Posted on 08/19/2016 11:59:43 AM PDT by Lorianne
As the US and its allies prepare to launch a major offensive for Mosul, US service members are on the ground in growing numbers — and increasingly in harm’s way. Mike Giglio reports from the bases and front lines where they work around northern Iraq. ___ ERBIL, Iraq — The Black Hawk helicopter pushed into ISIS territory through the pre-dawn sky. Joshua Wheeler, a veteran master sergeant with US special operations, was taking his men deep behind enemy lines. As the chopper descended on the ISIS stronghold of Hawija in northern Iraq, back in Washington, US president Barack Obama, who had been notified of the mission, waited for word of its fate.
Wheeler and his team were at the forefront of the hidden war US special operations troops are waging against ISIS. With him in the chopper were fellow members of the US Army’s elite Delta Force and some of the local commandos they had trained. Decked in desert camouflage and equipped with high-tech automatic weapons and night vision, the US and local soldiers looked almost identical.
Their mission, carried out on Oct. 22, was more dangerous than most. It called for the men to infiltrate a guarded compound that ISIS had converted into a prison and rescue dozens of men who, according to intelligence reports, were scheduled to be executed that day.
ISIS militants began firing on the helicopter as it lowered toward the compound. Wheeler shot back from the bay, recalled one of the local soldiers who was beside him, a captain with a specialized Kurdish force called the Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU), which is run by the security council of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
Then — as Wheeler often did, his Kurdish partners said — he led the way.
Wheeler hit the ground first, said the 29-year-old captain, the ranking CTU officer on the chopper. Gunshots and calls of “Allahu Akbar” rang out as the militants tried to repel the commandos, firing with everything they had. The captain said he and Wheeler advanced together, “fighting side by side.”
SNIP
Nevertheless, it is interesting reporting.
I was mobilized back in 1991 for Operation Desert Shield/Operation Desert Storm.
So many of us knew, down to our bones, that this was going to be a never-ending clusterfock from Day 1.
Yes, we DID get rid of Hussein and his evil sons, but we’re 25 years (Gasp!) in to this, now. And Nature always abhors a vacuum...
Enough. Bring our kids home! These ‘tribes’ are going to fight among themselves until the sun goes dark! And STOP IMPORTING THEM to our soil, for the love of Pete!
Let’s tackle our own problems right here.
Americans see things through a ‘today’ lens.
The Middle East sees things through a ‘millennia’ lens.
At its core it is Ishmael v Isaac, and will be until the last groan in the last war.
Thank you!
I had a hunch that a lot of people who were deployed over there had come to the same conclusion, but you hardly hear about it from them.
Right. Establish a strategic base, man it and get the heck out of there.
Operation Save Hillary’s Bacon is in full-swing.
That is what this amounts to.
Yeah, we should just let the Middle East and the Levant alone. Let Isis have their Caliphate and get their mits on nuclear material and chemical weapons, send suicide bombers to Europe, the U.S., Israel and elsewhere. Let Iran build their nukes and ICBM's.Who Cares.
Think of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates as the same as the Nazi's and all the reasons the Allies had to take them out.
Here's an easy one: google> similarities between Isis and Nazis.
What a dope.
Yeah, we should just let the Middle East and the Levant alone. Let Isis have their Caliphate and get their mits on nuclear material and chemical weapons, send suicide bombers to Europe, the U.S., Israel and elsewhere. Let Iran build their nukes and ICBM's.Who Cares.
Think of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates as the same as the Nazi's and all the reasons the Allies had to take them out.
Here's an easy one: google> similarities between Isis and Nazis. Even Truthout, a FAR leftist rag if there ever was one, has it right.
What's the matter with you. In Hawaii too long?
And yes, let them bring their killing to main street America - one of their goals.
They need to be dealt with there, not here.
Japan and Germany were very small population countries concentrated in small areas.
ISIS can recruit from 23% of the entire world’s population (and fastest growing population) and area spread out over a wide area. And they are not a standard army.
So, no comparison.
What we are doing is getting involved in a religious civil war that has been ongoing for over 1000 years. Sunni vs Shia.
Do you care which one prevails? I don’t. Sunni, Shia, makes no difference which one comes out on top. Whichever one does they will be brutal to the other and to other and still hate the West.
So why are we helping one side over the other?
Hussein Obama, America's FIRST Muslim President, knows that to defeat America it has to be done from the inside.
Hussein has been siding with "rebels." WHO ARE THEY? Muslim terorists such as Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and now ISIS.
By giving weapons and money from the US to the Muslim terrorists, the Muslims think they can be made strong enough to eventually conquer the US. Part of that in game is to have enough Muslims in the US to weaken the country for eventual defeat.
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