Futuristic Eskimo
All Star
who you think operates drone strikes, fam?
Jesus?
Im asking if JSOC is doing on the ground operations in Iraq still
Hell up in Syria and Iraq
- Thread starter 88m3
- Start date
Im asking if JSOC is doing on the ground operations in Iraq still
We would still be there with a 10k force (like Germany, Korea) if they agreed to give US troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. They wouldn't. So Barack called their bluff and bounced.
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/22/iraq-pm-immunity-issue-scuttled-us-troop-deal/
Same shyt is gonna happen in A-stan too.
This is lowkey hilarious though.
They hate us when we're there then wants us back the moment shyt go to hell.
Gotta love it.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Maybe...but theres no on the records activity going on there
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Iraq Said to Seek U.S. Strikes on Insurgents
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITTJUNE 11, 2014
Photo
Iraqi families fleeing violence in the northern province of Nineveh arrived Wednesday at a checkpoint in Aski Kalak in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region.CreditSafin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITTJUNE 11, 2014
Photo
Iraqi families fleeing violence in the northern province of Nineveh arrived Wednesday at a checkpoint in Aski Kalak in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region.CreditSafin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
- dismissed that suggestion at the time, saying that the request had not come from Mr. Maliki.
By March, however, American experts who visited Baghdad were being told that Iraq’s top leaders were hoping that American air power could be used to strike the militants’ staging and training areas inside Iraq, and help Iraq’s beleaguered forces stop them from crossing into Iraq from Syria.
“Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps in the Jazira desert,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and who visited Baghdad in early March. ISIS is the acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as the militant group is known.
As the Sunni insurgents have grown in strength those requests have persisted. In a May 11 meeting with American diplomats and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, Mr. Maliki said that he would like the United States to provide Iraq with the ability to operate drones. But if the United States was not willing to do that, Mr. Maliki indicated he was prepared to allow the United States to carry out strikes using warplanes or drones.
In a May 16 phone call with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Maliki again suggested that the United States consider using American airpower. A written request repeating that point was submitted soon afterward, officials said.
Some experts say that such American military action could be helpful but only if Mr. Maliki takes steps to make his government more inclusive.
“U.S. military support for Iraq could have a positive effect but only if it is conditioned on Maliki changing his behavior within Iraq’s political system,” Mr. Pollack said. “He has to bring the Sunni community back in, agree to limits on his executive authority and agree to reform Iraqi security forces to make them more professional and competent.”
But so far administration has signaled that it not interested in such a direct American military role.
“Ultimately, this is for the Iraqi security forces, and the Iraqi government to deal with,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said on Tuesday.
The deteriorating situation in Iraq is not what the Obama administration expected when it withdrew the last American troops from there in 2011. In a March 2012 speech, Antony J. Blinken, who is Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, asserted that “Iraq today is less violent” than “at any time in recent history.”
From the start, experts have stressed that the conflict in Iraq is as much political as military. Mr. Maliki’s failure to include leading Sunnis in his government has heightened the sectarian divisions in Iraq.
But American officials also say that militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria represent a formidable military threat, one that Iraq’s security forces, which lack an effective air force, have been hard pressed to handle on their own.
Continue reading the main story
RECENT COMMENTS
Michael S
25 minutes ago
Maliki had his chance, let him turn to his Iranian allies. "Freeing" Iraq did nothing but strengthen Iran so now let them foot the bills. ...
JP
26 minutes ago
Iraq II didn't settle or solve anything. No western solution short of a time machine will. Given time, the Islamic states in the middle...
CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY102COMMENTS
A second round of counterterrorism training between American Special Operations commandos and Iraqi troops started in Jordan this week. At least two F-16s are set to arrive in Iraq by September, and six Apaches will be leased for training later this year, Iraqi and Pentagon officials said.
But some former generals who served in Iraq said a greater effort was needed.
James M. Dubik, a retired Army lieutenant general who oversaw the training of the Iraqi army during the surge, summed it up this way: “We should fly some of our manned and unmanned aircraft and put advisers into Iraq that can help the Iraqi Army plan and execute a proper defense, then help them transition to a counter offensive.”
Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Paris.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/w...or-airstrikes-on-militants-officials-say.html
Type Username Here
Not a new member
Same thing with Vietnam. Vietnam works for the United States and its corporations.
Last edited:
Type Username Here
Not a new member
Achievements of the US invasion of Iraq:
ISIS takes over the biggest oil field in Iraq and only retreats after local Sunni tribes asked them to - check
ISIS captures US helicopters, armoured vehicles + countless weaponry from captured bases and freely moves them from Iraq to Syria - check
ISIS took $500 million from Mosul banks - check
30000 Iraqi troops turned and ran from 800 ISIS fighters -check
Honest question: did you miss the part where the United States government was very vocal in supporting anti-Assad groups, and wanted to conduct air strikes and openly fund these groups?
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Analysis: Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit down - Iraq's perfect storm of crises
© Photo: AFP
Video by Leela JACINTO
Text by Leela JACINTO
Latest update : 2014-06-11
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing following the fall of Mosul and Tikrit to a jihadist group. FRANCE 24's Leela Jacinto examines a crisis that has been brewing across the Iraqi-Syria border and its impact.
The lightening speed and sheer audacity of the latest jihadist assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, followed by Tikrit within 24 hours has shocked the international community. But FRANCE 24’s Leela Jacinto notes that this is a crisis that has been gradually brewing and has been largely ignored – until it crossed the tipping point.
Strategically, how significant is the fall of Mosul to Islamist militants? How did we get to this stage?
The significance of the fall of Iraq’s second-largest city cannot be overstated. As US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said, it presents a threat not just to Iraq, but to the region as well – and, I may add, to Western interests in the region.
What we are seeing here is a perfect storm of crises: a militant jihadist group that even al Qaeda is trying to keep at arm’s length that has extended its territorial gains across national borders. We’re seeing sectarian superpowers waging a proxy war for supremacy in Iraq, the collapse of a once-powerful Arab army and finally, local politicians fiddling over parliamentary seats while Rome burns.
First of all the fall of Mosul represents a huge territorial gain for ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) – or ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) as it’s sometimes called – and its allies. This group now effectively controls a region that stretches from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the Syria-Iraq border, through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq.
By Wednesday, ISIS had advanced as far as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, located just 150km north of Baghdad.
Mosul is the capital of Iraq’s Nineveh province. To the south of Nineveh, in the restive Anbar province, ISIS has controlled the town of Fallujah and parts of the Anbar capital of Ramadi since earlier this year.
Nineveh is one of the most multi-religious and multi-ethnic regions of Iraq. Almost all the religious and ethnic groups in the region has have historic roots here – Christians, Kurds, Sunnis, various Shiite sects, ethno-religious groups such as the Shabaks, Turkmen, Assyrians – they’re all here.
ISIS is a hardline Salafist group, notorious for its brutality, and minority groups have good reason to fear them. This is why were are seeing hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing the area.
It must be said that we don’t know as yet what ISIS’ plans for Mosul might be: do they plan to hold the city or simply send a message to the Iraqi authorities before abandoning the city? We’ll have to monitor the situation.
But the message to Iraqi authorities is loud and clear: the country’s security forces are no match for ISIS.
Iraqi security forces in Mosul simply melted earlier this week, abandoning their positions in the latest onslaught.
The planning of the final ISIS assault is a display of the group’s formidable fighting power and military strategy.
Over the past few days, the group managed to conduct an assault on a number of Iraqi towns and cities – using diversionary tactics to draw and disperse Iraqi security forces to cities like Samara in central Iraq before they went for their main target: Mosul.
ISIS militants targeted prisons and police stations in Mosul, freeing hundreds of prisoners, including their fighters. They then seized key installations – including the provincial headquarters and the airport – as Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts, leaving behind heavy weapons, military vehicles and uniforms – all of which are assets for ISIS.
Iraq’s parliamentary speaker Osama al-Nujaifi on Tuesday told journalists in Baghdad that the entire province of Nineveh is right now under militant control.
What can be done to address the situation?
Well, some Iraqi politicians have called for US help. Washington can certainly provide logistical help such as drones. But the real work must be done by the Iraqi security forces.
Iraq’s army was once a formidable military that waged an eight-year war with Iran. Today, it simply lacks the capacity for a US-like surge strategy, which was implemented in 2008.
More importantly, a military surge also requires political leadership including forging alliances with tribal chiefs and community leaders, which Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has simply not provided.
Maliki is still trying to put together a government following the April parliamentary elections. He’s proved to be a political survivor, but the Shiite politician has managed this at the cost of alienating Iraq’s significant Sunni minority.
He has managed to exacerbate Iraq’s sectarian divisions by systematically marginalising and even purging prominent Sunni politicians and using Shiite militia groups dreaded by the Sunni community. Many Iraqi Sunnis see him as a figure too closely aligned to Shiite conservatives and neighbouring Shiite powerhouse, Iran.
On Tuesday night, Maliki declared a state of high alert and has called for the mobilisation of “all efforts to face up to the existing challenges”.
But few are assured that Maliki has what it takes to truly confront those challenges.
He talked tough when Fallujah fell earlier this year, but that restive western Iraqi city is still under jihadist control.
Maliki is unlikely to succeed in re-establishing full control in Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq.
What do we know about ISIS?
ISIS basically emerged from remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq following the 2011 US troop pullout. The group declared itself fairly recently – in April 2013, when the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a statement announcing the merger of his group with a Syrian rebel group, the al-Nusra Front under the new ISIS banner.
The statement prompted a number of al-Nusra fighters – including foreign fighters – to join ISIS. But the leader of al Nusra, Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, denied the merger.
Then in November 2013, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the dissolution of ISIS and stated that the group should withdraw from Syria and concentrate on the fight in Iraq.
But Baghdadi disregarded Zawahiri’s order and has continued operations in Syria and Iraq. It’s one of the few groups that effectively controls territory across two countries.
It first came into the spotlight when it took over the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa and established what it called its first Islamic wilaya (province) where it gained a reputation for its harsh rule, earning Raqqa the moniker, “Syria’s Kandahar”.
Known for its brutality, the group has at times conducted operations alongside the al-Nusra Front, but it has mostly tense relations with other Syrian rebel groups, including Islamist ones. There have been reports of deadly clashes between ISIS and other rebel groups, including a reported assassination of an FSA (Free Syrian Army) commander.
Nobody knows for sure how many fighters ISIS has – estimates range in the thousands. As for the funding, it’s believed to come from private donations from the Gulf States as well as taxes and duties levied on goods and businesses in the territories it controls. In the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, it has seized oil refineries and managed to expand its sources of financing. Seizing a major city like Mosul will represent a major financial boost for ISIS.
On Wednesday, the group advanced on the Iraqi oil refinery town of Baiji. According to local sources, the jihadist group sent a delegation to convince security guards at the facility to withdraw, which they did.
Date created : 2014-06-11
http://www.france24.com/en/20140611-iraq-mosul-jihadist-syria-perfect-storm/
© Photo: AFP
Video by Leela JACINTO
Text by Leela JACINTO
Latest update : 2014-06-11
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing following the fall of Mosul and Tikrit to a jihadist group. FRANCE 24's Leela Jacinto examines a crisis that has been brewing across the Iraqi-Syria border and its impact.
The lightening speed and sheer audacity of the latest jihadist assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, followed by Tikrit within 24 hours has shocked the international community. But FRANCE 24’s Leela Jacinto notes that this is a crisis that has been gradually brewing and has been largely ignored – until it crossed the tipping point.
Strategically, how significant is the fall of Mosul to Islamist militants? How did we get to this stage?
The significance of the fall of Iraq’s second-largest city cannot be overstated. As US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said, it presents a threat not just to Iraq, but to the region as well – and, I may add, to Western interests in the region.
What we are seeing here is a perfect storm of crises: a militant jihadist group that even al Qaeda is trying to keep at arm’s length that has extended its territorial gains across national borders. We’re seeing sectarian superpowers waging a proxy war for supremacy in Iraq, the collapse of a once-powerful Arab army and finally, local politicians fiddling over parliamentary seats while Rome burns.
First of all the fall of Mosul represents a huge territorial gain for ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) – or ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) as it’s sometimes called – and its allies. This group now effectively controls a region that stretches from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the Syria-Iraq border, through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq.
By Wednesday, ISIS had advanced as far as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, located just 150km north of Baghdad.
Mosul is the capital of Iraq’s Nineveh province. To the south of Nineveh, in the restive Anbar province, ISIS has controlled the town of Fallujah and parts of the Anbar capital of Ramadi since earlier this year.
Nineveh is one of the most multi-religious and multi-ethnic regions of Iraq. Almost all the religious and ethnic groups in the region has have historic roots here – Christians, Kurds, Sunnis, various Shiite sects, ethno-religious groups such as the Shabaks, Turkmen, Assyrians – they’re all here.
ISIS is a hardline Salafist group, notorious for its brutality, and minority groups have good reason to fear them. This is why were are seeing hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing the area.
It must be said that we don’t know as yet what ISIS’ plans for Mosul might be: do they plan to hold the city or simply send a message to the Iraqi authorities before abandoning the city? We’ll have to monitor the situation.
But the message to Iraqi authorities is loud and clear: the country’s security forces are no match for ISIS.
Iraqi security forces in Mosul simply melted earlier this week, abandoning their positions in the latest onslaught.
The planning of the final ISIS assault is a display of the group’s formidable fighting power and military strategy.
Over the past few days, the group managed to conduct an assault on a number of Iraqi towns and cities – using diversionary tactics to draw and disperse Iraqi security forces to cities like Samara in central Iraq before they went for their main target: Mosul.
ISIS militants targeted prisons and police stations in Mosul, freeing hundreds of prisoners, including their fighters. They then seized key installations – including the provincial headquarters and the airport – as Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts, leaving behind heavy weapons, military vehicles and uniforms – all of which are assets for ISIS.
Iraq’s parliamentary speaker Osama al-Nujaifi on Tuesday told journalists in Baghdad that the entire province of Nineveh is right now under militant control.
What can be done to address the situation?
Well, some Iraqi politicians have called for US help. Washington can certainly provide logistical help such as drones. But the real work must be done by the Iraqi security forces.
Iraq’s army was once a formidable military that waged an eight-year war with Iran. Today, it simply lacks the capacity for a US-like surge strategy, which was implemented in 2008.
More importantly, a military surge also requires political leadership including forging alliances with tribal chiefs and community leaders, which Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has simply not provided.
Maliki is still trying to put together a government following the April parliamentary elections. He’s proved to be a political survivor, but the Shiite politician has managed this at the cost of alienating Iraq’s significant Sunni minority.
He has managed to exacerbate Iraq’s sectarian divisions by systematically marginalising and even purging prominent Sunni politicians and using Shiite militia groups dreaded by the Sunni community. Many Iraqi Sunnis see him as a figure too closely aligned to Shiite conservatives and neighbouring Shiite powerhouse, Iran.
On Tuesday night, Maliki declared a state of high alert and has called for the mobilisation of “all efforts to face up to the existing challenges”.
But few are assured that Maliki has what it takes to truly confront those challenges.
He talked tough when Fallujah fell earlier this year, but that restive western Iraqi city is still under jihadist control.
Maliki is unlikely to succeed in re-establishing full control in Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq.
What do we know about ISIS?
ISIS basically emerged from remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq following the 2011 US troop pullout. The group declared itself fairly recently – in April 2013, when the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a statement announcing the merger of his group with a Syrian rebel group, the al-Nusra Front under the new ISIS banner.
The statement prompted a number of al-Nusra fighters – including foreign fighters – to join ISIS. But the leader of al Nusra, Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, denied the merger.
Then in November 2013, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the dissolution of ISIS and stated that the group should withdraw from Syria and concentrate on the fight in Iraq.
But Baghdadi disregarded Zawahiri’s order and has continued operations in Syria and Iraq. It’s one of the few groups that effectively controls territory across two countries.
It first came into the spotlight when it took over the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa and established what it called its first Islamic wilaya (province) where it gained a reputation for its harsh rule, earning Raqqa the moniker, “Syria’s Kandahar”.
Known for its brutality, the group has at times conducted operations alongside the al-Nusra Front, but it has mostly tense relations with other Syrian rebel groups, including Islamist ones. There have been reports of deadly clashes between ISIS and other rebel groups, including a reported assassination of an FSA (Free Syrian Army) commander.
Nobody knows for sure how many fighters ISIS has – estimates range in the thousands. As for the funding, it’s believed to come from private donations from the Gulf States as well as taxes and duties levied on goods and businesses in the territories it controls. In the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, it has seized oil refineries and managed to expand its sources of financing. Seizing a major city like Mosul will represent a major financial boost for ISIS.
On Wednesday, the group advanced on the Iraqi oil refinery town of Baiji. According to local sources, the jihadist group sent a delegation to convince security guards at the facility to withdraw, which they did.
Date created : 2014-06-11
http://www.france24.com/en/20140611-iraq-mosul-jihadist-syria-perfect-storm/
KeysT
Playa from the Himalayas #ByrdGang
It was only a matter of time... seems like they are aiming for a lightining takeover... moving really fast before anyone can react. Baghdad better not fall though.. as Iraqi military how do you let a ragabond group of a 1,000 or so take over your city of 7 MILLION. What type of p*ssy shyt is that?!
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newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
"its chess not checkers"http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-01-biden-iraq_x.htm from 2006
Updated 5/1/2006 8:28 AM ETE-mail | Print |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Monday that Iraq be divided into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad.
In an op-ed essay in Monday's edition of The New York Times, Sen. Joseph Biden. D-Del., wrote that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."
The new Iraqi constitution allows for establishment of self-governing regions. But that was one of the reasons the Sunnis opposed the constitution and why they demanded and won an agreement to review it this year.
Biden and co-writer Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the opposition, and said the Sunnis "have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20% (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues."
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KeysT
Playa from the Himalayas #ByrdGang
looks the New Iraq will get shytted on in terms of oil.
Techniec
Drugs and Kalashnikovs
Ain't that the truth Ruth
Most of the oil is on shia arab land
Eastern Saudi
Southern Iraq
South west Iran
Think the Saudis are anti shia for just ideological reasons?