Posted on 07/10/2015 8:59:33 AM PDT by rktman
President Barack Obama has presided over billions spent battling the Islamic State, despite, by his own admission, lacking a clear and complete strategy to defeat the terror group.
War against Islamic State has cost a total of $2.91 billion, averaging $9.2 million per day, according to the Pentagon. More than 50 percent of the cost is directly tied to airstrikes, The Hill reports.
Republican Sen. John McCain has criticized the campaign against Islamic State as too weak, noting that 75 percent of airstrike missions return without firing a weapon. Speaking on CBS’s “Face The Nation” in late May, McCain said, “We need more troops on the ground. We need forward air controllers. But just referring to airstrikes, do you know that 75 percent of those combat missions return to base without having fired a weapon? It’s because we don’t have somebody on the ground who can identify … a moving target. … We found in Vietnam that if you don’t have the right strategy, airpower is minimal in its effect.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The junior varsity president once called ISIS the JV, so his administration can’t ever admit that ISIS is a problem - so they call it ISIL.
What does the affirmative action idiot care about costs? He is so stupid he thinks the government has an endless supply of money.
Before he was elected to the US Senate, his own finances were a horrible wreck, and were it not for the bribes and kickbacks he could get from his Senate Job, he would have collapsed financially and would have been evicted.
He would be a homeless nothing just as he so richly deserves to be. The man is a complete idiot.
Seems a little disingenuous. That's like saying every infantry patrol must end in contact. They're not attacking fixed targets like airfields and bridges. They're patrolling more or less like ground troops, looking for targets of opportunity. And opportunity doesn't always materialize.
Troops on the ground (i.e. not trainers) come with costs. They have to be supplied and defended in an environment where the enemy controls 1/3 of the country, and the front lines are undefined. This was why the Iraqi occupation cost $50b a year, compared to the $3b the air campaign has cost so far. And US casualties would presumably rise to the hundreds per year that tanked the GOP's poll ratings.
ISIS is doing exactly what the Bush/Clinton/Obama crime family intended: wiping out Christians in the Middle East. Europe and North America are next.
From what I heard there are plenty of targets, but few that they are permitted to hit due to WH micromanaged ROIs.
From 30K feet, everything looks like a target. They're trying to avoid killing civilians unnecessarily because their relatives tend to take it personally (and join the jihad). Our ROE's are what they are because the American people will not countenance the torture of jihadists for information. Another way of putting this is that we don't yet view enemy civilians and combatants as vermin to be exterminated without any moral qualms. Yet. As long as the military force is composed mainly of volunteers rather than draftees, and casualties remain limited, these ROE's are probably what we're stuck with.
McCain is mis-representing the truth to pitch for more troops. His depiction of strike missions isn’t how they’re done and he’s asking for things already in use there.
What’s needed most is what he can’t ask for: removing Iraqi officials and distant US military officials from the strike authorization. This would do the most to eliminate “75% of missions returning to base with ordinance”. In most cases by the time a strike is approved the enemy has scooted. They are aware of the time lag between spotting and approval and limit their time in the open to this interval. This is one reason ISIS prefers cities because they can quickly hide in civilian infrastructure, amongst civilians.
ROIs are great enhancements of Bush’s and made more Draconian by Obama.
Liberals and their media allies will not stand for civi deaths, internment, or “torture” of muslims in war, but are OK if civi deaths done by illegals on whites or blacks on blacks in the US.
We are stuck with these ROIs until either Iran or ISIS nukes us; else we get a conservative President and Congress.
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