Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 236

On September 27 2014 01:23 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So the UK Parliament has authorized strikes against ISIS.

On September 27 2014 00:39 TheFish7 wrote:
I'm just questioning why they feel the need to come out and say "every little thing gonna be alright", especially after stepping up security, it feels disingenuous.

Russia said Friday that it would help to support Iraq in the fight against ISIS. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the pledge to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said via state-run news agency Itar-Tass. "During the meeting, Lavrov confirmed Russia’s support for Iraq’s independence, territory integrity and sovereignty," the foreign ministry said. "Moscow is ready to continue supporting Iraq in its efforts in fighting the terrorist threat, and, first of all, the one from the Islamic State."

Britain will struggle to mount a lengthy air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq because its air force has been reduced to the “bare bones” by defence cuts, a former head of the RAF has warned.

Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Graydon said the RAF was at “rock bottom” after years of cuts and sustaining air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters would be “quite a stretch”.

MPs are on Friday expected to back a Government motion authorising a bombing campaign on Isil targets in Iraq to try to help the Baghdad government beat back the militants who have seized large parts of northern Iraq.

...

Sir Michael, a former Chief of the Air Staff, said with fighters already committed to defending UK air space and operations in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Falklands, the RAF would be badly stretched to take on a new campaign.

He said: “The lack of combat air craft is a major weakness in our make up. This has been raised time and time again and basically ignored. We really are at rock bottom.”

The RAF is short of pilots and navigators, while the longer the campaign carried on, the more wear and tear would hit the reliability of the ageing Tornados, he said.

Sir Michael, vice president of the UK National Defence Association, said: “To sustain this operation is going to be quite a stretch.”

Britain currently has just seven combat-capable air squadrons, compared to 15 for the French air force.

Iraqi officials say that the United States is due to send 13,000 soldiers to Iraq, despite its claims of complete military withdrawal from the country.

The vice president of the local council of Iraq’s Saladin Province made the announcement on Thursday, adding that the troops, along with their vehicles, would be stationed at the Speicher airfield in the city of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

On September 27 2014 12:27 pls no ty wrote:


LOL YEAH TANKS AND JETS AND MAYBE A BATTLESHIP.

> PYD co-chair Salih Mislim
> I REALLY LOVE THESE KURDS.

btw...

On September 27 2014 16:21 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

So, contrary to previous claims, ISIS is in fact encroaching on Kobane? Well that's not good.

Bullshit reporting from salty Iranian press, probably a reaction to Iran's declining influence in Iraq lol. But they're claiming that the US is sending 13,000 soldiers to Iraq. Honestly, this isn't in any US news and everything I find points to here



RIP Iranian news
+ Show Spoiler +

On September 28 2014 01:41 AngryMag wrote:


IS is on the offense in Syria, bombardements are relatively limited (everybody participating is very cautious regarding bombardments in populated areas-->tacticians are afraid of rising IS support throughout the neigbouring Sunni countries-->big mistakes ala bombing a wedding could be hugely counter productive).They will only slow them down but they'll be not defeated if things keep going that way.

In Iraq IS is on the defense, but throwing them out will take time if things continue at this rate and it is likely that they'll be able to keep on their "guerilla" channels (local contacts, smuggling routes, hidden weapon depots) intact even in the long run as they still have support from the Sunnis. 2 weeks ago, I read that the Iraqi armed forces had the worst week since the start of the IS offensive in June. They lost over 500 hundred soldiers within a week.

To the American soldiers: In the german speaking media I read that US- military and intelligence officials voice disagreement with the president's strategy. They say they need a well trained and funded ground fighting force of around 15000 soldiers to really hurt IS. Air strikes will not be enough to stop them, atleast if you trust their assesment. According to the sources I read, this ground fighting force should be formed out of local moderate militias (Hey what could possibly go wrong with that?) Meaning they don't speak of American soldiers but of local players..

Perhaps the Iranian article is based on this assesments? Sources are as I said german stuff I read over the last weeks, so putting it in here is somehow useless.

And I saw a clip on liveleak yesterday where a YPG soldier fires a german Milan weapon in the Kobane area, they are saying that more and more weapons from the west are coming (They also already have american caliber 50 machine guns, both systems very useful against light and and light armoured vehicles, so far the Kurds had big trouble to fight these mobile platforms because of a lack of modern weaponry).

I hope and think that they'll manage to hold on Kobane, atleast this time around.

RAF jets sent on Iraqi combat mission against IS

Two RAF jets have carried out their first combat mission over Iraq since Parliament authorised air strikes targeting Islamic State (IS) militants.

The Ministry of Defence said the two Tornado jets carried out armed reconnaissance operations but did not conduct any air strikes.

They gathered intelligence which would be "invaluable", the MoD added.

.....

The Tornado jets have now returned to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, seven hours after they took off.

In a statement, the MOD said: "Although on this occasion no targets were identified as requiring immediate air attack by our aircraft, the intelligence gathered by the Tornados' highly sophisticated surveillance equipment will be invaluable to the Iraqi authorities and their coalition partners."

.....

Source

U.S. Considers a No-Fly Zone to Protect Civilians From Airstrikes by Syria

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has not ruled out establishing a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria to protect civilians from airstrikes by the Syrian government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday.

Mr. Hagel and General Dempsey indicated they are open to considering the request of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, where tens of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge. Mr. Hagel said, “We’ve discussed all these possibilities and will continue to talk about what the Turks believe they will require.” He said 1.3 million Syrian refugees are now in Turkey.

General Dempsey added that “a buffer zone might at some point become a possibility,” but he said it was not imminent. Creating a buffer, or no-fly zone, would require warplanes to disable the Syrian government’s air defense system through airstrikes.

.....

Source

Iran will attack Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside Iraq if they advance near the border, ground forces commander Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdestana said in comments published on Saturday.

"If the terrorist group [ISIS] comes near our borders, we will attack deep into Iraqi territory and we will not allow it to approach our border," the official IRNA news agency quoted Pourdestana as saying.

ISIS controls a swathe of territory north of Baghdad, including in Diyala province, which borders Shiite Iran.

The United States launched air strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq in August and has since widened them to Syria, where the group has its headquarters, as part of an international coalition to crush the group.

Iran is a close ally of the Shiite-led government in Iraq and has been unusually accepting of U.S. military action in Iraq against the jihadists.

Hezbollah squeezed out of Golan by Jabhat al-Nusra, Israel

The Syrian opposition militants entering Lebanon’s southeastern corner are not Hezbollah’s only concern. There are three other consequences, equally serious and disturbing for the party.

First, Jabhat al-Nusra has taken control of the Syrian side of the border facing the Lebanese area of Shebaa, which is occupied by Israel, isolating Hezbollah from the Syrian extension in the Golan Heights. Hezbollah considers the area a strategic position in its conflict with Israel. After Syria maintained only weak official control over those quiet areas since the disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel in 1973, a series of military operations has lately targeted Israeli soldiers in the region.

For example, a bomb targeted Israeli soldiers in Shebaa on March 14, and another struck Israeli soldiers deeper into the Golan Heights four days later.

On September 27 2014 21:11 ImFromPortugal wrote:


Why so much hate for the kurds are you turkish ?

President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. underestimated the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL) and overestimated the ability of the Iraqi military to fend off the militant group in an interview that will air Sunday on 60 Minutes.

The president was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft about comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has said the U.S. not only underestimated ISIS, it also overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi military to fight the extremist group.

"That's true," Mr. Obama said. "That's absolutely true."

"Jim Clappper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," he said, blaming the instability of the Syrian civil war for giving extremists space to thrive.

The comments were among the president's most candid to date about the rapid rise of the terrorist group that has ransacked much of Syria and Iraq in recent months.

"Essentially what happened with ISIL was that you had al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes," he explained. "They went back underground, but over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you had huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos."

The group was able to "attract foreign fighters who believed in their jihadist nonsense and traveled everywhere from Europe to the United States to Australia to other parts of the Muslim world, converging on Syria," the president said. "And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world."

The reader survey asked more than 2,200 active-duty troops this question: “In your opinion, do you think the U.S. military should send a substantial number of combat troops to Iraq to support the Iraqi security forces?” Slightly more than 70 percent responded: “No.”

“It’s their country, it’s their business. I don’t think major ‘boots on the ground’ is the right answer,” said one Army infantry officer and prior-enlisted soldier who deployed to Iraq three times. He responded to the survey and an interview request but, like several other service members in this story, asked not to be named because he is not authorized to discuss high-level military policy.

The Military Times survey was conducted online this summer and concluded in August just as President Obama was ramping up the air campaign against the Islamic State group.