Conspiracy ping!
Ping to an article which may interest you. News from Syria. Deceptions - and a slide into military intervention.
The latest detail, which is disturbing on multiple grounds, is that some of the U.S. troops have been wearing on their uniforms the insignia of the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, or YPG, ... ............................ I guess they considerate an honor to be with the main fighting units in Syria and Iraq. Outside of the Kurds, who’d want to fight for any of the others?
What I think is more important than a half dozen of the boys swapping patches with the unit they are embedded with, for team building camaraderie, is the fact that ISIS is now getting its ass kicked all up and down the whole Euphrates River. At once.
We got a new commanding General in CENTCOM two months ago, and we are already fighting a whole different war today. Those Special Operators can call in and direct our air strikes, and our air strikes have surged - in number and effectiveness. They can also exploit battlefield intelligence, which also now seems to be happening.
Today, all of ISIS’ main stronghold are under significant, often overwhelming, assault (Raqqa, Fallujah, Mosul, Manbij). They can not effectively reinforce anywhere, and are losing ground everywhere. At once. Critical lines of supply and communication appear likely to be cut in a matter of days or weeks. ISIS is facing a rapidly developing strategic defeat.
War is a dirty business. ISIS loves sawing off prisoners heads and posting the video online. They gleefully executed prisoners by the hundreds (for being Shia, or Christian) as they captured areas, and gleefully took the women and girls as sex slaves. They formally re-instituted slavery in the areas they ruled. And they openly declare that the whole of humanity must submit to their rule, or die, and urge all muslims to kill us where we live.
So if guys are out successfully destroying ISIS at a rapid clip, I am willing to laugh off patch-swapping on their part. ISIS must be destroyed, and I am grateful and supportive to all who are out there making it happen.
It’s one thing to swap patches when meeting or training with allied forces in their country or ours, or even in a host allied country. But when you’re in a war zone, it’s a violation of a whole lot of laws and regulations. I have a bunch of patches from my travels. But when I was in theater, that never happened. I either wore my authorized patches, or if we went on a mission, I went sanitized, but with my military ID and dog tags. I’m not going to come down too hard on these guys, but what they did was not authorized.
No whey!
Our spec ops teams don’t want to be noticed by the locals who might tip off the enemy.
ISIS is known for concentrated force attacks in order to capture our operators.