{"id":54610,"date":"2014-08-17T16:18:06","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T20:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=54610"},"modified":"2014-08-17T16:18:06","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T20:18:06","slug":"iraq-the-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=54610","title":{"rendered":"Iraq, the mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day we talked about how the Hezbollah commander in Lebanon was worried about the ISIS\/ISIL\/Islamic State and how they threatened his own country. Messy, huh? One terrorist group worried that another terrorist group will attack them. Well, today we read that the Syrian government attacked the ISIS\/ISIL\/IS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, supposedly from where Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) supposedly directs his army in Iraq. From the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

…the intensity of Sunday’s air raids appeared unusually high, with at least 25 strikes hitting the group’s stronghold of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.<\/p>\n

Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said 14 of those raids targeted a military court and other buildings used by the group.<\/p>\n

He said at least 31 Islamic State members were killed in Raqqa, and around 40 wounded. He said there were an additional 22 civilian casualties, but he didn’t have an exact breakdown of the dead and wounded.<\/p>\n

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist collective, also reported the airstrikes on Raqqa, but put the death toll early in the day at 11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess that complicates further the politics of the latest war in Iraq. I mean, it was a scant few months ago that the Obama Administration had to be dissuaded from using airstrikes against the Syrian government, now we find ourselves fighting the same enemy. The only thing that could complicate it more is if the Assad government would use chemical weapons on the IS people.<\/p>\n

In related news, it seems that the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing for a more military stance against the IS. The Brits have limited their participation to rendering humanitarian aid thus far, but Cameron seems to want to shoot at someone. From Reuters<\/a>;<\/p>\n

In his toughest comments yet on IS, an al Qaeda splinter group, Cameron said Britain needed to adopt a more robust stance against Islamic State to prevent it from one day launching an attack on British soil, a warning he first issued in June.<\/p>\n

Britain has so far limited its role in Iraq to aid drops, surveillance and agreeing to transport military re-supplies to Kurdish forces. In addition, Britain’s trade envoy to Iraq has said SAS special forces are gathering intelligence there.<\/p>\n

“If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a novel concept – kill them there before we have to fight them here. I’d have never thought of that.<\/p>\n

In other related news, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are agreeing to the prosecution of people in their nations caught contributing to the IS in contradiction of UN sanctions against IS, according to Reuters<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait agreed to comply with a United Nations resolution aimed at stopping financing for Islamist militant groups in Syria and Iraq after four of their nationals were named among a group blacklisted by the international body.<\/p>\n

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Friday intended to weaken the Islamic State – an al Qaeda splinter group that has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate – and al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Nusra Front. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, it looks like there are limits to the amount of evil some of these countries will accept. But let’s see what the Saudis and Kuwaitis do to those citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day we talked about how the Hezbollah commander in Lebanon was worried about the … Iraq, the mess<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}