Keyword: leadingfrombehind
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FIFTY years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized a strategic bombing campaign against targets in North Vietnam, an escalation of the conflict in Southeast Asia that was swiftly followed by the deployment of American ground troops. Last month, President Obama expanded a strategic bombing campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Middle East, escalating the attack beyond Iraq into Syria. Will Mr. Obama repeat history and commit ground troops? Many analysts believe so, and top officials are calling for it. But the president has expressed skepticism about what American force can accomplish in this kind of struggle, and he has resisted...
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If President Obama and his spinners won’t accept conservatives’ take on the failures and missteps leading up to the Islamic State and the region-wide chaos in the Middle East, maybe they will believe the New York Times. Strangely enough, it confirms the facts and arguments conservative critics have been making for years now. What is also evident is that President Obama picked on the wrong people; the intelligence community is striking back by going to the media with chapter and verse of the president’s dereliction. The report substantiates eight key points: 1. Leaving Iraq with no troops was a disaster....
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President Obama has put America at the center of a widening war by expanding into Syria airstrikes against the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS and ISIL. He has done this without allowing the public debate that needs to take place before this nation enters another costly and potentially lengthy conflict in the Middle East. He says he has justification for taking military action against the Islamic State and Khorasan, another militant group. There isn’t a full picture — because Mr. Obama has not provided one — of how this bombing campaign will degrade the extremist groups...
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Children in Syria are being taken from their families to be trained as Islamic State fighters and used as informants, according to a civilian who fled the city of Raqqa. Former student Abu Abrahim Raqqawi gave Sky News a chilling account of life inside the IS-controlled city where he claimed children are being indoctrinated to become jihadists. The US launched airstrikes against IS targets in Syria on Tuesday and Abu Abrahim said IS members in the city were killed after rockets struck their communications hub and a hospital used exclusively by the militants. But there are mixed feelings about the...
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U.S. planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria for a second day on Wednesday, but the strikes did not halt the fighters' advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded. "Those air strikes are not important. We need soldiers on the ground," said Hamed, a refugee who fled into Turkey from the Islamic State advance. Mazlum Bergaden, a teacher from Kobani who crossed the border on Wednesday with his family, said two of his brothers had been taken captive by Islamic State fighters. "The situation is very bad. After they kill people, they...
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No link now, they are just announcing it now.
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The United States last declared war many wars ago, on June 5, 1942, when, to clarify legal ambiguities during a world conflagration, it declared war on Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Today’s issue is not whether to declare war but only whether the president should even seek congressional authorization for the protracted use of force against the Islamic State. Promising to “destroy” this group with the help of “a broad coalition” of “partners,” President Obama said last week, “I welcome congressional support for this effort.” He obviously thinks such support is optional, partly because this “effort,” conducted by U.S. combat aircraft,...
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The use of the W-word could have both legal and political implications. Top Obama Administration officials have publicly given conflicting accounts in recent days over a fundamental question of the new U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria: Is the nation at war? With 158 airstrikes carried out on ISIS targets and more than 1,600 troops deployed to Iraq in various capacities, Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC News Thursday that the nation was not in fact at war with the militant group. But by Friday afternoon, the White House and the Pentagon were...
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ANKARA--U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday played down chances of an imminent broad coalition against Islamic State militants, illustrating the difficulty Washington faces winning commitment for a military campaign in the heart of the Middle East. Kerry met Turkish leaders to try to secure support for U.S.-led action against Islamic State, but Ankara's reluctance to play a frontline role highlighted the challenges of building a willing coalition to wage what will likely be a tough offensive. Kerry has been touring the Middle East to build support for President Barack Obama's plan, announced on Wednesday, to strike both sides...
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President Obama’s strategy to “degrade and destroy” ISIS comes with an additional 475 American troops gearing up to go to Iraq, bringing the total number of U.S. service members there to over 1,600 – but don’t call those “boots on the ground.” Like the hundreds of American soldiers already in Iraq, the new crop has not been assigned to any combat duties, the military says, and Thursday that’s how the White House told ABC News it defines “boots on the ground” in this context: “U.S. military service members serving in combat roles.”
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The U.S. is not at war with ISIS, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted today. Kerry was asked today whether the U.S. was at war with ISIS. "No. Look, we’re engaged in a counterterrorism operation of a significant order," the secretary responded. "And counterterrorism operations can take a long time, they go on. I think 'war' is the wrong reference term with respect to that, but obviously it involves kinetic military action."
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The prospect of the first American attacks on Syrian soil during three years of brutal civil war electrified Syrians on Thursday, prompting intense debate over whether airstrikes on the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria would help or harm President Bashar al-Assad, his armed Syrian opponents and war-weary civilians. But even among fervent opponents of ISIS there was ambivalence over President Obama’s declaration that he would “not hesitate” to strike ISIS in Syria. Now, framing the attack on ISIS as driven by American national security concerns, Mr. Obama faces mistrust from both sides. Many insurgents consider his action too...
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Secretary of State John Kerry plunged into an intensive series of meetings here with Arab officials on Thursday to coordinate strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The meetings are being hosted by Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to provide bases for the training of moderate Syrian rebels who are battling the Sunni militants and the Assad government in Damascus. The talks will also include the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. The Obama administration is eager for the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, to...
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Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday airstrikes against Islamist militants in Syria without a UN Security Council mandate would be an act of aggression, Interfax news agency reported. "The US president has spoken directly about the possibility of strikes by the US armed forces against ISIL positions in Syria without the consent of the legitimate government," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said. "This step, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, would be an act of aggression, a gross violation of international law."
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President Barack Obama told Americans on Wednesday he had authorized U.S. airstrikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State militant group. Obama's decision to launch attacks inside Syria, which is embroiled in a three-year civil war, marked a turnabout for the president, who shied away a year ago from airstrikes to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people.
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President Barack Obama tried Tuesday to sell a military intervention he never wanted to an American public that opposes it, telling the nation that he needed authorization to attack Syria as leverage in a newly emerged diplomatic opening from Russia. Calling the United States "the anchor of global security," Obama offered moral, political and strategic arguments for being ready to launch limited military strikes while trying to negotiate a diplomatic solution to what he called Syria's violation of a global ban on chemical weapons. "Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along...
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President Barack Obama is set to hit rewind on his approach to foreign policy when he addresses the nation Wednesday. A president who rode opposition to the Iraq War to the White House will try to convince the American people that, this time, the U.S. must wade back into the much-despised quagmire to eliminate the threat from jihadist group ISIS. It’s not the first time Obama has retreated from some of his most frequently-played sound bites regarding the terror threat in the Middle East. But with the ISIS threat feeling ever closer to home since the terror group beheaded two...
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The United States on Sunday expanded its air war against Islamic extremists in Iraq, sending fighter jets to attack targets near the Haditha Dam in coordination with ground forces from the Shiite Muslim-dominated Iraqi military and local Sunni Muslim tribes. The U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said in a statement that U.S. combat aircraft destroyed four Islamic State Humvees, four armed vehicles, two of which were carrying anti-aircraft artillery, one fighting position, and one command post. It’s not clear whether the collaboration, coordinated by the U.S. military with the Shiite-dominated central government, will set a precedent. Still, the timing...
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LONDON — Alarmed by the suspected presence of hundreds of British jihadis among Sunni militants in Syria and Iraq, Britain increased its assessment of the terrorism threat on its own soil on Friday and said new laws would be introduced to counter what Prime Minister David Cameron called “a greater threat to our security than we have seen before.” The tone of the warnings recalled the days after July 7, 2005, when four suicide bombers killed 52 travelers on the London transit system. The show of concern, moreover, seemed intended to bolster the government’s case for contentious new legislation to...
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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he would not recommend U.S. military airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria until he determines that they have become a direct threat to the U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaking to reporters on board a military plane traveling to Afghanistan, said Sunday that he believes the Sunni insurgent group formerly known as ISIS is more of a regional threat and is not currently plotting or planning attacks against the U.S. or Europe.
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