Third Time's the Charm? U.S. Preparing for Full-Scale Invasion of Iraq

Just last week, President Obama ordered 1500 troops to be deployed to Iraq, effectively doubling the number of U.S. personnel in the region. After several devastating defeats by ISIS, the Iraqi military needs more training from U.S. advisers before it can take their country back from Al Baghdadi's ragtag army.
However, before any of those 1500 troops set foot on Iraqi soil, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have already recommended that the U.S. send even more soldiers into the troubled nation. And this time, they won't just be advisers and support troops. They're recommending that we deploy these men to actively engage ISIS alongside Iraqi forces.

The top-ranking officer in the American military said on Thursday that the US is actively considering the direct use of troops in the toughest upcoming fights against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq, less than a week after Barack Obama doubled troop levels there.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, indicated to the House of Representatives armed services committee that the strength of Isis relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq.

Whatever happened to ending the war in Iraq? Think back to when Obama was elected in 2008. Wasn't that his main selling point? America wanted to cut Iraq loose once and for all, consequences be damned. We knew that we had to let Iraq stand on its own two feet. I understand that no president has ever lived up to all of his campaign promises, but this was the big one. Americans were tired of Bush's war, and ending it once and for all was the main reason that he was elected.

From this point on, President Obama will be remembered as the man who tricked America into accepting universal healthcare, and nothing more. There's literally nothing else that is remarkable about his administration. Obamacare is the only promise he managed to pull off, and it's a complete disaster. His administration is nothing more than Bush's fourth term in office, which is the only reasonable explanation for the desire keep this war going.

I digress. Don't think for a moment that this is going to be a small peacekeeping mission to help shore up the Iraqi's defenses. This is a classic case of mission creep. Before we know it, there will be a full-scale invasion of Iraq.

Even with potential US involvement in ground combat looming, Dempsey and Hagel said further troop increases would be “modest” and not on the order of the 150,000 US troops occupying Iraq at the height of the 2003-2011 war.

“I just don’t foresee a circumstance when it would be in our interest to take this fight on ourselves with a large military contingent,” Dempsey said.

But should the Iraqi military prove unwilling to take back “al-Anbar province and Ninewa province” – the majority of territory in Iraq seized by Isis – or should the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, exclude Sunnis from power, “I will have to adjust my recommendations,” Dempsey said.

Furthermore, the Iraqi military is a complete and utter disaster, which all but guarantees that we will have several divisions stationed in Iraq before the next election. In a recent report from zero hedge, it was mentioned that Iraq is going to need a lot more assistance before it can stand on its own.

Iraq will need about 80,000 effective military troops to retake the terrain it lost to Islamic State militants and restore its border with Syria, the top U.S. general said on Thursday.

"We're going to need about 80,000 competent Iraqi security forces to recapture territory lost, and eventually the city of Mosul, to restore the border," Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, told a congressional hearing.

Think of the implications of that statement. Currently the Iraqi Army consists of 283,000 active duty soldiers, and 500,000 reservists. That means that when we pulled out of Iraq, we left them with less than 80,000 competent soldiers. After nearly a decade of occupation, all we could muster was a skeleton crew to watch over one of the most volatile regions on the planet.

And now our government refuses to cut its losses. We're never going to “win” in Iraq because there is nothing left for us to win. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose. It's time to leave Iraq once and for all, before we're dragged into another war with no clear objective, and no end in sight.

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Obama Has Just Ordered 1500 Troops to Return to Iraq

If I were to ask you which American war has been longest, would you know the answer? If you're thinking Vietnam, you'd be mistaken. Perhaps you might suggest Afghanistan, which has been ongoing for 13 years and counting. You'd be wrong again. No, the longest American war is now Iraq, which has been ongoing for 23 years.

After the brief and devastating Operation Desert Storm, the United States spent more than a decade bombing Iraqi air defense systems within the no fly zones, as well as killing hundreds of thousands of civilians through the use of sanctions. The U.S. brought the hammer down on Iraq once again with Operation Iraqi Freedom and the occupation that followed.
 
Officially, the war has been declared a victory at least 4 times by various presidents, but looking back on it now, it looks more like one long procession of endless of conflict. Give it a few more years, and we may have another president declaring victory for the 5th time, because Obama has just ordered another brigade of U.S. troops into the region.

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to aid Baghdad government and Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group, roughly doubling the number of US troops in the country, the White House said Friday.

The 1,500 troops will include a group of advisors to help Iraqi forces plan operations and a group of trainers who will be deployed across the country, officials said, as Washington steps up the pressure on the IS militants.

Some of the advisors will be deployed to western Anbar province, where the Iraqi army has been forced to retreat from advancing IS jihadists, a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP.

Some of the additional troops will begin to arrive in Iraq in the next several weeks, the official said.

"As a part of our strategy for strengthening partners on the ground, President Obama today authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 additional US military personnel in a non-combat role to train, advise, and assist Iraqi security forces, including Kurdish forces," a statement said.

In Iraq, there's no such thing as a “non-combat” role. After more than two decades of fighting against the most powerful military on the planet, the opposition forces in that country have become masters of asymmetric warfare. If anything, our occupation created the breeding ground that spawned ISIS and their brutal tactics. Make no mistake, there is no safe place in Iraq for U.S. troops, and they'll begin taking casualties as soon as they arrive.

And so it will continue until the United States finally admits defeat. We'll keep sending troops into the meat grinder, and they'll keep finding new ways to kill them. And as the war machine blasts that country into oblivion for the third time, we can look forward to creating new and more frightening enemies like ISIS.

Will this madness ever end?

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The U.S. Veteran Fighting ISIS in Syria is Obviously a Propaganda Shill

Last month I reported on a member of a Dutch biker gang who went to the Middle East to fight against ISIS. Truth be told, there are numerous foreign volunteers who are heading towards Iraq and Syria from all over the world, and the U.S. is no exception. Recently, Radio Free Europe interviewed a United States Army veteran Jordan Matson, who left his life in Wisconsin to help the Kurds in their fight against ISIS.

"For over a year, people were being slaughtered by ISIS," the 28-year-old Sturtevant, Wisconsin, native told RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI), using another acronym for IS.
"Anyone who didn't conform to their way of life could either convert, be killed, or get driven off their land. So when Mosul fell and IS drove all the Christians and minorities from the town or killed them, I thought that enough was enough and I decided to come here to fight," Matson said via Skype.

For two months, Matson has fought in northeastern Syria alongside the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). He said he decided to join the Kurdish militia after searching the Internet for a way to fight IS.

"I found that the YPG was the only force in the area that would let Christians and Muslims live in peace together so I decided to join them," he said.

Personally, I think it's admirable that someone would volunteer their time and skills to put down those vile thugs. Many of us have seen the footage of their atrocities and read the grisly news reports of their exploits. No sane person would doubt that ISIS is a scourge against Christians and Muslims alike, and that they must be stopped if we want even any kind of peace for the Middle East.

However, something doesn't seem right about this particular story. If you've read anything about the history of Radio Free Europe, then you would be suspicious too. It's no secret that this news outlet was founded by the CIA, and has been backed by the United States government for decades. They're nothing more than a propaganda wing of NATO.
So why would Radio Free Europe take any interest in this American fighting against the ISIS onslaught?

The YPG and Peshmerga are fighting closely together, he said. "It's a welcome relief during the fighting, we are fighting for the same cause."

While the reinforcements from the Iraqi Peshmerga have helped combat IS in Kobani, Matson believes more is needed from the United States and its international allies.

"To put an end to IS, we are going to need boots on the ground," he said. "If we increase the bombing campaign and put boots on the ground to help give support to the YPG fighters, it would help push IS back to the Syrian borders. Troops could save many lives here," Matson told RFI.

Suddenly it makes more sense. They're trying to make him into a sympathetic poster child of America's fight against ISIS. They're trying to paint a picture of desperation and courage, and are hoping to persuade the American public to support sending troops into the region. It's propaganda, pure and simple.
My only question is, does Jordan Matson have pure motives here? Is he an unwitting pawn of American propaganda, or is he knowingly participating in this fight at the behest of NATO and the United States? I would argue, that it is in fact the latter.

Although U.S. law enforcement officials say that it is illegal for Americans to join a Syrian militia like the YPG, CNN reports that Matson has been attempting to recruit more foreign fighters to the Kurdish militia via social media.

Kandal Amed from the YPG told RFI correspondent Simira Balay that other foreign fighters have already joined the Kurdish militia to fight against IS.

"Foreign fighters are in all fronts with the People's Protection Units. Germans and Russians, others, wanted to be part of the new spirit that was created for the peoples of the Middle East. Among our ranks, you will find Americans, Germans, and others, all men, but we expect the arrival of foreign women, too," Amed told RFI by phone from the Al-Ya'rubiya (Tal Kojar) checkpoint on the border between Iraq and Syria.

Not only is he breaking the law, but he's encouraging others to do so and there's been no official condemnation for his actions. This is why I think he may be some kind of clandestine operative. See, governments don't like it when you do their job for them. If you left your house right now and tried to hunt down a few gang bangers, you'd be called a vigilante and thrown in jail. It makes them look bad when you try solving problems that the government has failed to control, so they drop the hammer on you in any way they can.

In this case however, Jordan Matson is fighting what the U.S. government claims to be its enemy, and is getting rave reviews from a western propaganda outlet. He's trying to convince more people to join him, and is asking the U.S. government for “boots on the ground.” Since this is all highly illegal, and the government hasn't condemned it in any way, I have to think that Matson is cutting a paycheck behind the scenes. I could be wrong. He may just be a pawn of western propaganda. But, it's all a little too convenient if you ask me.

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The U.S. Veteran Fighting ISIS in Syria is Obviously a Propaganda Shill

Last month I reported on a member of a Dutch biker gang who went to the Middle East to fight against ISIS. Truth be told, there are numerous foreign volunteers who are heading towards Iraq and Syria from all over the world, and the U.S. is no exception. Recently, Radio Free Europe interviewed a United States Army veteran Jordan Matson, who left his life in Wisconsin to help the Kurds in their fight against ISIS.

"For over a year, people were being slaughtered by ISIS," the 28-year-old Sturtevant, Wisconsin, native told RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI), using another acronym for IS.
"Anyone who didn't conform to their way of life could either convert, be killed, or get driven off their land. So when Mosul fell and IS drove all the Christians and minorities from the town or killed them, I thought that enough was enough and I decided to come here to fight," Matson said via Skype.

For two months, Matson has fought in northeastern Syria alongside the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). He said he decided to join the Kurdish militia after searching the Internet for a way to fight IS.

"I found that the YPG was the only force in the area that would let Christians and Muslims live in peace together so I decided to join them," he said.

Personally, I think it's admirable that someone would volunteer their time and skills to put down those vile thugs. Many of us have seen the footage of their atrocities and read the grisly news reports of their exploits. No sane person would doubt that ISIS is a scourge against Christians and Muslims alike, and that they must be stopped if we want even any kind of peace for the Middle East.

However, something doesn't seem right about this particular story. If you've read anything about the history of Radio Free Europe, then you would be suspicious too. It's no secret that this news outlet was founded by the CIA, and has been backed by the United States government for decades. They're nothing more than a propaganda wing of NATO.

So why would Radio Free Europe take any interest in this American fighting against the ISIS onslaught?

The YPG and Peshmerga are fighting closely together, he said. "It's a welcome relief during the fighting, we are fighting for the same cause."

While the reinforcements from the Iraqi Peshmerga have helped combat IS in Kobani, Matson believes more is needed from the United States and its international allies.

"To put an end to IS, we are going to need boots on the ground," he said. "If we increase the bombing campaign and put boots on the ground to help give support to the YPG fighters, it would help push IS back to the Syrian borders. Troops could save many lives here," Matson told RFI.

Suddenly it makes more sense. They're trying to make him into a sympathetic poster child of America's fight against ISIS. They're trying to paint a picture of desperation and courage, and are hoping to persuade the American public to support sending troops into the region. It's propaganda, pure and simple.

My only question is, does Jordan Matson have pure motives here? Is he an unwitting pawn of American propaganda, or is he knowingly participating in this fight at the behest of NATO and the United States? I would argue, that it is in fact the latter.

Although U.S. law enforcement officials say that it is illegal for Americans to join a Syrian militia like the YPG, CNN reports that Matson has been attempting to recruit more foreign fighters to the Kurdish militia via social media.

Kandal Amed from the YPG told RFI correspondent Simira Balay that other foreign fighters have already joined the Kurdish militia to fight against IS.

"Foreign fighters are in all fronts with the People's Protection Units. Germans and Russians, others, wanted to be part of the new spirit that was created for the peoples of the Middle East. Among our ranks, you will find Americans, Germans, and others, all men, but we expect the arrival of foreign women, too," Amed told RFI by phone from the Al-Ya'rubiya (Tal Kojar) checkpoint on the border between Iraq and Syria.

Not only is he breaking the law, but he's encouraging others to do so and there's been no official condemnation for his actions. This is why I think he may be some kind of clandestine operative. See, governments don't like it when you do their job for them. If you left your house right now and tried to hunt down a few gang bangers, you'd be called a vigilante and thrown in jail. It makes them look bad when you try solving problems that the government has failed to control, so they drop the hammer on you in any way they can.

In this case however, Jordan Matson is fighting what the U.S. government claims to be its enemy, and is getting rave reviews from a western propaganda outlet. He's trying to convince more people to join him, and is asking the U.S. government for “boots on the ground.” Since this is all highly illegal, and the government hasn't condemned it in any way, I have to think that Matson is cutting a paycheck behind the scenes. I could be wrong. He may just be a pawn of western propaganda. But, it's all a little too convenient if you ask me.

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Turns Out There Were WMDs in Iraq, and the Government Covered it Up

Several days have passed since the New York Times reported on the abundance of chemical weapons that were found in Iraq between 2004 and 2011. So far, it appears to have been a non-event. Sure, the televised news networks had taken to the story, but by now they've already lost interest. Ten years ago, if you would have told me that we would find WMD's in Iraq, but the public would shrug their shoulders at the news, I would have laughed in your face.

The alternative media seems to be particularly uninterested. Most of the websites I read on a daily basis haven't made a single mention of this development, though they probably have a good reason not to. The New York Times article revealed what many of us had known for years. The WMDs had “MADE IN AMERICA” written all over them, so to speak.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them...

...Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Mr. Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”

Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

So not only was the knowledge of these weapons ignored, but suppressed as well. In fact, many soldiers were injured by these weapons when they went to dispose of them. They usually had no knowledge of the chemical contents within the shells, and were exposed to mustard and sarin gas.

And that story seems to be more important than the weapons themselves. Who cares if they found WMDs in Iraq? We were the ones who built the damn things. The real story is how we let our soldiers get gassed while they were disposing of these munitions. As usual, the government's flag waiving “support your troops” rhetoric falls on its face. They could care less about the grunts in our armed forces.

In addition, many of these munitions were used by the insurgents to build their roadside bombs. Which begs the question, where are these chemical weapons now? Surely, if they weren't going to make their existence public, they wouldn't have any problem destroying them.

Nonetheless, several participants said the United States lost track of chemical weapons that its troops found, left large caches unsecured, and did not warn people — Iraqis and foreign troops alike — as it hastily exploded chemical ordnance in the open air.

Ok. So where are they are now? According to The Guardian:

The Islamic State extremist group (Isis) has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility north-west of Baghdad, where 2,500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with deadly nerve agent sarin or their remnants were stored along with other chemical warfare agents, Iraq has said in a letter circulated at the United Nations.

That's the real story here. Our government dragged us into a war, only to find weapons they made, put our soldiers in harms way to get rid some of them, ignored the ones they didn't destroy, and then covered it all up. Now those remaining weapons are in the hands of those lunatics with ISIS. Does the wickedness and stupidity of our government, know any bounds?

Moreover, the documents cited for the New York Times article were "heavily redacted". They managed to deliver this bombshell to the American public, despite the government's best efforts to cover it up. This leaves us with one final question.

What is the government still hiding from us?

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Members of Dutch Biker Gang Are Fighting ISIS in Iraq

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During the Spanish Civil War, tens of thousands of foreign nationals from across the Western world flooded into the country. They formed dozens of "international brigades", and fought against Francisco Franco and his German and Italian allies. Throughout history, the reasons for volunteering for such a cause have often been misguided. During the Spanish Civil War for instance, most of those volunteers were fighting for the Communists, just so they could fight the Fascists. Not much of an improvement if you ask me.

Since then, there hasn't been a conflict that has inspired so many young westerners to leave the comfort of their homes to volunteer in a war outside of their borders (and without permission from their government). That is until now.

While there's been many reports of thousands civilians from across Europe joining ISIS, now it appears that members of the Dutch No Surrender biker gang, have been traveling to Iraq to fight the against the Islamic state.

The Dutch public prosecutor said on Tuesday that motorbike gang members who have reportedly joined Kurds battling the Islamic State group in Iraq are not necessarily committing any crime.

“Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden,” public prosecutor spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP.

“You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands,” he told AFP after reports emerged that Dutch bikers from the No Surrender gang were fighting IS insurgents alongside Kurds in northern Iraq.

The head of No Surrender, Klaas Otto, told state broadcaster NOS that three members who traveled to near Mosul in northern Iraq were from Dutch cities Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Breda.

Perhaps there is a less than altruistic reason for a gang member to fight ISIS, but so far it has yet to be seen. Sometimes good deeds come from where you least expect them. Sometimes people do things so despicable to their fellow man, that even the other bad guys can't stand to sit back and watch.

While joining ISIS is obviously misguided, I can't see anything wrong with civilians fighting against them. If anything it's preferable to how most wars are fought. The next time somebody tries to convince you we should go to war in foreign country we have no business being in, tell them to grow a pair and go fight it themselves.

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While Isis Rampages Through Iraq, Afghanistan Continues to Crumble

 

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While this past week has seen the newsfeeds swamped with stories of America's Ebola outbreak, it's easy to lose sight of the global picture. The virus just happens to be the most visible and alarming story to be reported. All across the planet though, there are nations that are being hollowed out by economic collapse and war, and the fabric that holds this world together is being frayed at every corner.

One story that has been impossible for the news to completely ignore, is the devastation ISIS is inflicting against Iraq and Syria. As we speak, a dog eat dog fight for the city of Kobani is being fought between ISIS and the Syrian Kurds (I think we've armed both of them at some point), while an Iraqi base has been abandoned near the town of Hit. 180,000 people have fled the fighting, many of them heading towards the city Ramadi, which ISIS can now attack from two sides. That city is expected to fall in the weeks ahead.

There should be no doubt that the Iraq War was a total failure, and any claim that we were there to build a democracy, is a complete farce. Not only did we fail to rebuild their infrastructure and economy, but we failed to leave them with a competent military that could have fought off the likes of ISIS. We systematically wrecked their nation at every level, and left them to the dogs. It should be clear to all, that a free nation, or even a barely functional nation, cannot be built on the shoulders of a foreign invasion.

So since it's established that our nation's attempt at Americanizing Iraq has been a complete waste of time, money, and lives, how is our other nation building experiment coming along?

KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber rammed a foreign convoy along a major road out of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul early on Monday, killing at least one person, authorities said.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack on the Jalalabad Road, a main thoroughfare with a U.S. military base and a housing compound for U.N. and other international contractors and aid workers.

That's not all. Within the same day, another Taliban attack annihilated a convoy of nearly two dozen Afghani soldiers and police.

At least 22 members of the Afghan National Security Forces have been killed in a Taliban ambush and seven others kidnapped by the armed group in a mountainous region in northern Afghanistan, an official has said.

Taliban fighters attacked a convoy carrying Afghan security forces on Monday,killing 22 soldiers and police, kidnapping seven, and injuring eight others.

The attack happened in the mountainous Laghman Valley in Sar-e-Pul province, some 340km northwest of Kabul, as security officers travelled to reinforce colleagues in another district.

"They were ambushed as they were going from Laghman area to Alaf Safid. Twenty-two police were martyred, eight wounded and seven were taken captive,"Governor Abdul Jabar Haqbeen told the AFP news agency.

If 22 American soldiers were killed and 7 captured by the Taliban, you probably wouldn't hear very much about Ebola that day. It would be completely unprecedented. The Taliban has never been able to inflict those kinds of casualties against American forces, especially not with ambushes and small arms fire. The news cycle wouldn't let you hear the end of it for months.

So why hasn't this story been thoroughly dissected and plastered across every news channel and website? Because it's uneventful. Because, Afghani troops being slaughtered by the Taliban isn't unusual. Because they either lack the training, equipment, or air support (or all of the above) to properly suppress the Taliban, their deaths are no longer surprising.

Much like Iraq, we've failed to leave them with a functional government, infrastructure, or military. If the American military couldn't destroy the Taliban with all of its missiles, drones, and helicopters, then how could the people they trained, do it without the high tech weapons? They're not going to have any of those advantages after we pull out. And if the Taliban can still bomb Kabul on a whim, then it'll be looking a lot like Baghdad in no time.

The best we as Americans can do, is learn from this. We failed to learn the folly of nation building after Vietnam. In 10 or 20 years (if not sooner) when some dimwitted politician tries to push for another nation building crusade, let's not forget what happened here. Let's not forget the soldiers we lost, the civilians who were butchered, and the new threats our wars have spawned.

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