U.S. troops will man Patriot batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-troops-will-man-patriot-batteries-along-turkeys-border-with-syria/2012/12/14/c53483e2-45d0-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html?hpid=z2

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — The United States authorized on Friday the deployment of 400 troops to man two long-range missile defense Patriot batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria, a move that could put American troops near the front lines of the Arab country’s escalating civil war.

Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta signed the order authorizing the deployment of the batteries Friday morning while flying from Kabul to this military base in southern Turkey.

Speaking to American airmen inside a hangar, Panetta said the crisis in Syria has made this base, roughly 60 miles from Syia, and others in the region exceptionally important.

“This is a challenging time, a critical time,” Panetta said. “You are in a critical place doing a critical task.”

[newfie11]

1. Here we go again

I am not surprised but I am disgusted.

[leveymg]

2. Incirlik is also the center for western intel support to the rebels, a likely target in the end-game

when and if the regime collapses and a dead-man's trigger launches Syria's large missile and chemical warfare arsenal. This is a worst-case scenario that seems all the more possible with each passing day. For details of how that may well happen if the Syrian state falls, please see, http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021920320

That things have closed and reached the threshhold of this point, shows how badly wrong the initial projections made for a quick and easy kill based on the Libyan regime change model of 'humanitarian intervention" pushed by Clinton, Rice, Petraeus and the rest of the Washington hawks and neocons.

Avoiding that end-game will require masterful diplomacy, not the sort of go for the jugular instincts we've seen from the last crew.