Click here to access article by Mike Whitney from CounterPunch.
Whitney (my "neighbor" in Washington state) finds that the Russian actions are exposing the many lies and false flags used to hide the Empire's project to turn Syria into another failed state that can be controlled to serve the interests of the Empire.
Can you imagine when a request was made by a prominent Iraqi official to attack ISIS (Daesh) oil tankers how this might have caused a US Empire director to pause a few moments to figure out a reasonable answer? Finally the director came up with this excuse: "Daesh trucks that sell oil are ‘civilian targets’ to US"!
To learn more about the various terrorist groups operating in Syria, an article from Sputnik entitled "The Land of Terror: Is Daesh Syria’s Only Deadly Menace on the Ground?" appears to offer some valid answers.