Posted on 08/23/2014 9:07:06 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Iraq's ethnic Kurds are longtime U.S. allies and have put up the toughest resistance to the Sunni extremists in the so-called Islamic State that has captured swaths or Iraq's north and west.
They're getting help from U.S. air strikes, but also need heavier weapons of their own to match the firepower of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Weapons have been promised by the U.S. and other countries, but getting them through the central government in Baghdad has hampered the mission, according to Kurdish commanders.
"We have heard weapons are coming, but so far we haven't seen any. As you know, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense doesn't give us any weapons. And that just encourages ISIS to attack us," says Esmat Rajab, a commander in the Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga.
(Excerpt) Read more at kqed.org ...
Their goal is the preservation (even expansion) of Kurdistan. Fighting ISIS in northern Iraq definitely lines up with that. I doubt they’d move any further south than Mosul.
its the “even expansion” part that there may be differences on.
Yep, Bush 41 shafted the Kurds, exposing them to Saddam's reprisals. That the same people are asking us for help and expecting a different result shows just how desperate they are.
I was generalizing - not so much ‘picking’ on the Kurdish.
Then again, look at the way ‘we’ are now treating Israel, we had the support of Jordan at one time, Qadaffi ‘got the message’ and at least remained more or less neutral.
It will take years to sort out how much damage this clown BO has done in the name of the US but it all does seem to point to him ‘backing’ the Mooslims.
We back groups to ‘slow down’ the Russians in Afghanistan, we supported Iraq vs Iran, apparently most of what ISIS has they ‘stole’ from the Iraqis - that we ‘armed’, the Iraqis and Afghanis that we back or support have ‘our backs’ but too often there is a knife in the hand that is ‘on our shoulder’.
Granted this all didn’t happen overnight, just a pattern that is not all that hard to follow.
Our track record isn’t very good in that part of the world.
Who we may back last year, we may be fighting with our own money and weapons next year.
It was not my intention to besmirch the Kurds in any manner, they definitely have resiliency, as they seem to end up being the ‘Whipping Boy’ no matter who is in control.
BTW Pman, BO and RR full name shouldn’t be in the same sentence...<: <: <:
Europe will do it
Gonna be a long wait.
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