Tag: iraq

Evergreen reminder: Barack Obama campaigned on losing the war in Iraq.

Oh, sure, he called it ‘ending’ the war. But even back in 2011 it was obvious that Barack Obama’s supremely idiotic mistake was going to end up biting us all in sensitive places.  And now apparently we’re all supposed to pretend that everything said during the 2008 election… somehow doesn’t matter.

Well, guess what? It does matter. President Barack Obama made an extremely bad, foolish, arrogant, and above all, stupid decision: and now we all have to cash the check that one incompetent man’s ego wrote. Huzzah.

Quote of the Day, The Antiwar Movement Lacks The Right To Lecture Us edition.

While reading this passage on how inevitably Libya collapsed (via Instapundit), I came across this passage:

They don’t realize it yet, but these guys are on a path to make even Donny Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks look good—and you thought that was impossible.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, The Antiwar Movement Lacks The Right To Lecture Us edition.

Reuters apparently shocked that people act horridly when a city’s being sacked.

Seriously, what did Reuters expect was going to happen?

On April 1, the city of Tikrit was liberated from the extremist group Islamic State. The Shi’ite-led central government and allied militias, after a month-long battle, had expelled the barbarous Sunni radicals.

Then, some of the liberators took revenge.

Near the charred, bullet-scarred government headquarters, two federal policemen flanked a suspected Islamic State fighter. Urged on by a furious mob, the two officers took out knives and repeatedly stabbed the man in the neck and slit his throat. The killing was witnessed by two Reuters correspondents.

Continue reading Reuters apparently shocked that people act horridly when a city’s being sacked.

More on Islamic State, the God-damned* death cult now running large sections of Iraq and Syria.

Remember when ‘ritual human sacrifice’ was an archaic term? …Yeah, I miss those days, too.

Yes, I am being perfectly serious.  You have probably all seen the image of Islamic State (IS) ritually slaying two gay men by throwing them off of a building, but I want you to look at this: Continue reading More on Islamic State, the God-damned* death cult now running large sections of Iraq and Syria.

12 Warthogs quietly sent back to Middle East.

Translation: expect more US troops to be deployed to the Middle East.

The Pentagon is deploying 300 airmen and 12 A-10 combat jets to the Middle East in early October, according to the Indiana Air National Guard.

The six-month deployment from the 122nd Fighter Wing is not specifically part of President Obama’s fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but the airmen and jets could provide air support to troops battling ISIS on the ground.

“I don’t know of a time in Blacksnake history we have taken this kind of aviation footprint forward,” said Col. Patrick R. Renwick, 122nd Fighter Wing commander, in a statement. “The A-10 ‘Warthog’ is uniquely suited for the Combatant Commander’s needs, and the Blacksnakes are the right team to bring that capability to combat.”

A-10s are essentially flying tanks: that ‘air support’ thing is typically ‘close air support.’ Warthogs are aboust as subtle as a depleted-uranium round in the face, so wherever they’re going, it’s going to be somewhere where you want that.  That means supporting ground troops.

This is just a thing that is.

Moe Lane

PS: I suppose that we could be putting the Warthogs at the service of somebody else’s ground troops.  …Whose? The Kurds? Because if we’re sending the ANG units there, that’s just more American troop buildup in Iraq anyway.

2012: Joe Biden slams Mitt Romney for… being right about Iraq, Syria, and Russia.

I honestly and truly do not like to tell people that the best thing that they can do for the Republic is not to vote.

But…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw6I7MWYKV4

…if Joe Biden’s argument here swayed you – if the thought that Mitt Romney, if elected, would try to:

  • Reverse our withdrawal of troops from Iraq (there’s a heck of a lot of people in ISIS-held territory that wish we were still there);
  • Stop using a fixed timetable for our withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan (I believe that ISIS has shown us all why that’s a bad idea);
  • Engage in combat in Syria (note that Joe Biden assumed that we’d be fighting the fascists there, not giving them [and the theocrats in Iran] tacit assistance);
  • And confront Russia (who is merrily pushing everywhere they can, right now)

– and you thought that this was all a bad thing; then I will submit to you that in voting for Obama-Biden you made the single most foolish, uninformed, and downright dangerous Presidential vote that you are likely to make in your life.  And while I absolutely respect the right of you to exercise your franchise – better men and women than either  you or I died to protect that right – it is my humble request that you refrain from damaging the country that we both love in the future.  I have kids, you see. I don’t want to see them worse off than I was, at their age.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via

Alleged WMD (chlorine gas) attack in Iraq.

Just now hearing of this.

No other news on this.

Am trying my best not to go into full-blown wrath over this. Wrath gets in the way of proper negative reinforcement of bad behaviors, and original story may not be true.

What a …Victorian speech Obama made.

I’m actually down with a cold of some kind, and I don’t have the energy to properly go off on that speech, but: when it comes to our apparent policy for fighting in Iraq Barack Obama seems to have found his inner Palmerston or Disraeli. Basically, what’s going to happen is that we’re about to start arming a subject ally tribe – the Kurds – and let them kill ISIS. And, not incidentally, acquire territory (whether what we’re still gamely calling ‘Iraq’ objects or not). This is not necessarily a bad call, theoretically – but I am uncertain that the President realizes that he’s adopting a strategy that British imperialists would have recognized on sight.

To say nothing of Barack Obama’s father, who by all accounts hated those same British imperialists with great vim and vigor. Whether this is irony, or a bizarre attempt at therapy, is beyond the scope of this post – suffice it to say, I really wish that Barack Obama had taken more history classes in college. Proper ones.

White House sending another 350 troops to Iraq.

Nickel-and-diming our way back to a significant troop presence, apparently:

The White House just announced that President Obama authorized hundreds of extra troops on the ground to protect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement that that the Defense Department authorization stemmed from a State Department request for “approximately 350 additional U.S. military personnel to protect our diplomatic facilities and personnel.”

I wonder if the President’s own hardcore supporters believe the man on this, at this point. Can’t decide whether it’s worse if they do, or if they don’t.