The Middle East Cesspool

"We said the PYD will not go west of the Euphrates and that we would hit it the moment it did. We hit it twice."
"Turkey cannot abandon its border, its fate to any country."
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu

AP Photo/Raqqa Media Center, File   ISIL fighters parade in Raqqa, Syria.

Turkey unleashed its military to attack the main Kurdish force across the border in northern Syria. Which raises the question yet again, is Turkey serious about meeting the challenge to defeat Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant? Or does it remain internally conflicted despite its links with the United States and NATO, as a partner in the war against Islamist terrorism?

Since Turkey has reverted to its own brand of Islamism, it has become a terrorist threat against Kurds, Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi.

On the other hand, the United States and NATO depend heavily on the strategic and conflict-ready capacity of the Kurdish forces to challenge Islamic State, and they have been supported by the United States, with training and weapons in recognition of their successes on the battlefield. So Turkey is attacking a key ally of the U.S., the YPG.

For their part, leaders in the YPG have informed the U.S. that the Turkish military shot at its forces in the town of Tal Abyad, with machine guns. The Turkish Prime Minister claims that his military attacked the Kurdish force west of the Euphrates River in contrast to the YPG account which held the attack was east of the river.

And the Islamic State is left free to get on with its business, since Russia is targeting Syrian rebel forces for the most part, in support of Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Damascus. And with Turkey targeting the most successful military challenge to the Islamic State, while they're enjoying a free pass from the Syrian regime and Russia, the quagmire that is Syria sinks ever deeper into vicious madness.

This undated photo released Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015, file photo, on a social media site used by ISIL, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows smoke from the detonation of the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin in Syria's ancient caravan city of Palmyra. Activists say ISIL has killed three captives on Monday, Oct. 26, 2015 in Palmyra by tying them to Roman-era columns at the site, then blowing the structures up with explosives.
Islamic State social media account via AP

Getting on with their public relations program, ISIL killed three captives in the ancient city of Palmyra, tying them to columns dating from the Roman era, and blowing both the structure and the prisoners into the atmosphere with explosives. Introducing yet another new strategy to impose fear and awe, upholding their formidable reputation for imaginative atrocities.

Crucifixion, caged drownings, beheadings and mass slaughter seem to have lost some of the horror appeal that has given the Islamist jihadis their main draw for voluntary recruits into the caliphate's war. The three dead captives were described by activists as civilians, their identities not yet revealed. Images posted on social media this week were of ISIL members driving a tank over a government soldier in revenge for ISIL fighters being flattened by tanks.

The horrific barbaric primitivism of Islamic State is by no means confined to their sinister imagination's monopoly; equal levels of butchery are carried out by the Syrian government military. Hatred and rage runs deep and unappeasable within elements of the universal religion of peace and brotherhood among Muslims.

Islamic State social media account via AP   This undated photo released Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015 on a social media site used by ISIL, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin in Syria's ancient caravan city of Palmyra rigged with explosives. Activists say ISIL has killed three captives on Monday, Oct. 26, 2015 in Syria’'s ancient city of Palmyra by tying them to Roman-era columns at the site, then blowing the structures up with explosives.