fahrenheit451:163

We don't have to worry about when WW3 might start or not. It has already started. A couple of weeks ago one of the myriad groups embroiled in the Syrian conflict, the so-called US-led Coalition consisting of the anti-Assad Syrian Free Army et al, bombed and destroyed  a convoy of those fighters directly allied to the Syrian government.That in itself violated quite few international legal norms.This US-led Coalition has since that incident gone on to carry out two further attacks of a similar nature. Subsequently the US has directly reinforced its illegal front operating base that houses those SFA elements with additional US personnel and upgraded heavy field artillery. This is to counter the success of President Assad's allies in reaching the Iraq border that has hemmed in the US' allies advance northward. To say nothing of Turkey's equally unlawful partial occupation of sovereign Syrian territory and its partisan support of yet more various and diverse factions who in their turn are at odds with not only the Syrian government and its allies,but also the various elements of the FSA as well. And so on and so forth ad nauseum.  The other,supposedly main conflict against ISIS/Daesh against which all the other 3 rivals are supposed to be directing the majority of their ire and wrath continues apace not only inside Syria but over in Iraq where the balance of contending forces are somewhat different but nevertheless contain an equally combustible array of ethnic/national/international and confessional factions.The Republican neocons in Washington and their liberal interventionist Democratic co-conspirators are not up for even trying to contemplate a grand strategic/diplomatic bargain with the other major players in this conflict. Rather the imbeciles in and around the Capitol continue to pursue and enforce sanctions against Russia and Iran for a whole host of specious,contradictory and bellicose reasons. Throw in the Saudi led intervention in the Yemeni civil war,the new Qatar imbroglio,the developing cataclysm in Libya,unrest in Morocco and Egypt and Israel's duplicitous and underhand role in virtually all of them and you know that none of this bodes well for the rest of us. The government in Tehran let it be known that the illegal US forward base in Syria is now within their missiles range. And of course nobody is going to back down anytime soon. Epic schadenfreude?