World - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com
Pentagon Reopens Nuclear Bomb-Proof Base Deep Within Rocky Mountains
In 2006, officials from North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) closed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex after determining that “Russia was no longer a threat.” However, this week, the Pentagon announced that the military compound would reopen with $700 million worth of improvements. So what has changed? Is Russia now considered a big enough threat that the Cheyenne Complex, which is built to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear bomb, is being utilized by U.S. military once again?
2006 - Base closed because Russia was no longer a threat.
2015 - Base reopen because...
Also, from Yahoo - US, Russian war games rekindle Cold War tensions
That's exactly why you should give a fuck, you dumb fuckWho gives a fuck about Russia with a disaster like Obama in the White House?
Over the following week, aerial bombardments by the U.S.-led coalition continued in Syria as Hani trudged toward Germany, trying to leave the chaos behind. But rather than slowing, the war has only expanded with Russia entering the fray. Russia says its only goal is to attack what it calls terrorists in Syria, and it has no intention of fighting for the government of President Bashar al-Assad. But if Russia targets opposition groups or rebels, security analysts say, regional forces like Saudi Arabia will also deepen their involvement in the increasingly international war. "The goal is terrorism and we are not supporting anyone against their own people,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference in New York on Thursday. “We fight terrorism."
Rebels or terrorists
But in Syria, classifying “people” and “terrorists” depends on who you ask. Many opponents of the government distinguish between militant groups calling some “opposition” or “rebels” and others “terrorists.” The Assad government and its backers — along with others disenchanted by every group with guns in Syria — often refer to all militant groups as "terrorists." Russia is one of Assad’s most staunch allies. “From the Syrian perspective and the Russian perspective, all groups that are fighting the regime are potential targets for airstrikes,” said Musa Shteiwi, the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “The priority might be for the big ones.”
The White Helmets, a volunteer search and rescue group, shows the aftermath of purportedly Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria
The “big ones,” he said, include Islamic State militants and al-Qaida affiliates like the al-Nusra Front. Many of the other groups fighting the government are believed to be either supported by or allied with Saudi Arabia, long one of Assad’s enemies. Saudi Arabia has demanded that Russia halt airstrikes, saying they are hitting civilians in opposition cities. In the coming days, if Russian involvement begins to clearly favor the Assad government, Shteiwi says that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries will feel obliged to step in.
Expanding the war
Early on the morning of Sept. 30, a Russian three-star general approached the American embassy in Baghdad, walked past a wall of well-armed Marines, to deliver face-to-face a diplomatic demarche to the United States. His statement was blunt: The Russia military would begin air strikes in neighboring Syria within the hour — and the American military should clear the area immediately. It was a bout of brinksmanship between two nuclear-armed giants that the world has not seen in decades, and it has revived Cold War levels of suspicion, antagonism and gamesmanship.
With the launch of airstrikes in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated a proxy war with the U.S., putting those nation's powerful militaries in support of opposing sides of the multipolar conflict. And it's a huge gamble for Moscow, experts say. "This is really quite difficult for them. It's logistically complex. The Russians don't have much in the way of long-range power projection capability," said Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert at New York University.
Toe to toe, a conventional war between the U.S. and Russia would be no contest. But few believe any conflict would play out like that.
Moscow's military campaign in Syria is relying on supply lines that require air corridors through both Iranian and Iraqi air space. The only alternatives are naval supply lines running from Crimea, requiring a passage of up to 10 days round-trip. How long that can be sustained is unclear. That and other questions about Russian military capabilities and objectives are taking center stage as Putin shows a relentless willingness to use military force in a heavy-handed foreign policy aimed at restoring his nation's stature as a world power. In that quest, he has raised the specter of resurgent Russian military might — from Ukraine to the Baltics, from Syria to the broader Middle East.
Since its annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Russia has steadily expanded its military presence in the region. In response, the U.S. and its NATO allies are working to build, train and equip Ukrainian forces.
MORE
The U.S.-led coalition, created to combat the jihadi threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq, has been wrong footed by the Russian jets pounding the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and by an influx of Iranian forces. The question on everyone’s mind is: will the United States and its European and regional Sunni allies intervene to stop President Vladimir Putin from reversing the gains made by mainstream Syrian rebels after more than four years of war?
Few are holding their breath. Many say, often with vehemence, that the current drama is the consequence of ongoing Western inaction and U.S. retreat at critical moments in an ever more uncontrollable conflict, whose regional dimensions are fast becoming global. Nobody in the Middle East is counting on U.S. President Barack Obama. The gloomy prediction of most is that a war that has killed at least a quarter of a million people and displaced half the Syrian population is about to get much, much worse. The conflict has taken a deadly trajectory throughout. It began as a popular uprising against Assad, part of the 'Arab Spring', then became a sectarian war with regional patrons such as Iran and Saudi Arabia backing their local proxies. Military interventions by Russia and Iran have pushed the war to the brink of a full-blown international conflict.
Faisal Al Yafai, chief commentator at the UAE-based newspaper, The National, recalled the words of David Petraeus, the U.S. general who led the “surge” of American military reinforcements into Iraq in 2007-08 - "Tell me how this ends". After the Russian "surge" into Syria, he said, "America and its allies now look like the only group without a plan". He believes the emerging military alliance between Russia and Assad’s other main backers – Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah – does have an idea of "how this ends". The same is true of ISIS, he said. The end for the Assad family, he argues, is its survival. For ISIS, it is to carve out and consolidate the caliphate it declared in large swathes of Syria and Iraq last year. But for Russia and Iran, it is "nothing less than the replacement of the U.S.-Israel axis with one of their own".
A new axisis
Pentagon Reopens Nuclear Bomb-Proof Base Deep Within Rocky Mountains
In 2006, officials from North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) closed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex after determining that “Russia was no longer a threat.” However, this week, the Pentagon announced that the military compound would reopen with $700 million worth of improvements. So what has changed? Is Russia now considered a big enough threat that the Cheyenne Complex, which is built to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear bomb, is being utilized by U.S. military once again?
2006 - Base closed because Russia was no longer a threat.
2015 - Base reopen because...
Also, from Yahoo - US, Russian war games rekindle Cold War tensions
Pentagon Reopens Nuclear Bomb-Proof Base Deep Within Rocky Mountains
In 2006, officials from North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) closed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex after determining that “Russia was no longer a threat.” However, this week, the Pentagon announced that the military compound would reopen with $700 million worth of improvements. So what has changed? Is Russia now considered a big enough threat that the Cheyenne Complex, which is built to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear bomb, is being utilized by U.S. military once again?
2006 - Base closed because Russia was no longer a threat.
2015 - Base reopen because...
Also, from Yahoo - US, Russian war games rekindle Cold War tensions
No such things as nuclear bomb proof. What's happening is the majority of a nucler detonation on the ground bounces off the earth and up into the sky harmlessly (relatively speaking.) This is why they detonate them at a thousand or so feet to maximize the shock wave effect. NORAD's considerably better protected from a nearby detonation than an above ground facility, but they didn't cover the mountain in some mythical protective thing or anything. It's simply that it's underground.
As to reopening it, regardless of current threats it's there, it's all set up, not using it is a massive waste of an excellent resource.
Is Russia a threat? To the US? No. To others, yes. Can think of lots of reasons to have Cheyenne open and operational, none to close it.
The best reason to open a secluded shelter deep within the granite of the Cheyenne Mountains is.....Pentagon Reopens Nuclear Bomb-Proof Base Deep Within Rocky Mountains
In 2006, officials from North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) closed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex after determining that “Russia was no longer a threat.” However, this week, the Pentagon announced that the military compound would reopen with $700 million worth of improvements. So what has changed? Is Russia now considered a big enough threat that the Cheyenne Complex, which is built to withstand a 30 megaton nuclear bomb, is being utilized by U.S. military once again?
2006 - Base closed because Russia was no longer a threat.
2015 - Base reopen because...
Also, from Yahoo - US, Russian war games rekindle Cold War tensions
No such things as nuclear bomb proof. What's happening is the majority of a nucler detonation on the ground bounces off the earth and up into the sky harmlessly (relatively speaking.) This is why they detonate them at a thousand or so feet to maximize the shock wave effect. NORAD's considerably better protected from a nearby detonation than an above ground facility, but they didn't cover the mountain in some mythical protective thing or anything. It's simply that it's underground.
As to reopening it, regardless of current threats it's there, it's all set up, not using it is a massive waste of an excellent resource.
Is Russia a threat? To the US? No. To others, yes. Can think of lots of reasons to have Cheyenne open and operational, none to close it.
Okay... then why are we reopening the base?
