who's next?

[waider]

So, Russia is saying it didn't sell stuff to Iraq. One of the companies involved is, however, saying it sold stuff to Syria. It's a short step from there to an extension of hostilities to Syria; not helped by the fact that a Syrian bus apparently caught a stray missile, and as reported yesterday "busloads" of Syrians were heading to Iraq to join the fight on the Iraqi side.

Comments

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter. Iraq will simply become a U.S. protectorate and dominate the area soon. Cheap oil for the Yanks, an SUV in every garage, and the rest of the world will have to compensate by ultra-controlling our emissions so the planet doesn't die. Welcome to the future.

[waider.livejournal.com]

the rest of the world will have to compensate by ultra-controlling our emissions

oop. no more beans on toast for me.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I should say not!

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

I don't believe anyone actually cares about this except consumers of news. I think it's just more propaganda/backdoor diplomacy, just as the public announcment that American bugs were discovered in the EU headquarters was. When countries have business to communicate with each other to accomplish things, they do not do so via the news networks.

The Syrian bus (as reported here in the US, anyway.) did not catch a stray 'missile'. It caught a 2000-lb bomb. The difference is that the bomb doesn't have much in the way of active propulsion - it has movable fins to fine-tune its aerodynamic fall,, maybe - and, hence, once it's released, if a bus should drive under it, it's not possible to retarget or abort it. It's gonna fall down and blow up.

We're told that the bus was carrying Syrian aid volunteers out of Iraq.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Re: the bus, aha. Right. Like a lot of the headline news I'm seeing, it appeared and was swiftly overtaken by other stories so I didn't get any more detail on it. The BBC reported that the Syrian newsagency described it as a missile strike, and later that the US had confirmed the hit and said they had been targetting a bridge. Which would seem to be a task for bombs, yes.