![\"dana-pittard\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/dana-pittard-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nMilitary.com<\/a> says that Major General Dana Pittard has been chosen to lead the latest operation in Iraq. If his name sounds familiar, he was in public opinion hot water about two years ago<\/a> while he was post commander at Fort Bliss when he wrote on his blog that suicide is a selfish act after attending one of his troops’ funeral.<\/p>\n Anyway, Pittard is an Armor officer and he’s going to command a special forces-manned unit.<\/p>\n The troops have already set up a joint operations center to “serve as a fusion center where information that’s coming in from the various teams can be consolidated and it can be analyzed,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.<\/p>\n Warren declined to say whether the JOC was in the “green zone” on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy or elsewhere in Baghdad.<\/p>\n The troops at the JOC will take at least two weeks to conduct an assessment of the situation on the ground, the capabilities and needs of the Iraqi forces, and the status of the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).<\/p>\n Much of the intelligence for the JOC will come from the 30-35 manned and unmanned flights the U.S. has been conducting over Iraq, Pentagon officials said.<\/p>\n Once the assessment is concluded in 2-3 weeks, the intention was to open a second JOC at a location yet to be named in northern Iraq, Warren said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The article goes on to announce that the Iraqis are buying old Cold War jets from Russia to compensate for the snail’s pace of the delivery of US jets that were agreed to months ago but haven’t materialized.<\/p>\n “We shouldn’t have just bought U.S. jets, we should have bought British, French and Russian jets to provide air support. If we had air support, none of this would have happened,” Maliki said of the ISIL advances.<\/p>\n At the Pentagon, [Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman] said that the U.S. was attempting to deliver the first two F-16s “as quickly as possible” and the rest would arrive on schedule in the fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, I’m sure the ISIS folks will hold off for another four months just to accommodate our delivery.<\/p>\n