Category: Terror War

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the Pentagon is planning to send US troops to fight alongside Iraqi military forces, according to Stars & Stripes;

“As [the campaign against the Islamic State] evolves there are certain operations that could be more complex than the ones in which the Iraqi security forces are currently involved,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee. “There are some places along the path that I think will be fairly complex terrain for them, including, for example, Mosul. And eventually as they need to restore the border between Iraq and Syria.”

Dempsey said he was not predicting that American troops would be required alongside Iraqi forces in such operations “but we’re certainly considering it.”

In any event, Dempsey said the number of U.S. combat troops fighting with the Iraqis would be relatively small.

Of course this would have been huge news leading every cable show six or seven years ago. But not now, for some reason. Probably because Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is still toeing the party line (or lie);

Despite Dempsey’s comments, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, appearing at the same hearing, repeated the Administration’s position that “U.S. military personnel will not be engaged in a ground combat mission.”

So, whichever way you want it, the Obama Administration has you covered.

Jerry sends us a link to CBS News which reports that US sailors were attacked by Turkish citizens while they were on shore leave in Istanbul;

“Soldiers from the occupying country think they can walk around freely in Eminonu,” association spokesman Melik Dibek said, referring to the neighborhood where the incident occurred. “It’s obvious why they’ve anchored here -because of their ambitions in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. American imperialism is the reason why the Middle East has turned into a chamber of fire.”

The servicemen, who were not in uniform, were from the USS Ross, a guided-missile destroyer docked nearby, according to Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command. He said they were not hurt and were safely back aboard the ship, but that shore leave for its sailors was canceled for the remainder of the day.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara condemned the attack on Twitter and said it had no doubt that most Turks would reject such an action.

Yeah, our imperialism and ambitions in the Black Sea. The US Embassy statement must have come from someone who has been sleeping the last few decades. The Turks, who have the most to lose in a successful Islamic Caliphate in the region, have hardly lifted a finger to beat back the Islamic State. In fact, they used the war as an excuse to bomb the Kurds a few weeks back.

And in the war against Saddam Hussein, they wouldn’t let move the 4th Division through their country in that endeavor. That’s their right, certainly, but they also wouldn’t let US war planes use our bases there to attack ISIS for quite some time. Despite the billions of dollars that we’ve poured into their military. That should probably end abruptly.

The Associated Press reports that four nuclear scientists were killed in an ambush on their bus this morning and the Syrian government is blaming al Qaeda;

A pro-government Syrian newspaper and a monitoring group say that militants opened fire on a bus carrying nuclear scientists and engineers near Damascus, killing at least four men.

The Watan newspaper said on Monday that the men were heading to work at the Scientific Research Center near the Syrian capital when they were attacked Sunday.

The newspaper says the four victims were Syrian nationals, and suggested al-Qaida-linked militants were responsible for the attack.

Other government reports say that one of the victims is Iranian and that there were five killed. I wouldn’t rule out Israel, though, they attacked another nuclear research facility near Damascus last year.

So should we be cheering for al Qaeda because they hindered the Syrian nuclear research? The Iranians are fighting ISIS, al Qaeda is fighting ISIS, the Syrian government is fighting al Qaeda and ISIS, Hezbollah is fighting Israel and ISIS and our troops are going into the middle of a 360 degree ambush.

Thanks to Andy11M for the link.

According to Fox News, US aircraft struck what was thought to be a meeting of ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State leadership;

The airstrikes, that took place near the Iraqi town of Mosul near the Syrian border, destroyed a vehicle convoy of 10 armed trucks. The official offered no further information and said they could not confirm if Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present.

“This strike demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the ISIL terrorist network and the group’s increasingly limited freedom to maneuver, communicate and command,” a defense official told Fox News.

AFP reports that Iraq is looking into whether or not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was in the casualties;

The death of the elusive Baghdadi would be a major victory for the coalition of countries carrying out air strikes against IS and aiding Iraqi forces fighting to regain large areas of Iraq that the jihadists have overrun.

[…]

“Until now, there is no accurate information available,” a senior Iraqi intelligence official said when asked about whether Baghdadi had been killed.

“The information is from unofficial sources and was not confirmed until now, and we are working on that,” the official said without specifying what the initial reports indicated.

The ISIS fellows aren’t sitting on their hands, however – they’re moving on Baghdad doing what they do best;

Meanwhile on Saturday, a series of bombings in and around the capital Baghdad killed at least 43 people, with the deadliest blast hitting the city’s sprawling Shiite district of Sadr City, where a car bomb tore through a commercial area, killing 11 people and wounding 21.

There has been an uptick in the number of bombings blamed on Sunni militants in the capital and mostly targeting Shiites, feeding sectarian tensions in the city, as the security forces of the Shiite-led government battle the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group to the west and north of the capital.

And now there will be more than 3000 US troops in the middle of this morass.