[Fighting888]

We will be launching air strikes against the ISIS Sunni militants in northern Iraq.

I wonder if our war will expand into Syria, since the ISIS militants operate out of both Iraq and Syria.

[Fighting888]

There are 50,000 Yezidi refugees trapped on Shingal mountain. We will be airdropping food to them too.

Quote:




ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—An eyewitness told Rudaw that 40 Yezidi children and elderly have died of hunger and thirst on Shingal Mountain on Monday.



“The children and the elderly cannot stand the lack of food and water and the aid doesn’t reach all the families who have taken refugee on the mountain,” the witness told Rudaw by telephone.



Around 50,000 civilian Yezidis, most of them residents of Shingal, have spent three days on a dry mountain in the outskirts of town after fleeing the advance of Islamic militants on Sunday.



The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has coordinated with international organizations to deliver food and water to the refugees by air, but people on Shingal mountain say that the help doesn’t reach them properly.

[TheWastelander]

It's not a new war and I agree with this action.

What we did caused a lot of this mess so the least we can do is provide air support to the Kurds, bomb the extremist totalitarian assholes, and prevent a genocide of the Yezidi and the Christians trapped on the mountain.

[Fighting888]

We officially withdrew our troops back in December 2011 and ended the Iraq War. Now our troops back to war in Iraq and starting a new military campaign against ISIS. I guess you could argue that this war is just a continuation of our 2003 Iraq War, but I guess you could also argue that the 2003 war is a continuation of the first Gulf War in 1991.

but the point is that we're now at war with ISIS.

It'll be interesting to see how widely this war expands. Does it go into Syria? We'll see.

I wonder what's the real reason we're there. Maybe because Saudi Arabia feels like ISIS could expand the fighting into their kingdom?

[Sonsowey]

You know this whole ISIS mess is because we toppled Sadam and funded rebels agains Al-Assad.

Every time we try to take out an "enemy" in the middle east, a worse one rears its head.

Hard to imagine something worse than ISIS really but I'm sure it's out there, and if there's one way to find out what it is, starting a war with ISIS seems like a good way to do it.

[OBJ Snakebite]

Am I the only one who hears "ISIS" and thinks of Mallory Archer?

[Foolsgo1d]

I just find it odd that now they decide to hit ISIS when it was ISIS and others who would have profited the most from us bombing the Syrian regime.

The CIA knows this, so does MI6 but hell, lets go bomb somebody because they're allied to Iran and to hell with the civilians who are being massacred by the Jihad warriors.

[Jaydublin]

3 times in just under 3 decades... not bad boys.

But seriously, I feel for some of these people in Iraq. They have lived in constant war and terror.

Anyway, more refugees for Europe.

[Double Salad]

[Saweeep]

Journalist inside ISIS: part one

These guys seem pretty well set up.

Straight from the cult growers play book, this stuff.

[Dr. Howard]

(08-08-2014 09:11 AM)Jaydublin Wrote:  

3 times in just under 3 decades... not bad boys.

But seriously, I feel for some of these people in Iraq. They have lived in constant war and terror.

Anyway, more refugees for Europe.

True, they should consider renaming the country "new afghanistan" with that war track record, especially when you extend it back to the iran/iraq war as well.

[Que enspastic]

ISIS are everyone's enemy in the Middle East. No one will shed tears over drone strikes clearing out their motorised columns.

[Sherman]

This is Vietnam all over again. The US gave unlimited aid to the South and the North still won because they were the stronger horse. Now they are our trading partners, and Vietnam is eager to get close to the US because they are far more afraid of China. So, why couldn't the political boobs have figured this out 50 years ago before all the death and destruction? But at the time, North Vietnam was peddled as the great threat who would bring the collapse of capitalism. They won and it didn't happen.

So why don't we learn from our mistakes, and just let the stronger horse form a state and then do business with them? It was the US that decided to take down Saddam and his progressive civil state that suppressed radical religion. ISIS is being careful with the oil fields because it is in their best interest. Why do we consider it worthy to support the side who can't win no matter how much help they get? Just like Vietnam, ISIS will eventually win and set up their state. And then we will have another trading partner.

The US really needs Rand Paul to make heads roll at the State Department and rethink US foreign policy.

[Sonsowey]

^^^ The "ally with ISIS" position is not likely one Obama has taken seriously.

Of course, if the U.S. teamed up with radical Islam, who could stop us?

Think about it Obama...

[LeBeau]

I just hope the Kurds get their own state at the end of all of this, and that places like Erbil remain safe

[Sonsowey]

I wonder how many Syrian Kurds have fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. Do the Iraqi Kurds want other Kurds to come join them?

[Baldwin81]

(08-08-2014 12:19 PM)Sherman Wrote:  

The US really needs Rand Paul to make heads roll at the State Department and rethink US foreign policy.

Unfortunately, Rand Paul (or someone with his foreign policy ideas) doesn't make it to the White House with his positions. The "cathedral" will subtly and not-so-subtly block him.

Remember the popular support in the primary for his dad?

The networks (broadcast and cable) completely glossed over anything he had to say. The internet was bonkers for Ron Paul, but the majority of voters are still getting their news from big media.

A shame really, I don't agree with everything Ron and Rand had to say, but damn if they weren't a common sense island in a sea of bullshit.

[kbell]

Didn't he campaign for the presidency on a platform of getting out of Iraq? Now he wants to go back in!?! You don't see those end this war bumper stickers anymore, even though we still are at war.

[Spectrumwalker]

If Saddam was still in power Iraq wouldn't be this mess it is today. One of Osama Bin Ladens objectives was to topple western backed secular Arab dictators. Funny how Anglo geopolitics in the Arab world is congruent with Bin Laden's goals.

[Sonsowey]

[rekruler]

(08-08-2014 02:06 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

Not to divert this thread too much, but Saddam Hussein was a true badass mothefuka. His parents were shepherds and his dad left when Saddam was a few months old. He began his "political career" as a low level street enforcer for an upstart revolutionary party, and climbed his way up the ladder by carrying out assassinations and other violent acts, until he ruled supreme in that fuked up country and was known only as "Saddam" to his subjects and as an international pariah par exellance to the world at large. Yeah he ended up on the wrong end of a long rope, but that must have been one intense life, from beginning to end. Talk about "The Will to Power."

[weambulance]

Yeah, Saddam was a real hero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign

Some of the shit you guys come up with is unreal.

It's clear that about half the people in this thread would be upset with the US no matter what it did.

[rekruler]

(08-08-2014 02:20 PM)weambulance Wrote:  

Yeah, Saddam was a real hero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign

Some of the shit you guys come up with is unreal.

It's clear that about half the people in this thread would be upset with the US no matter what it did.

Nobody is calling him a hero. The man was evil, although probably a LOT less so than the western media would have us all believe. The world is never black and white. The point is he was a badass, which is a designation that is agnostic of moral rights or wrongs.

Think Genghis Khan: a mass murderer and rapist on an unimaginable scale, he left an entire continent-the world's largest, at that- a smoking ruin. Yet because nobody alive today has an ethnic or political axe to grind with Mongols, his atrocities have basically earned him eternal fame with very little in the way of opprobrium. Saddam is a bantamweight on the atrocity scale compared to Genghis, so if we can acknowledge that Genghis Khan was a baddass, we can do the same with Saddam.

[Sherman]

(08-08-2014 02:20 PM)weambulance Wrote:  

Yeah, Saddam was a real hero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign

Some of the shit you guys come up with is unreal.

It's clear that about half the people in this thread would be upset with the US no matter what it did.

Well, actually we support American policy.

   

Saddam Hussein declared honorary citizen of Detroit receives key to the city.

[Sourcecode]

America, Fuck Yeah!
Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day, Yeah