Iraq has been
a nest of vipers since it was created at the supposed end of WWI. The continual tribal and religious conflicts
that keep it internally in turmoil are now made more complex by the invasion of
even more fundamentalists striking out of Syria and bringing widespread murder
with them.
The Iraqi
national army, which was supposedly trained to fight and defend the patchwork
nation of Iraq, at a cost of billions to U.S. taxpayers dropped their weapons
and bolted at the first sign of contact by the invading ISIS. This allowed the invaders to further arm
their forces by capturing weapons and other hardware left for the Iraqis by the
U.S. when it officially departed Iraq.
Now, with the
Iraqi army a joke, unable to defend it’s own nation, there are an unknown
number of U.S. military advisors and diplomats still in Iraq. These people must be protected and that task
requires a real military, not our untrustworthy pseudo allies who spend their
training time chanting Shia slogans aimed at the Sunni who comprise ISIS.
Currently we
are blowing holes in the ISIS convoys and positions to prevent them reaching U.S.
personnel. To make matters even more
difficult, the ISIS sunni have been killing any non-Muslims they capture by
invading the towns and small cities on their route to Bagdad. They are trotting out the convert of die
modus operandi. They are offering this
choice minorities who still live in Iraq.
Thousands of Yazidi have fled en-masse to a mountain near the Syrian
border. They arrived there with no food,
water, medicines, or suitable clothing.
The ISIS promptly surrounded the mountain with intent to kill them
all. The initial plan to massacre was
partially prevented by units of Iraqi and Syrian KURDS. To prevent mass deaths among these refugees,
the U.S. has been targeting ISIS, dropping ordnance on their lines using drones
and Navy aviation. With some decrease in
the AA capacity of ISIS, we have followed on with air drops of
necessities. Kurdish units have escorted
or convoyed some thousands of Yazidi to Syria; then to Kurdish Iraq. The current estimate waiting to be rescued is
around 40,000. This is an extremely
large number of people to evacuate to safety.
The burden is going to fall upon our military.
The current
plan is for the U.S. to deploy more advisors to determine how many actual
refugees there are and how best to extract them. What ever method is chosen, it or it in
combination with plan B will require our troops to return to combat roles in
Iraq. The total deaths attributed to
Bush/Cheney is still growing.
There is no
hope for any real unification of Iraq.
The Sunni invaders are behaving much like the Germans who invaded
Ukraine and Russia. Even more
disturbing, the minorities report that their own neighbors are helping to round
up and execute the minorities. This is
horribly reminiscent of the Holocaust.
Meanwhile,
back at the kibbutz, the Israeli/Hammas cease fire is once more not
holding. Rockets were fired into Israel
today from Gaza.
ISIS has been
an effective and mostly cohesive force in Syria and Iraq. Hammas has a large store of mostly inaccurate
ballistic rockets. But both of these
groups must eventually realize that they are outnumbered and massively outgunned.
“ You can
hide in the caves, they’ll be only your graves, but you can’t get away from the
guns!”
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