Ya Libnan

Russia delivers anti-ship missiles to Syria, report

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Russia has delivered anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria, the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed military source as saying on Thursday, days after a United Nations commission of inquiry called for an arms embargo on Damascus.

Economic and diplomatic pressure has isolated Syrian President Bashar Assad following a nine-month government crackdown against protesters in unrest the United Nations says has killed more than 4,000 people.

Moscow has spoken out against further sanctions imposed by Western and Arab League states, and it has defended its right to sell Syria weapons — tens of millions of dollars worth last year.

“The contract was completely fulfilled, almost ahead of time,” Interfax cited the source as saying of the deal, estimated at $300 million. The source did not say when the deliveries had taken place.

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said in February that Moscow was pressing ahead with the deal despite Israeli concerns, indicating the missiles might have been delivered earlier this year.

“This weapon allows coverage of the entire coastline of Syria from possible attack from the sea,” Interfax quoted the source as saying.

Russia teamed up with China in October to veto a Western-backed UN Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s government. Russia said the resolution could have opened the door to Western military intervention like in Libya, where it says NATO overstepped its Security Council mandate.

A United Nations commission of inquiry said on Monday that in cracking down on protesters, Syrian military and security forces had committed crimes against humanity including murder, torture and rape, and called for an arms embargo on Syria.

Earlier this week, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that Russia planned to send its aircraft carrier and other ships to Syria.

Besides accounting for 7 percent of Russia’s total of $10 billion in arms deliveries abroad in 2010, according to Moscow defense think-tank CAST, Syria also hosts a Russian naval maintenance facility.

Russia traditionally used what influence it still has in the Middle East as a lever in diplomatic maneuvering with Europe and in particular the United States.

Israel has voiced concerns over the contract for sale of the rockets, capable of hitting ships 300 km (190 miles) off Syria’s coast. Hezbollah used a surface-to-air missile in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War to hit the INS Hanit warship, killing four sailors.

Reuters

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22 responses to “Russia delivers anti-ship missiles to Syria, report”

  1. Leborigine Avatar
    Leborigine

    Great. Now they are arming terrorists with anti ship missiles!!

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar
      5thDrawer

      Expensive proposition …. a million-dollar+ missile managed to kill 4 in 2006?  Russia trying anything to have some income.

      1. Michael Craddock Avatar
        Michael Craddock

        No, Russia is trying to have their influence in the Middle East at any cost. They are also poised for their attack on Israel. They want Israel’s oil fields and Gas pipelines. They’ll invade once a peace agreement is made.

  2. Leborigine Avatar
    Leborigine

    Great. Now they are arming terrorists with anti ship missiles!!

  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Great. Now they are arming terrorists with anti ship missiles!!

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Expensive proposition …. a million-dollar+ missile managed to kill 4 in 2006?  Russia trying anything to have some income.

    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Expensive proposition …. a million-dollar+ missile managed to kill 4 in 2006?  Russia trying anything to have some income.

      1. Michael Craddock Avatar
        Michael Craddock

        No, Russia is trying to have their influence in the Middle East at any cost.

  4. C S Avatar
    C S

    Western-Arab Military Intervention in Syria Has Begun
    DEBKA-Net-Weekly #519 December 1, 2011Small units of Western Special Forces began filtering into Syria this week,DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report. Their task was to mark out targets for aerial sorties and naval bombardments of President Bashar Assad‘s armed forces and government sites across the country, to be executed by the US and other NATO countries, including Turkey, Britain, France, Holland and Italy.

    These advance units, no more than 6 to 8 men each, are also sussing out strategic sites in northern and central Syria for capture by the incoming Western and Arab armies.

    Attached to each unit is a former Syrian officer, a deserter to the Free Syrian Army headed by Col. Riad al-Asaad, and an interpreter.

    These defectors are well grounded from their regular military service on the locations to which the
    Western units are assigned and they know what parts of the army and local populace those units can count on for cooperation against Assad.

    (Monday, Nov. 28, debkafile reported exclusively that a group of military officers from NATO and Persian Gulf nations had quietly established a mixed operational command at Iskenderun in the Turkish Hatay province on the border of North Syria. They hail from the United States, France, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with Turkish officers providing liaison.)

    As this issue closes, we can also reveal the establishment of an intelligence-logistical headquarters for these forces in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli. The government in Beirut appears to be ignoring its presence.
    Full civil war would call for substantial reinforcements

    This outfit has two tasks: The first, to take charge of Syrian army deserters, sort them according to military skills and transfer them to the military training camps organized by the Turkish army and central intelligence agency, MIT.

    The second is to organize the flow of weapons from Lebanon and Turkey to the Free Syrian Army fighting inside the country.

    Finally, this headquarters is also responsible for charting plans of operation to meet two possible eventualities:
    1. The outbreak of a full-scale Syrian civil war.
    This would necessitate large-scale Western and Arab reinforcements. Some of these special forces units would be airlifted or transported by rail from Europe, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, to land at small Syrian military and civilian airfields controlled by the advance guard of small special forces units already in the country. Others would be dropped by sea on Syrian beaches.
    Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have begun setting up arms and logistical supplies dumps for their use.

    The Iskenderun planners expect the bulk of the Syrian army to remain loyal to Bashar Assad in the early days of the campaign and engage the foreign forces in combat. But as the conflict drags out into several weeks, they count on a swelling outflow of defectors to the rebels’ side.
    Responding to different kinds of coup

    2. The outbreak of mutiny in the Syrian army and security services.

    This could take three different forms:

    – A Syrian Army high command conspiracy to overthrow Assad. Preparations are underway to strengthen potential coup leaders with international and Arab support and bonding them with the Free Syrian Army rebels and Syrian opposition factions.
    Attempts by Assad loyalists to suppress the putsch will be fought with advanced technology and intelligence resources.

    – A Syrian Alawite coup to keep this 3.5 million-strong community in power without Assad by installing another Alawite figure in Damascus in his stead. In that case, the Western-Arab plan would be to isolate the anti-Assad Alawite conspirators in order to save Syria from all-encompassing civil war.

    – The survival of the Assad regime against Western-Arab military intervention and his ability to cling to power for another six months at least.

    To meet these variable scenarios, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report three plans of action have been charted:

    One: Foreign troops will be deployed the full length of Turkey’s 800-kilometer long border with Syria, a line that stretches between the Mediterranean and the intersection of the Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish frontiers.

    Two: Those troops will seize control, with local rebel help, of the main protest centers in the North, such as Idlib, Rastan and Homs, and then move in on Aleppo, northern Syria’s largest city whose metropolitan area has a population of over 2.5 million, mostly Sunni Muslims and Kurds.
    Bisecting Libya finished Qaddafi. So why not Assad?

    Severing Aleppo from the body of Syria and placing it under Western military protection would constitute the harshest economic sanction yet meted out to the Assad regime. It would cut off his access to financial resources for funding his military crackdown on the uprising against his rule.

    Three: These movements would essentially divide Syria in two: a northern entity under anti-Assad opposition rule covering an area with a population of 6.5 million, 30 percent of the country’s total of 23 million. They will be kept going by assistance coming in from Turkey and Lebanon; and a southern entity, left initially under the rule of Bashad Assad in Damascus, until the northern sector can evolve into a beachhead for capturing the south as well.

    Plans have matured for the seizure of one airport or more in northern Syria for the landing of cargo planes carrying logistical supplies to the Western and Arab forces in the field. A sea port is also to be commandeered on Syria’s Mediterranean coast for ships to unload essential supplies for the northern population.

    Even if only a part of this master-plan comes to fruition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources note, Syria will be partitioned in a manner that recalls the bisection of Libya last March, when a provisional rebel administration ruled from Benghazi and the Muammar Qaddafiregime held on for a time in Tripoli.

    The Libyan experience taught the West and the Arabs emirs that a ruler’s days are numbered when international backing – especially by the global financial system – is withdrawn and swings around to back an opposition administration setting up a rival shop in the same country.

    1. Sebouh80 Avatar
      Sebouh80

      To be honest, I have  absolutely zero trust on the news reporting of Israeli Debka. Let me give you an example when the Libyan regime fell debka was saying that Mouammar Gaddafi was with the Toureg tribe in South Libya preparing to escape to Niger. The truth was that the late Libyan leader was in his home town Siret which he was later killed by Nato and their Libyan merceneries.

      Bottomeline, once you recieve too many conflicting reports than this news agency automatically loses its credibility. This is also the case with most of the Arab mass media today who are more propaganda than fair news reporting. Peace.

      1. C S Avatar
        C S

        From wiki:
        “DEBKAfile (Hebrew: תיק דבקה‎) is a Jerusalem-based English language Israeli open source military intelligence website with commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence, security, and military and political affairs in the Middle East. The word “Debka” refers to an Arab folk dance.[1]The site’s operators, state that 80 percent of what Debka reports turns out to be true, and point to its year 2000 prediction that al-Qaeda would again strike the World Trade Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that Hezbollah had amassed 12,000 Katyusha rockets pointed at northern Israel.

        1. 5thDrawer Avatar
          5thDrawer

          80% truth is not so good … imagine that only ONE badly-written or researched line could begin a whole conflagration based on an un-truth. In which case, it would be 100% wrong.

      2. C S Avatar
        C S

        Debkafile — based in the Jerusalem neighborhood of French Hill, equidistant from both Palestinian villages and the walls of the Old City — has shown an ability to get that kind of coverage. USA Today,CNN and NBC all reported last Friday that American and British forces were in Afghanistan scouting out terrorist hiding places; Debkafile had the same story days earlier, and included details about Russian intelligence officers and German commandos joining in the incursions.
        On the Saturday before, Debkafile ran a story that Saudi Arabia had refused to let the U.S. use its air bases to stage attacks on Afghanistan; it took The New York Times another two days to report this information.
        Like the Drudge Report, which it resembles, Debkafile clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics and has partnered with the far-right news site WorldNetDaily for a weekly, $120 subscription product.
        That slant, combined with Debkafile’s breakneck pace ­– its eight-person staff updates the site as often as 5 or 6 times per day with terse, one-line tips and sparse news briefs — means it often airs unfounded, inaccurate rumors while breaking legitimate news.
        On Thursday at 10:47 a.m. EDT, Debkafile trumpeted in a headline that “U.S. Pentagon Sources Report Siberian Airways Tel Aviv-Novosibirsk Flight Crash Thursday Was Caused by Missile Fired from Russian Ground by Terrorists.”
        Mainstream outlets, such as the Associated Press and CNN, shied away from the terror angle when reporting the plane crash. MSNBC said that there may be “indicators” that the flight “might” have been downed by terrorists.
        Less than two hours later, at 12:20 p.m. EDT, Debkafile had changed its tune.
        “A Misfired Ukrainian Missile or Projectile Appears Now to Have Caused the Siberian Airways Tel-Aviv-Novosibirsk Flight to Plunge into the Black Sea Thursday,” the Debka headline stated. “The Disaster Occurred as the Ukrainian-Russian Navies Conducted a Sea Exercise off Crimean Coast. This Latest Report Lays to Rest Wild Rumors of Terrorist Attack Causing the Tu-154 to Crash.”
        Such missteps don’t seem to bother the site’s increasingly loyal band of readers.
        “Not everything Debka says is going to be confirmed, but I guarantee you three days later you’ll find at least one item in The New York Times,” said Greg Clayman, a New York City Internet marketing executive. “When (White House press secretary) Ari Fleischer tells the mainstream media, ‘Watch what you say,’ you’ve got to look for other sources.”

  5. C S Avatar
    C S

    Western-Arab Military Intervention in Syria Has Begun
    DEBKA-Net-Weekly #519 December 1, 2011Small units of Western Special Forces began filtering into Syria this week,DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report. Their task was to mark out targets for aerial sorties and naval bombardments of President Bashar Assad‘s armed forces and government sites across the country, to be executed by the US and other NATO countries, including Turkey, Britain, France, Holland and Italy.

    These advance units, no more than 6 to 8 men each, are also sussing out strategic sites in northern and central Syria for capture by the incoming Western and Arab armies.

    Attached to each unit is a former Syrian officer, a deserter to the Free Syrian Army headed by Col. Riad al-Asaad, and an interpreter.

    These defectors are well grounded from their regular military service on the locations to which the
    Western units are assigned and they know what parts of the army and local populace those units can count on for cooperation against Assad.

    (Monday, Nov. 28, debkafile reported exclusively that a group of military officers from NATO and Persian Gulf nations had quietly established a mixed operational command at Iskenderun in the Turkish Hatay province on the border of North Syria. They hail from the United States, France, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with Turkish officers providing liaison.)

    As this issue closes, we can also reveal the establishment of an intelligence-logistical headquarters for these forces in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli. The government in Beirut appears to be ignoring its presence.
    Full civil war would call for substantial reinforcements

    This outfit has two tasks: The first, to take charge of Syrian army deserters, sort them according to military skills and transfer them to the military training camps organized by the Turkish army and central intelligence agency, MIT.

    The second is to organize the flow of weapons from Lebanon and Turkey to the Free Syrian Army fighting inside the country.

    Finally, this headquarters is also responsible for charting plans of operation to meet two possible eventualities:
    1. The outbreak of a full-scale Syrian civil war.
    This would necessitate large-scale Western and Arab reinforcements. Some of these special forces units would be airlifted or transported by rail from Europe, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, to land at small Syrian military and civilian airfields controlled by the advance guard of small special forces units already in the country. Others would be dropped by sea on Syrian beaches.
    Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have begun setting up arms and logistical supplies dumps for their use.

    The Iskenderun planners expect the bulk of the Syrian army to remain loyal to Bashar Assad in the early days of the campaign and engage the foreign forces in combat. But as the conflict drags out into several weeks, they count on a swelling outflow of defectors to the rebels’ side.
    Responding to different kinds of coup

    2. The outbreak of mutiny in the Syrian army and security services.

    This could take three different forms:

    – A Syrian Army high command conspiracy to overthrow Assad. Preparations are underway to strengthen potential coup leaders with international and Arab support and bonding them with the Free Syrian Army rebels and Syrian opposition factions.
    Attempts by Assad loyalists to suppress the putsch will be fought with advanced technology and intelligence resources.

    – A Syrian Alawite coup to keep this 3.5 million-strong community in power without Assad by installing another Alawite figure in Damascus in his stead. In that case, the Western-Arab plan would be to isolate the anti-Assad Alawite conspirators in order to save Syria from all-encompassing civil war.

    – The survival of the Assad regime against Western-Arab military intervention and his ability to cling to power for another six months at least.

    To meet these variable scenarios, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report three plans of action have been charted:

    One: Foreign troops will be deployed the full length of Turkey’s 800-kilometer long border with Syria, a line that stretches between the Mediterranean and the intersection of the Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish frontiers.

    Two: Those troops will seize control, with local rebel help, of the main protest centers in the North, such as Idlib, Rastan and Homs, and then move in on Aleppo, northern Syria’s largest city whose metropolitan area has a population of over 2.5 million, mostly Sunni Muslims and Kurds.
    Bisecting Libya finished Qaddafi. So why not Assad?

    Severing Aleppo from the body of Syria and placing it under Western military protection would constitute the harshest economic sanction yet meted out to the Assad regime. It would cut off his access to financial resources for funding his military crackdown on the uprising against his rule.

    Three: These movements would essentially divide Syria in two: a northern entity under anti-Assad opposition rule covering an area with a population of 6.5 million, 30 percent of the country’s total of 23 million. They will be kept going by assistance coming in from Turkey and Lebanon; and a southern entity, left initially under the rule of Bashad Assad in Damascus, until the northern sector can evolve into a beachhead for capturing the south as well.

    Plans have matured for the seizure of one airport or more in northern Syria for the landing of cargo planes carrying logistical supplies to the Western and Arab forces in the field. A sea port is also to be commandeered on Syria’s Mediterranean coast for ships to unload essential supplies for the northern population.

    Even if only a part of this master-plan comes to fruition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources note, Syria will be partitioned in a manner that recalls the bisection of Libya last March, when a provisional rebel administration ruled from Benghazi and the Muammar Qaddafiregime held on for a time in Tripoli.

    The Libyan experience taught the West and the Arabs emirs that a ruler’s days are numbered when international backing – especially by the global financial system – is withdrawn and swings around to back an opposition administration setting up a rival shop in the same country.

    1. Sebouh80 Avatar
      Sebouh80

      To be honest, I have  absolutely zero trust on the news reporting of Israeli Debka. Let me give you an example when the Libyan regime fell debka was saying that Mouammar Gaddafi was with the Toureg tribe in South Libya preparing to escape to Niger. The truth was that the late Libyan leader was in his home town Siret which he was later killed by Nato and their Libyan merceneries.

      Bottomeline, once you recieve too many conflicting reports than this news agency automatically loses its credibility. This is also the case with most of the Arab mass media today who are more propaganda than fair news reporting. Peace.

  6. C S Avatar
    C S

    Western-Arab Military Intervention in Syria Has Begun
    DEBKA-Net-Weekly #519 December 1, 2011Small units of Western Special Forces began filtering into Syria this week,DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report. Their task was to mark out targets for aerial sorties and naval bombardments of President Bashar Assad‘s armed forces and government sites across the country, to be executed by the US and other NATO countries, including Turkey, Britain, France, Holland and Italy.

    These advance units, no more than 6 to 8 men each, are also sussing out strategic sites in northern and central Syria for capture by the incoming Western and Arab armies.

    Attached to each unit is a former Syrian officer, a deserter to the Free Syrian Army headed by Col. Riad al-Asaad, and an interpreter.

    These defectors are well grounded from their regular military service on the locations to which the
    Western units are assigned and they know what parts of the army and local populace those units can count on for cooperation against Assad.

    (Monday, Nov. 28, debkafile reported exclusively that a group of military officers from NATO and Persian Gulf nations had quietly established a mixed operational command at Iskenderun in the Turkish Hatay province on the border of North Syria. They hail from the United States, France, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with Turkish officers providing liaison.)

    As this issue closes, we can also reveal the establishment of an intelligence-logistical headquarters for these forces in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli. The government in Beirut appears to be ignoring its presence.
    Full civil war would call for substantial reinforcements

    This outfit has two tasks: The first, to take charge of Syrian army deserters, sort them according to military skills and transfer them to the military training camps organized by the Turkish army and central intelligence agency, MIT.

    The second is to organize the flow of weapons from Lebanon and Turkey to the Free Syrian Army fighting inside the country.

    Finally, this headquarters is also responsible for charting plans of operation to meet two possible eventualities:
    1. The outbreak of a full-scale Syrian civil war.
    This would necessitate large-scale Western and Arab reinforcements. Some of these special forces units would be airlifted or transported by rail from Europe, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, to land at small Syrian military and civilian airfields controlled by the advance guard of small special forces units already in the country. Others would be dropped by sea on Syrian beaches.
    Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have begun setting up arms and logistical supplies dumps for their use.

    The Iskenderun planners expect the bulk of the Syrian army to remain loyal to Bashar Assad in the early days of the campaign and engage the foreign forces in combat. But as the conflict drags out into several weeks, they count on a swelling outflow of defectors to the rebels’ side.
    Responding to different kinds of coup

    2. The outbreak of mutiny in the Syrian army and security services.

    This could take three different forms:

    – A Syrian Army high command conspiracy to overthrow Assad. Preparations are underway to strengthen potential coup leaders with international and Arab support and bonding them with the Free Syrian Army rebels and Syrian opposition factions.
    Attempts by Assad loyalists to suppress the putsch will be fought with advanced technology and intelligence resources.

    – A Syrian Alawite coup to keep this 3.5 million-strong community in power without Assad by installing another Alawite figure in Damascus in his stead. In that case, the Western-Arab plan would be to isolate the anti-Assad Alawite conspirators in order to save Syria from all-encompassing civil war.

    – The survival of the Assad regime against Western-Arab military intervention and his ability to cling to power for another six months at least.

    To meet these variable scenarios, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report three plans of action have been charted:

    One: Foreign troops will be deployed the full length of Turkey’s 800-kilometer long border with Syria, a line that stretches between the Mediterranean and the intersection of the Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish frontiers.

    Two: Those troops will seize control, with local rebel help, of the main protest centers in the North, such as Idlib, Rastan and Homs, and then move in on Aleppo, northern Syria’s largest city whose metropolitan area has a population of over 2.5 million, mostly Sunni Muslims and Kurds.
    Bisecting Libya finished Qaddafi. So why not Assad?

    Severing Aleppo from the body of Syria and placing it under Western military protection would constitute the harshest economic sanction yet meted out to the Assad regime. It would cut off his access to financial resources for funding his military crackdown on the uprising against his rule.

    Three: These movements would essentially divide Syria in two: a northern entity under anti-Assad opposition rule covering an area with a population of 6.5 million, 30 percent of the country’s total of 23 million. They will be kept going by assistance coming in from Turkey and Lebanon; and a southern entity, left initially under the rule of Bashad Assad in Damascus, until the northern sector can evolve into a beachhead for capturing the south as well.

    Plans have matured for the seizure of one airport or more in northern Syria for the landing of cargo planes carrying logistical supplies to the Western and Arab forces in the field. A sea port is also to be commandeered on Syria’s Mediterranean coast for ships to unload essential supplies for the northern population.

    Even if only a part of this master-plan comes to fruition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources note, Syria will be partitioned in a manner that recalls the bisection of Libya last March, when a provisional rebel administration ruled from Benghazi and the Muammar Qaddafiregime held on for a time in Tripoli.

    The Libyan experience taught the West and the Arabs emirs that a ruler’s days are numbered when international backing – especially by the global financial system – is withdrawn and swings around to back an opposition administration setting up a rival shop in the same country.

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      To be honest, I have  absolutely zero trust on the news reporting of Israeli Debka. Let me give you an example when the Libyan regime fell debka was saying that Mouammar Gaddafi was with the Toureg tribe in South Libya preparing to escape to Niger. The truth was that the late Libyan leader was in his home town Siret which he was later killed by Nato and their Libyan merceneries.

      Bottomeline, once you recieve too many conflicting reports than this news agency automatically loses its credibility. This is also the case with most of the Arab mass media today who are more propaganda than fair news reporting. Peace.

      1. C S Avatar
        C S

        From wiki:
        “DEBKAfile (Hebrew: תיק דבקה‎) is a Jerusalem-based English language Israeli open source military intelligence website with commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence, security, and military and political affairs in the Middle East. The word “Debka” refers to an Arab folk dance.[1]The site’s operators, state that 80 percent of what Debka reports turns out to be true, and point to its year 2000 prediction that al-Qaeda would again strike the World Trade Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that Hezbollah had amassed 12,000 Katyusha rockets pointed at northern Israel.

        1. 5thDrawer Avatar
          5thDrawer

          80% truth is not so good … imagine that only ONE badly-written or researched line could begin a whole conflagration based on an un-truth. In which case, it would be 100% wrong.

      2. C S Avatar
        C S

        Debkafile — based in the Jerusalem neighborhood of French Hill, equidistant from both Palestinian villages and the walls of the Old City — has shown an ability to get that kind of coverage. USA Today,CNN and NBC all reported last Friday that American and British forces were in Afghanistan scouting out terrorist hiding places; Debkafile had the same story days earlier, and included details about Russian intelligence officers and German commandos joining in the incursions.
        On the Saturday before, Debkafile ran a story that Saudi Arabia had refused to let the U.S. use its air bases to stage attacks on Afghanistan; it took The New York Times another two days to report this information.
        Like the Drudge Report, which it resembles, Debkafile clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics and has partnered with the far-right news site WorldNetDaily for a weekly, $120 subscription product.
        That slant, combined with Debkafile’s breakneck pace ­– its eight-person staff updates the site as often as 5 or 6 times per day with terse, one-line tips and sparse news briefs — means it often airs unfounded, inaccurate rumors while breaking legitimate news.
        On Thursday at 10:47 a.m. EDT, Debkafile trumpeted in a headline that “U.S. Pentagon Sources Report Siberian Airways Tel Aviv-Novosibirsk Flight Crash Thursday Was Caused by Missile Fired from Russian Ground by Terrorists.”
        Mainstream outlets, such as the Associated Press and CNN, shied away from the terror angle when reporting the plane crash. MSNBC said that there may be “indicators” that the flight “might” have been downed by terrorists.
        Less than two hours later, at 12:20 p.m. EDT, Debkafile had changed its tune.
        “A Misfired Ukrainian Missile or Projectile Appears Now to Have Caused the Siberian Airways Tel-Aviv-Novosibirsk Flight to Plunge into the Black Sea Thursday,” the Debka headline stated. “The Disaster Occurred as the Ukrainian-Russian Navies Conducted a Sea Exercise off Crimean Coast. This Latest Report Lays to Rest Wild Rumors of Terrorist Attack Causing the Tu-154 to Crash.”
        Such missteps don’t seem to bother the site’s increasingly loyal band of readers.
        “Not everything Debka says is going to be confirmed, but I guarantee you three days later you’ll find at least one item in The New York Times,” said Greg Clayman, a New York City Internet marketing executive. “When (White House press secretary) Ari Fleischer tells the mainstream media, ‘Watch what you say,’ you’ve got to look for other sources.”

  7. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Nice paint-job. Now, THAT’s a phallic symbol. Imagine the ‘vibes’ …. :-))

  8. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Nice paint-job. Now, THAT’s a phallic symbol. Imagine the ‘vibes’ …. :-))

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