It's been a long week of laughs.
Related:
SILLI Saturday: Australia's ISIS
SILLI Saturday: France to Help Kerry U.S. in Iraq
SILLI Saturday: The Enablers of ISIS
SILLI Sunday: ISIS in Africa
SILLI Sunday: Turkey Taking ISIS Syriausly
SILLI Sunday: Khorasan Coming Out Party
SILLI Sunday: British Beheadings
That really seems to have caught on in lots of places now.
Looks like we will have to stay in Afghanistan after all, huh?
Also see:
SILLI Monday
SILLI Tuesday
SILLI Wednesday
SILLI Thursday
Did an about-face, he did.
SILLI Friday
Sticking with the SILLIness:
"Veterans of Iraq torn over airstrikes against ISIS; Fear expansion of campaign" by Peter Schworm | Globe Staff September 27, 2014
US military veterans watched in dread this summer as insurgents swept across Iraq and as the country the United States fought to liberate descended into chaos. They recoiled at the beheadings of hostages and mass killings at the hand of the Islamic State.
But as the United States extended its airstrikes against the radical group into Syria this week, a new phase of what military leaders said would be a lengthy campaign, many military personnel who fought in Iraq said they feel deeply conflicted over the latest intervention.
Even some veterans who believe that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, poses a grave threat and that military action is justified expressed profound ambivalence over the expanded US involvement.
They said they worry the airstrikes may spiral into another intractable conflict that will lead to a redeployment of American ground forces.
Already has, and more, many more, on the way soon.
See: 13,000 US Troops to be Deployed to Iraq
Obummer lied again? That's not funny.
Coming after 13 years of war in the region, the renewed military campaign brought an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and fatigue.
“Our community is tired,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy and support group for veterans and their families. “ISIS is absolutely a problem, but it’s a problem for the entire world.”
I sure wish the U.S. and its allies hadn't created the f***er.
President Obama has pledged that he will not send ground combat troops to fight the Islamic State, but military leaders have said the campaign in Iraq and Syria could take years to complete.
See above for the veracity of that pledge.
While some veterans welcomed the airstrikes as overdue, they voiced unease about a protracted campaign.
“Does this mean another 13 years of war?” asked Rieckhoff, who served as an Army infantry rifle platoon leader in Iraq. “That lack of clarity is something that weighs heavily on our community. And you can’t honestly tell us we’re going to get taken care of when we get home. That promise has been shattered.”
He is referring to the VA scandal, and what makes you think they are ever coming home?
There is a range of opinions among veterans, and in interviews this week some said they welcomed the campaign, calling it necessary to avoid squandering hard-won gains in Iraq.
What gains?
“I was proud to see that we took a strong stand against terrorism,” said Jim Glick, a former Army paratrooper who served in the 1980s. “It’s a statement, and I think it was necessary.”
Yinon Weiss, chief executive of RallyPoint, an online social network for veterans and active-duty military personnel, said he has found that those who served in Iraq clearly support the bombings, and believe the threat posed by the Islamic State is too big to ignore.
“A lot feel that going back to finish the job is a no-brainer,” said Weiss, an Army veteran who cofounded the Watertown-based company, which hosts interactive discussions of military news.
Judging by the opinions veterans express on the site, many fault the Obama administration for removing combat troops from Iraq too quickly three years ago, believing a substantial, continued US military presence could have stabilized the country and prevented the Islamic State from establishing a stronghold.
Fine, stay there forever. ISIS was established by the U.S. to overthrow Syria.
“There’s a sense this entire thing could have been avoided,” Weiss said.
Sure could have, Weiss.
While veterans generally support the US-led campaign, he said, active-duty service members appear to be more divided. Some feel the United States has sacrificed enough, and that it is long past time to let Iraq stand on its own.
“There’s a faction that thinks, ‘We have to do something,’ ” he said. “But some say we’ve spilled enough blood. Iraq has had our support for almost a decade. At what point do we stop putting Americans in harm’s way?”
At what point do our leaders stop killing people and creating threats to do that?
Some veterans said they were torn, reluctant to squander the sacrifices made by service members who died in Iraq. But others were frightened by the prospect that more could die for an uncertain cause.
“We watched our friends die, yet it’s still happening,” said Jon Turner, a Marine who served two tours in Iraq. “Hundreds of thousands of people died, and what do we have to show for it.”
A wrecked army and wartime economy, that's what.
Turner, 29, said news of the bombing campaign awakened the stress and anxiety he has experienced since leaving the military, and the fear that other young adults will be sent into combat.
“I’m definitely concerned about where this is going,” said Turner, who lives near Burlington, Vt. “I don’t want us to be at war anymore, period. Seeing what’s happening is very disheartening.”
Pretty much domes up the way most Americans feel.
Eric Wasileski, a Navy veteran who took part in Operation Desert Fox, a US bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998, said Obama’s recent speech outlining plans to defeat the Islamic State triggered painful memories, and the fear the United States would be pulled back into a wider war.
“It was like I was back over there again,” he said.
You may soon be.
Michael Smith, an Army veteran who served as a chaplain’s assistant in Iraq, said the Islamic State’s brutality and its aims in the region posed a clear threat. But Smith, associate director of the Veterans Upward Bound program at Suffolk University, feels ambivalent about further military action, and its cost.
“There are a lot of people with a lot of heartache and baggage from combat,” he said. “Some of it’s seen, and some of it’s unseen.”
The things they carried.
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Someone helping with the load:
"Three allies join US effort against Islamic State in Iraq" by Griff Witte and Rebecca Collard | Washington Post September 27, 2014
LONDON — Three European nations — including Britain — joined the widening US-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq on Friday, even as the group’s fighters renewed their attempt to overrun a strategic border city in Syria.
Britain’s belated entry, seven weeks after the United States began carrying out strikes, followed an overwhelming parliamentary vote to authorize attacks. Denmark and Belgium also opted to join the fight.
But as the coalition expanded, its constraints became clear. All three countries that authorized military action on Friday decided to limit their involvement to Iraq. Meanwhile, Islamic State militants demonstrated that airstrikes have failed to slow their assault on critical positions within Syria.
Not what I was told days ago.
Along the Turkish-Syrian border, Islamic State fighters backed by artillery fire pushed toward the city of Kobane — known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab — as Syrian Kurdish forces dug in for a key test of their strength.
The United States and its Arab allies broadened their campaign to targets in Syria this week, after a drumbeat of American strikes in Iraq since early August.
I'm tired of the beat.
But no European ally has been willing to join the Syria campaign — raising the prospect that the Islamic State could try to use it as a refuge.
Meaning the U.S. will really have to go in there and clean things out.
‘‘Simply allowing [Islamic State] to retreat across an invisible border is no answer,’’ said Peter Hain, a member of parliament and former cabinet minister, during Britain’s daylong debate.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, scarred by a humiliating defeat last year when he sought permission to launch strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did not try to win approval for attacks in Syria this time around.
Instead, he limited his proposal to Iraq, where he had a clear consensus thanks to the Iraqi government’s invitation for Western help. No such invitation exists from Syria, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband has suggested he won’t support widening the campaign without a UN resolution that is unlikely to ever come.
Friday’s House of Commons vote endorsing Cameron’s plan to deploy six Tornado fighter jets to Iraq was lopsided, at 524 to 43.
That's it?
Still, there was opposition from the backbenches, both from hawks who wanted to go further, as well as from doves who insisted the country had not learned the right lessons from more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Governments never do.
But Cameron argued that the Islamic State was impossible to ignore, given the threat it poses to Britain.
I'm wondering if his upbringing has something to do with it.
‘‘This is not a threat on the far side of the world. Left unchecked, we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member, with a declared and proven intention to attack our country and our people,’’ Cameron said as he opened the debate.
Cameron and others who support airstrikes were quick to differentiate Friday’s vote from the last time the British Parliament authorized military action in Iraq, in 2003. Cameron stressed that there would be no boots on the ground and said the air campaign would be marked more by ‘‘patience and persistence’’ than ‘‘shock and awe.’’
I'll take a grain of salt with the boots on the ground promise, and I condemn the extended airstrike campaign that is already killing civilians.
The British contribution is modest, representing only a third the number of its jets that flew over Libya during the 2011 campaign against Moammar Khadafy’s government. But it is similar to the commitment of other nations that have joined the coalition against the Islamic State, including France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
As long as Obummer can spew coalition, coalition, it's all good.
While the British public was divided over joining the air campaign when the United States first launched strikes, opinion has solidified in favor of the idea in recent weeks — especially since Islamic State militants executed two American journalists and a British aid worker. At least two other Britons are known to be held by the group and have been forced to appear in Islamic State propaganda videos.
More agenda-pushing garbage I'm not buying from the corporate war pre$$.
European counterterrorism officials have expressed deep concern that the Islamic State will try to carry out attacks on Western soil, perhaps employing some of the estimated 3,000 Europeans who have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the organization.
Yawn.
When is the false flag going live?
Cameron suggested Friday that there would be a strong case for expanding Britain’s air campaign to Syria — but said that would require a separate debate.
He'll be back.
Meanwhile, the battle in Syria rages. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that airstrikes by the United States and its Arab allies had disrupted Islamic State’s command and control, logistics, and infrastructure in Syria.
But the group has continued its quest for territory. Gaining control of Kobane would give the Islamic State a hold over a major stretch of the border and open more potential supply lines even as airstrikes seek to erode the militants’ financial underpinnings.
The latest clashes have sent refugees streaming toward Turkey, adding to the estimated 1.5 million who have crossed into the neighboring country to escape Syria’s civil war since 2011.
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And like the other two World Wars, Germany on the losing side; however, this time they are more like Italy:
"German military struggles with hardware problems" by FRANK JORDANS, Sep. 26, 2014
BERLIN (AP) — First a group of German army instructors got stranded in Bulgaria en route to Iraq when their plane malfunctioned.
Then the weapons they were meant to train Kurdish fighters to use got stuck in Germany because a Dutch military plane — brought in because no functioning German aircraft was available — broke down.
As other countries including the United States and France hit Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, Germany's army has struggled mightily to conduct the considerably more modest jobs it has taken on. It highlights how far behind other nations Europe's economic powerhouse is when it comes to projecting its military power.
They have kinda been kept that way due to certain concerns of a select chosen.
The plane problems were a particular embarrassment for Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who had flown to the Kurdish city of Irbil on Thursday to witness the handover of the weapons. By the time Germany's first shipment of rifles, anti-tank weapons and ammunition arrived, she had met Kurdish leaders and left for home again.
German media have cited a confidential report, given to lawmakers on the parliamentary defense committee Wednesday, that listed a series of military hardware problems.
Even the Germans are making crap now?
What is it with western war spending and the lack of quality product anyway?
According to the media reports, only 24 out of 43 C-160 transport planes are currently available. The planes, developed 50 years ago, remain the workhorse of the Luftwaffe because their replacement, the Airbus A400M, has been delayed for several years.
?????????
The reports also say that just 42 of the Luftwaffe's 109 Eurofighter jets and 38 of its 89 Tornadoes are ready to fly. The navy acknowledged this week that it couldn't send any of its Sea Lynx helicopters to an international anti-piracy operation because of cracks in the tails.
They did pay $1.6 million in ransom, though.
Munich's daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that 110 of the army's 180 Boxer armored transport vehicles are currently being repaired.
The defense ministry declined to confirm the reports, citing military secrecy. But ministry spokesman Ingo Gerhartz said the temporary sidelining of certain equipment didn't affect the army's overall capability.
"We're involved in 17 operations around the world," Gerhartz told reporters in Berlin on Friday. "We're fulfilling these operations every day, around the clock, at the weekend and on holidays." But he conceded that the plane trouble had demonstrated how urgently Germany needs the A400M.
I can't take the $hit-$pinning lies from governments anymore.
Former chief of staff Harald Kujat has said the German military's problems are partly due to chronic under-financing.
Now the German war machine needs more money?
In a bid to balance Germany's budget, the government reduced defense spending by about $1 billion to $41.30 billion this year — far below NATO's recommended level of 2 percent of GDP.
Banks needed it.
The cuts have hit the military just as Germany seeks to develop a more active foreign policy.
Not stirring people up like Japan, are they?
In recent months Germany has joined a campaign to support the fight against Islamic insurgents in Mali, stepped up air patrols on NATO's border in the Baltics, and offered to airlift medical equipment to Ebola-affected West Africa
That is where the print ended.
, all in addition to its ongoing involvement in Afghanistan and the Gulf of Aden.
"There's a number of individual events that perhaps would have been relatively low key if they'd occurred in a more benign background," said Ian Keddie, a defense analyst at IHS Jane's. "The Germans in many ways haven't been involved as much (as other nations) and this may be the highest tempo they've been at for a while."
Germany, which wants to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, will send further weapons shipments to Iraq by chartering massive Antonov transport planes from Ruslan Salis, a Russian-Ukrainian company.
That is how you do it. The five largest arms sellers are veto-wielding members in charge of peace on the planet.
The plan has been criticized by some lawmakers because Western governments including Germany have imposed sanctions against Russia over its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Won't be biting them in the ass this winter.
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"Three killed as Somali pirates fight over ransom" Associated Press September 27, 2014
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Three Somali pirates were killed in a fight over the ransom paid to free a German-American journalist who was released this week after two years and eight months of captivity, a police official said Friday.
The gunfight broke out in the central town of Galkayo late Thursday when some of the pirates who held Michael Scott Moore attacked their comrades, accusing them of conducting a secret deal with negotiators, said Mohamed Hassan.
A top pirate commander was among three people killed after Moore was freed on Tuesday, he said, adding that one camp of pirates accused the other of betrayal.
The clash started after one group of pirates appeared unwilling to share the cash with others, Bile Hussein, a pirate commander in the coastal town of Hobyo, told The Associated Press on Friday. He said earlier that a ransom of $1.6 million was paid by Somali intermediaries acting on behalf of Germany.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t confirmed money was paid and US policy forbids the payment of ransoms.
Doesn't mean we don't do it; they just won't admit it publicly.
The 45-year-old Moore, who holds both German and US citizenship, was flown to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he was said to be getting medical care after being freed in Somalia, according to Germany’s Foreign Ministry. A statement issued Thursday through the German magazine Der Spiegel, for which Moore had freelanced in the past, said he was in poor health.
He doesn't have Ebola, does he?
Moore was seized by pirates in January 2012 in Galkayo as he drove from the airport.
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At least Spain is pitching in this time:
"Spain and Morocco arrest nine on suspicion of terrorism" by Dan Bilefsky | New York Times September 27, 2014
PARIS — Spanish and Moroccan law enforcement officials have arrested nine people suspected of being part of a terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State, the Spanish Interior Ministry said Friday.
The ministry said the suspects had been arrested in Melilla, a Spanish-administered enclave on the north coast of Africa, and Nador in northeastern Morocco. The Spanish media said that those arrested included eight Moroccan nationals and one Spaniard, who was purportedly the leader of the group.
The investigation was completed under the auspices of a judge who had sealed the details of the investigation, the ministry said, adding that the investigation was continuing.
Sigh. More mind-manipulating psyop propaganda.
Also Friday, the British police arrested two men suspected of plotting terrorist acts, a day after nine others were rounded up on suspicion of belonging to a banned extremist group.
In Spain, the leader of the cell was reported to be the brother of Zakaria Said Mohamed, a Spaniard who was suspected of fighting in Mali and whose arrest was solicited by the Moroccan authorities, the newspaper El PaΓs reported. The Spanish media said that the group leader had traveled to Mali and other conflict zones and was in charge of recruiting radicals for the cell. According to those reports, all of those arrested had been trained in the use of explosives and in handling arms.
El PaΓs said that Melilla had become a center of operations for jihadists and that investigators had uncovered three terrorist cells in recent months.
It added that in March, the authorities discovered a group based in Melilla that had sent dozens of fighters, a majority of whom were French and Moroccan, to fight in Syria, Mali, and Libya.
Spain has spoken out against the brutality of the Islamic State, but it has not participated in military strikes against the militant group in Iraq or Syria.
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