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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.
If Saddam was still in power, he would be major american ally in "fighting terrorists". Orwell would laugh his ass out if he lived to this day.
839*929
Hello, when you refer to Americans please don't conflate a meddling, incompetent President with Americans in general. Most Americans did not actually vote for that guy, he's lost most credibility in the US and among allies and other countries around the world. Thanks.
Why are you bringing GW Bush into the conversation?
It's not 2003 any more. Iraq has a democratically elected government, and has for about 10 years now. The Iraqi army was rebuilt and rearmed with large amounts of weaponry. ISIS is mainly coming from Syria, not Iraq. You've got this pretty much wrong.
Bullshit, you can't just reduce this to Weapons. Weapons are only as good as the people who operate them and they are only as good as those who lead them. Everything that has happened in Iraq since 2003 has been influenced by American meddling. Ibrahim al-Jaafari was replaced as Prime Minister of Iraq after the Bush White House became displeased with him due to his inability to curb the insurgency (which was not surprising in view of the fact that the army had been disbanded and some of the best troops had joined the insurgency). Iraq may have had democratic elections but the selection of parties and candidates available for election was carefully engineered by the USA and the same goes when it came to choosing which people occupied key government posts. Eye witness accounts of the search for a successor to al-Jaafari reminded me of the Praetorian's hunt for a new Roman emperor after the demise of Caligula. Having no idea who to replace Caligula with they finally found Claudius hiding behind a curtain and made him emperor and the US had given no more thought to who would replace al-Jaafari than the Pretorians had done when they disposed of Caligula. Finally the White House just chose Nouri al-Maliki, next best guy they could find without having any idea of how capable he was or whether he'd be an inclusive leader or a divisive one. The White House knew so little about al-Maliki that they mispronounced his name until he personally corrected them. Al-Maliki was so inexperienced he had to get weekly tutorial sessions from George W Bush Jr over video link (talk about dub leading dumber). It is this choice that is now coming back to bite the Obama administration along with it's own lack of interest in what is happening in Iraq. Yes the army was trained, yes the Sons of Iraq effort created a chance at reconciliation and yes It was al-Maliki, America's chosen man who de-Sunnified the government and civil service, it was he who fired all the US trained officers and replaced them with militarily inept cronies to coup-proof the army and it was his sectarian policies who sparked the campaign of repression that eventually led to the 'ISIS invasion' which in reality is a full blown Sunni revolt. Iraq today is very much America's mess and that is why the Europeans may be willing to join in the fight against ISIS by helping the Iraqi Kurds and possibly the YPG in Syria but they will remain unwilling to touch Iraq proper with a 16 foot pike. That's America's mess and it will have to be America who deals with it along with (irony abounds) Iran.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They annexed slightly under 100 acred or 4 sq km. Nothing remotely like 400. Seems your not one-sided news is not so good after all.