“Also, if you think it has a bathroom and kitchen in the back, I am going to strangle you.”

“when their primary niche in the conflict was previously filled by a barrel of kerosene with a flare taped to it.”

Boy, has that strategy not worked in a long time, if truly ever. The fight inside Syria has turned largely sectarian. And, since the Middle East’s various sects have spent the last 13 centuries or so slaughtering each other, I think it’s a pretty good bet that bombing/killing them into submission won’t work this time,…

You're welcome.

Ha! Reminds me of this:

No, Afghanistan didn’t collapse the Soviet Union. Nowhere did I make that assertion.

It’s interesting you took it that way, and it says a lot. Because, that’s not even close to what I asserted when I made the comparison.

No, the Afghanistan invasion didn’t “cause” the USSR to collapse. But, it was the conflict used by Soviet leadership as a distraction to the irreversible economic decline taking place inside the country. By inflaming nationalism, the leadership hoped Russian’s would gleefully trade away staples in their lives for the…

Except all those MANPADs lost from Qaddafi’s vast weapon stores, right?

Problem: “dumb” bombs perform even more poorly at high altitudes. Many of the munitions Russia has been using have been unguided, at least so far.

I’m actually glad you brought up “purchasing power parity.”

Probably the same thing Russia said when one of their highly advanced anti-air systems downed a civilian jetliner over Ukraine...

Russia’s biggest problem is it masquerading as a “world power” when it has an economy the size of Italy’s, and has corruption on a scale that rivals the geopolitical basket-cases of Nigeria and Lebanon (Link below). It’s publicly acknowledged military spending, as a percentage of GDP, is higher than the US by an…

You’re assuming they have no means of hiding their involvement, or being able to obfuscate the weapon’s origin.

“it took the Soviet Union seventy years to collapse under its own weight”

“We” don’t need to give MANPADs to anyone.

It’s only a matter of time before MANPADs start showing up, and start swatting Russian aircraft out-of-the-sky.

Iran’s economy is much different from the rest of the Middle East. While it’s true a huge majority of its total exports are energy related— Iran also possess heavy manufacturing capabilities including autos, and a financial sector.

Or, capture ammo shipments, sabotage 1 out of every 10 bullets, and release the shipment back into circulation. Why not sabotage all bullets? Because, doing so would ensure the entire batch would be destroyed. Instead, the sabotaged rounds would be distributed, and would act as a demoralizing form of “Russian…

It’s obvious what these media-revelations are— they’re products of the hardliners in the IRGC, and the Iranian government who oppose the Nuclear Agreement, but have failed to subvert its passage using normal governmental procedures. So, they’ve resorted to trying to influence US politics, which is already lukewarm to…