Here's your 3am call from Syria Obama, why ain't you answering the phone?

Russia is sending a new shipment of helicopter gunships to Syria, a move that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday could escalate the conflict "quite dramatically." (DUH)

Syria already has a fleet of the Russian gunships which are armed with rockets, cannons and heavy machine guns.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is one of Russia’s main weapons customers, according to Reuters, and Moscow sold a large shipment to the country as recently as mid-May.

Russia’s business relationship with Syria has presented a problem on the U.N. Security Council, which has been seeking a unified stance in confronting the Assad regime. Russia along with China -- two of the council’s five permanent members -- has been reluctant to admonish the Syrian leader, despite the growing bloody toll in a conflict that a U.N. official said Tuesday had all the characteristics of a civil war.

The violence that has left more than 10,000 people dead since the uprising against Assad’s government began 15 months ago. Most of the dead were civilians, according to opposition groups.