The Syrian war is reaching a decisive stage...

[shaayecanaan]

The Syrian rebels claim to have taken and held around 60% of Aleppo, where intense fighting is taking place. If they manage to hold Aleppo, then they will have a fairly secure basis in the North. If they don't, then its going to be hard for them to threaten Assad on a national basis, given that they have effectively been kicked out of Damascus.

map from Wikipedia says it all (brown is rebel-held, blue is contested, government held-cities are in green):-



good report from Algy

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/2012731267977893.html

[oberliner]

1. Why not post this in the Main Forums?

They could use more experts like you to share your insights into the situation there.

And I mean that absolutely sincerely.

[shaayecanaan]

3. I like the atmosphere of sophistication and refined elegance...

that you can only find in this particular forum. Plus if I posted it there it would be instantly buried by a hundred posts showing Mitt Romney stepping in dog shit or something.

[oberliner]

4. That's a good point

Things do have a tendency to get ugly up there.

[bemildred]

5. I often post in smaller forums precisely because I want something to hang around

for a while (in hopes of attracting interesting comments) and not get too littered up with ego duels and partisan flamefests.

Up top your chances are about two to one or better that it will sink like a stone, or else some flame war moves through and gives it 200 posts minutely examining some ongoing festival of rage.

And I definitely post I/P stuff down here because here there is at least a chance of seeing something new in the way of comments, down here I still see something new once in a while. Up there it is the same old stuff that I've read 20 times or more already. I can often predict how the arguments will go now, the various ripostes to the various thrusts, so to speak.

[bemildred]

2. Fighting in cities can drag on for a long time.

Esp. when both sides have outside supply.