Good Day and welcome to briefing…..this will be a short week because of T’giving…..as the month ends the news of the conflict is but a trickle….but that is expected because the media now has immigration to fixate on…..and of course the wait for the decision in Ferguson………….but IST will remain a good source of information for the war and its consequences….
Item 1–ISIS seems to be in the move again…..
(CNN) — ISIS militants are fighting Iraqi military and tribal forces close to the main government complex of Anbar province in the center of Ramadi, according to a local official there.
The fighting started Friday after ISIS militants launched a coordinated assault from different direction around the city, according to Faleh al-Issawi, deputy head of the provincial council.
The battle is taking place about 1,000 feet from the complex that houses the local government and security headquarters. “If the government complex falls, it would mean the fall of the whole province,” Al-Issawi told CNN.
Anbar where the US will try to use the tribes again to fight the bad guys….
Item 2–US has issued mixed messages on the Syrian front of the conflict…….
Vice President Joe Biden spent four hours today in private meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The topic: how to impose regime change on Syria, Turkey’s war-torn neighbor to the south.
Publicly, the US has been in favor of regime change for years, and had been backing “moderate” rebel factions on and off in hopes of installing one of them.
Since entering a direct war with ISIS in Syria two months ago, the US war focus has been on ISIS and other rebel factions, strikes which the US concedes are benefiting the Assad government.
At some point the US will need to pick one eventuality concerning Syria….hopefully it will not be too LATE to effectively meet the strategy.
Item 3–This is a paradox since Turkey has been fighting the PKK and Peshmerga for decades…….
(Reuters) – Turkish soldiers are training Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq and will give similar assistance to a new national army unit in Baghdad as part of the struggle against Islamic State, a senior Turkish official said on Saturday.
Turkish soldiers began special forces training with Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq three weeks ago, peshmerga spokesman Brigadier General Halgurd Hikmat said. The Turkish official said similar assistance would be given to Iraq’s National Guard.
Item 4–Chuck Hagel resigns as sec of Defense……There is more to this than meets the eye…I will be looking into this situation…..my guess at this time is he did not like the direction of the war against ISIS……
Sadly the media does not think that a conflict where Americans can die is woth more than a few seconds as an afterthought to some BS report on what Cosby has done….personally I find it disgusting.
Thanx for your time and attention………
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