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New US Airstrikes In Iraq Intended to Protect Important Dam
U.S. military involvement in Iraq is heating up again; the sudden rise of the organization known as the Islamic State has put a kink in the gradual, ongoing winding down of U.S. military presence in that country, and today that kink has gotten a little sharper. From The New York Times: The United States launched a fresh series of airstrikes against Sunni fighters in Iraq late Saturday in what Defense Department officials described as a mission to stop militants from seizing an important dam on the Euphrates River and prevent the possibility of floodwaters being unleashed toward the capital, Baghdad. The attacks were aimed at militant fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as they were moving toward the Haditha Dam, officials said. The operation represented another expansion of the limited goals that President Obama set out when he announced last month that he had authorized airstrikes in Iraq.
Whew! For a minute I was worried that nobody would make a facile nonsense comment to distract from the real issues. Thankfully you came through.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Not quite. It started as a group local to Iraq and led by al-Zarqawi that allied with al-Qaeda in 2004 and was then generally known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. Last year, it announced the merger of itself and the Syrian group al-Nusra; the leader of al-Nusra publicly denied this and asked al-Zawahiri to intercede. He did so and also directed that ISIS tone things down because it was making al-Qaeda and its affiliates look bad, and the head of ISIS told al-Zawahiri to get bent. Since then, al-Qaeda has disavowed the group.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.