Category: Terror War

The Obama High Command today issued a press release to inform the uninformed that it had now vanquished one of the major obstacles in the campaign to do something about ISIS: they found a name for the operation. Inherent Resolve. Could they have submitted a request to the ivory towers of academia to come up with a name for the operation that could possibly be less understood by the American public? It is doubtful that our assembled politically correct camp leadership could have done better than the focused circle of sycophants surrounding our C in C.

Take a microphone and a camera out in the streets and interview everyday folks as to their interpretation of “Inherent Resolve.” If you can find one in a hundred who knows both words and is familiar with their usage, you will have done quite well. Float that same term through faculty lounges across the country, and you will likely get a lot of approving nods and grunts of acceptance. Why is that? Well, it has the inherent capability of meaning whatever its creators want it to mean. That was likely the goal of those inside the administration who came up with this indefinable tag for an apparently pointless attempt to stem militant jihadists in their fervent drive to create a Muslim caliphate in the very regions this same ineffectual administration so recently abandoned, walking away from the battlefield, arrogantly proclaiming victory while the enemy cleverly lay low and rebuilt their martial capabilities.

What is a more laughably foolish way to initiate a battle campaign than to burden the efforts of your engaged warriors with a label that is inherently based upon your previous lack of resolve, and therefore absolutely laughable to your enemies? And to the world?

I’m an old combat infantryman who has no problem with an enemy who hates me with a deadly determination to destroy me. But I swear to all of you out there, I cannot support a commander in chief and his politically correct administration who subject our nation in general and our military in particular to this sort of international ridicule.

I do believe I am inherently resolved to oppose these silly Democrat fools who profess to lead us.

Thomas Lifson adds: “Resolve” cannot by its nature be “inherent.” Resolve is an act of will. The phrase is self-contradictory.

Crossposted at American Thinker

The press is all a-twitter that the Obama Administration has given this new war in Iraq and Syria a name – Inherent Resolve. Isn’t that reason to celebrate? From the Washington Post;

Col. Edward Thomas, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disclosed the name to a handful of reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. He offered no details on its genesis, or why it took so long for the Defense Department to name the operation. The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 3 that Inherent Resolve was proposed, but rejected by senior officers at the Pentagon.

Because, you know, the genesis of the name is more important than an examination of the facts for the need for the operation – or a discussion on how we can insure that it doesn’t happen again (in Afghanistan).

Now that we have a name for it, the aesthetics are complete. The war is almost won. The media can stop calling it “the war against ISIS” or “the war in Iraq and Syria” or the “3rd Iraq War”. I’m sure my readers can come up with a better moniker for this inevitable return to Iraq.

Eggs sends us a link from the New York Times which reports on the “secret” casualties of the Iraq War, they tell how there were casualties from Saddam Hussein’s non-existent chemical weapons program. The excuse for keeping the weapons and their casualties secret was that the weapons containers were old and degraded and didn’t fit the Bush Administration’s definition of WMDs.

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

You can read the entire 45-page FOIA here.

To me, 5000 chemical warheads is indicative of a chemical weapons program, and 500 tons of yellow cake uranium tells me that there was a nuclear program in Iraq. The concern now is that those 5000 warheads are in the hands of ISIS. The Obama Administration says that the weapons are degraded and not worth worrying about, but one of the encounters that US troops had with chemical weapons that the New York Times recounts happened in 2011.

The NYT stops short of blaming the US for the weapons troops found in Iraq, but they do say that the weapons were “US designed” as if we were designing Hussein’s chemical weapon program. But the weapons were activated by unnamed European manufacturers.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin.

But, regardless, the things still existed, Hussein wasn’t disposing of them and they were still potent enough to wound US troops as they tried to dispose of the things. So can we admit that there were indeed WMDs in Iraq now?

AFP reports that Dutch bikers of the motorcycle gang “No Surrender” aren’t breaking the law when they travel to the Middle East to fight against ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State thugs;

“Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden,” public prosecutor spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP.

“You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands,” he told AFP after reports emerged that Dutch bikers from the No Surrender gang were fighting IS insurgents alongside Kurds in northern Iraq.

The above picture is of “Ron”, one of the bikers near Syria, from De Morgen.

The Washington Post (by way of the Stars & Stripes) takes a look at the jihad of Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, the son of a Palestinian father and an American mother who converted to Islam. Abu-Salha grew up in Florida and made several trips to the Middle East – during the last trip, he blew himself up in a truck bomb aimed at a restaurant frequented by Syrian soldiers. Border security had an opportunity to stop his personal jihad after his second-to-the-last trip;

As the 22-year-old Florida native made his way through a U.S. border inspection, officers pulled him aside for additional screening and searched his belongings. They called his mother in Vero Beach, Fla., to check on his claim that he had merely been visiting relatives in the Middle East. But when she vouched for him, U.S. officials said, Moner Mohammad Abusalha was waved through without any further scrutiny or perceived need to notify the FBI that he was back in the United States.

For six months, Abu-Salha wandered around the country until he made his final journey and met his fateful end.

His death May 25 was accompanied by the release of a menacing video. “You think you are safe where you are in America,” he said, threatening his own country and a half-dozen others. “You are not safe.”

Apparently not because the folks protecting our borders take a Muslim’s mother words as gospel. The kid had sneaked off from his family during that rip. He left his car abandoned as he began his journey and the mother didn’t think to mention that to authorities. By the time he exploded, Abu-Salha was on the no-fly list, but he blowed up real good.

It makes me wonder how many others are floating around the country looking for a place to explode. there’s much more about the rambunctious youngster at the link, so you should read the whole thing.

This morning, Andy sent us a link to the news that Turkey finally gave us permission to use our own bases there to launch attacks against ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State targets in Iraq and mostly Syria.

U.S. officials confirmed Saturday that Ankara had agreed to train Syrian moderate forces on Turkish soil. A Turkish government official said Sunday that Turkey put the number at 4,000 opposition fighters and said they would be screened by Turkish intelligence.

Also Sunday, officials confirmed that Turkey agreed to let U.S. and coalition fighter aircraft launch operations against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria from Turkish bases, including Incirlik Air Base in the south. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has been traveling in South America, has said the U.S. wanted access to the Turkish bases.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private talks between the Americans and Turks.

Maybe they were anonymous because they weren’t quite telling the truth.

A Turkish official says there is no new agreement with the United States on using an air base in southern Turkey for operations against the militant group ISIS.

Turkey and the United States are still negotiating the use of the Incirlik air base as well as Turkish demands for the creation of a no-fly zone and a safe haven for refugees, the government official told the Associated Press on Monday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue publicly.

Well, an anonymous source told me that everyone is FOS. The Turks need to get off their high horse and start spending some of the money that we’ve been giving them since the end of World War II and especially the money that we’ve been giving them to protect themselves since the Syrian Civil War began. And the Associated Press needs to start doing some of that journalism stuff and quit using anonymous sources to create news stories where none exist.

And why TF is Hagel in South America? It’s like the only continent on the planet where nothing much is happening.

Yesterday, we talked about some senior commanders who have been telling the President that we should have more troops on the ground in Iraq. Apparently, one of those senior commanders is General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He told a Sunday show yesterday that airstrikes alone aren’t getting the job done;

…he said that when Iraqi forces are ready to take the offensive against the Islamic State jihadists who have overrun swaths of territory in northern and western Iraq, as well as in Syria, that would likely change.

“Mosul will likely be the decisive battle in the ground campaign at some point in the future,” Dempsey said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the northern Iraqi city seized by IS militants in June.

“My instinct at this point is that will require a different kind of advising and assisting because of the complexity of that fight,” he said.

Funny how since the president told us that he wasn’t going to allow combat troops to put their boots on the ground, this administration has been acclimatizing the public to that eventuality.