7 October 2016
MOON OF ALABAMA — There is a curious coincidence of a remark Secretary of State Kerry made to Syrian opposition activists and a new paint scheme applied to some U.S. military jets.
October 1 2016: Kerry in leaked audio: ‘I lost the argument’ for use of force in Syria
Washington (CNN) Secretary of State John Kerry’s frustration with the failure of American diplomacy was on display as he defended US efforts to help end the five-year civil war in Syria during a meeting last week with a group of Syrian civilians, according to an audio recording obtained by CNN.
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Kerry’s comments came at a meeting that took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on the sidelines the UN General Assembly, where Kerry was going from session to session in a frenzied effort to resuscitate a ceasefire that seemed poised to collapse.
A complete audio recording of the meeting between Kerry, some of his staff, and some Syrians is available on youtube.
Of interest is a short segment about alleged Russian bombing beginning at 11:18. The female Arab-English interpreter translates remarks by a Syrian, believed to be the Syrian front-man of the White Helmets scam Raed Saleh, about the difficulties of supervising ceasefires.
Interpreter (translating from a male Arabic speaker): We don’t believe that Russia can be the guarantor of the actions of the regime. We see Russia is a partner of the regime in bombing Syrians, Syrian civilians, market places, even our own team, the Syrian Civil Defense team. We documented since the start of the Russian intervention in Syria from day one until February of this year more than 17 of our Syrian Civil Defense personal have been killed by Russian airstrikes.
Kerry: Do you have any videos of the airplanes of these strikes?
(crosstalk interpreter and male Arab voice)
Kerry: Can we get that (unintelligible) videos the agents have been asking for?
(crosstalk interpreter and male Arab voice)
Kerry staff member: So can I just say – we get a lot of videos of the victims of these attacks, they are terrible, but they don’t help us. We need videos of the actual aircrafts and ammunition. And there is a lot of them on the internet but we don’t know whether they are real or not. Verified videos of the actual aircraft is the most useful thing. …
These men can be helped, though someone in the U.S. military – or not.
A Canadian journalist based in Eastern/Central Europe, Christian Borys tweeted yesterday:
Christian Borys @ItsBorysThe U.S is painting their F/A-18’s to match the paint schemes of Russian jets in #Syria. Standard training, but interesting nonetheless. pic.twitter.com/FVN6tMj2Ji
1:45 PM – 6 Oct 2016
This is the attached pic:
The first three pics are of an U.S. F/A-18 fighter and attack aircraft in Russian coloring. (The wingtips are raised for storage as this is a carrier enabled plane. The windows of the raised cockpit hood are covered with white sun protection sheets.) On the bottom right is a picture of a Russia SU-34 in the usual Russian color scheme as it is also used by the Russian contingent in Syria.
It would be extremely difficult to distinguish these like-colored planes from each other in a shaky fly-by and “bombing” video.
The U.S. regularly uses planes in “enemy” color schemes as “aggressor force” during training and maneuvers. It helps U.S. pilots to get used to “enemy” targets during air-to-air combat training. So this can all be, like Christian Borys assumes, “standard training”.
But there is also Kerry’s talk with the Syrian opposition and his explicit request for videos of “Russian” jets bombing in Syria.
This may be an innocent coincidence: Secretary Kerry is asking the scam artists of the White Helmets for video of Russian jets “bombing civilians” in Syria and, just by chance, the U.S. military is painting one of its jets to look like a “Russian” Su-34 strike fighter like those deployed in Syria. […]
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