The big news is that the US has put together a less than functioning coalition of about 50 partners and NO one is sure what their contributions will be, other than the 5 Arab nations that have participated in the airstrikes beginning this week.
There has been developments that are starting to shine a light on the dysfunctions of this coalition…….
Item 1–Iraqi PM has issued a terrorist warning…….
While speaking to reporters at the UN today, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Ibadi made some news that seemed to catch everybody off guard: He said he had “credible” evidence that ISIS was planning subway attacks in the US and Paris, reports Reuters. US security officials quoted on and off the record by Reuters, NBC News, the AP, and others said it was the first they were hearing about it and generally downplayed the remarks. One senior intelligence official called it “total bunk.”
This sounds more like the PM is trying to deflect all the criticism of the army for not fighting like they were trained to do……the army has had too many mistakes for the world to have confidence in their abilities.
Item 2–There is a critique of the airstrikes in Syria from the rebels……..
Rebels factions have been complaining about the US attacking their “allies” in al-Qaeda, and today warned that the US strikes against ISIS aren’t really helping them in any way either.
The US war also found considerable complaints from Syrian women activists, who warned the US attacks were counterproductive, killing civilians and radicalizing the population.
This site has been saying that there may have been a better way to handle ISIS…..but the common goal was to bomb them into the Middle Ages…….
Item 3–A ‘moderate’ rebel group has shut down ops and for the usual reasons……
Two years after the Obama administration granted it a rare license to raise money for Syrian rebels, a Washington-based opposition nonprofit group that tried to help the United States build a moderate fighting force is defunct.
Former organizers of the Syrian Support Group say the Obama administration shares the blame for the collapse of their campaign, and for the broader challenge of finding allies among fighters who’ve spent years seeking U.S. military help in their struggle against Bashar Assad’s government only to be asked, now, to serve as foot soldiers against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The lesson from the Syrian Support Group’s experience, the organizers said, is that half-measures just won’t cut it in such an enormous undertaking.
About 500 troops from the U.S. Army‘s 1st Infantry Division in Fort Riley, Kansas, will head to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East next month to help coordinate the campaign against the Islamic State, the Pentagon said Thursday.
More than 200 hundred of the soldiers will be based in Iraq at U.S. Joint Operations Centers (JOCs) in Baghdad and the Kurdish capital of Irbil, and the rest of the contingent will operate out of U.S. bases in the region under the U.S. Central Command, Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said at a Pentagon briefing.
The initial plan was to have 138 of the troops at the operations center in Baghdad, 68 at the operations center in Irbil and 10 at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, Kirby said. The 200-plus troops will be part of the 475-troop contingent President Barack Obama authorized last month to serve in Iraq as advisers to the Iraqi National Security forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
The amount of US Troops silently creeps up and up……is this the plan all along?
Item 5–Back in the early days of 2003 the world was asking if there was a reason that the US was attacking Muslim countries…..and their answer was that the US was not at war with Islam……..unfortunately the facts say something different……..
That means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama—after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.
The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even afterCongress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).
All this bombing makes for good propaganda…….and sends chills up the spines of countries that disagree with our policies…….
Item 6–The moist important info to come out of DC is that these airstrikes may not be doing the best job…..why?
……..the Pentagon has warned that the airstrikes in Syria are going to end up the exact same way, with ISIS expected to quickly change tactics and adapt, making it more difficult to pick out targets.
What damage the strikes have done, Pentagon officials say ISIS will easily rebound from, and picking future targets will require “competent partners” on the ground to spot.
Not the best news to describe the effects of our airstrikes.
This concludes the briefing….the news out of the Middle East is coming faster than I can type but i will try to keep you abreast of the changes and the news……
Thanx for your time and attention…….
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Re: “Rebels factions have been complaining about the US attacking their “allies” in al-Qaeda, and today warned that the US strikes against ISIS aren’t really helping them in any way either.”
That’s kind of funny and very predictable for people who read about the Syrian situation. After all, the “moderate” rebels and the “radical Islamist” rebels both have the same enemy – Assad.
So true and the rebels want Assad gone and they will concentrate of that outcome….not what the US wants….