As the weekend begins Barack Obama, sent two F/A-18s into Iraq carrying 500-pound laser-guided bombs which were deployed against Kurdish forces near Erbil.
According to the Washington Post:
“At approximately 6:45 a.m. EDT, the U.S. military conducted a targeted airstrike against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, a top Pentagon spokesman said in a statement.
“Two F/A-18 aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece near Erbil,” Rear Adm. Kirby said. “ISIL was using this artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil where U.S. personnel are located.”
A small clutch of U.S. advisers have been based in the city during recent weeks, assessing the capability of Kurdish forces to defend the region. No other details were immediately provided.
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There was a pause between the first, second and third waves of attacks from the US aircraft.
However, we are also told by The Guardian that drones, as well as F-18s, were involved.
The drone hit an Isis mortar position near the city, the Pentagon said, about three hours after Friday’s first fighter jet strike. A second pass by the drone killed suspected Isis militants when they “returned to the site moments later.”
Over an hour later, four more FA-18 Super Hornets hit an Isis vehicle convoy of seven vehicles while it was parked near the city, as well as a mortar position. Two passes by the jets dropped eight laser-guided bombs.
Together, the three strikes suggested an air campaign to protect Iraqi Kurdistan was beginning to take shape, marking the return of US aircraft to combat in Iraq.
An AP correspondent at the scene reported six bombs dropped at the front at Khazer, the site of a camp for displaced Iraqi Arabs just outside Irbil, abandoned in the face of the Isis offensive. Peshmerga fighters had been told to withdraw from their positions just before the sorties began, but even so, one of the bombs landed within 100 metres of their lines.
While the narcissist-in-chief has prided himself on the removal of troops from Iraq, a move that I do agree with, though not in the way that he did it, the reality is that he left a vacuum in Iraq that has been filled by Islamists who seek to impose the religion of Mohammed firmly in the nation.
National Security advisor and Benghazi talking points tamperer Ben Rhodes stated, “The fact of the matter is we have people in Irbil and if Irbil is allowed to fall, they will be at risk.”
While at least one member of Iraq’s political system has been pleading tearfully for someone to step in and save them from the bloodthirsty Islamists that are conquering their land, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, “The President is determined to make sure that the United States is not dragged back into a long military conflict in Iraq,”
However, in a bizarre event of confliction of reports, the New York Times reported that around 5PM EST on Thursday that Kurdish officials and other media outlets reported that American forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq, the Pentagon denied the allegations via Twitter:
Press reports that US has conducted airstrikes in Iraq completely false. No such action taken.
— Rear Adm. John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 7, 2014
Yet, shortly following that Tweet, Obama appeared to make a brief statement saying that he authorized two targeted airstrikes:
The claims of airstrikes are supported with video of the actual strikes by the F-18s.
The question should come to mind, what is being done about the thousands of Islamists that are brutally murdering and intimidating Iraqis, including Iraqi Christians throughout the land? I’m not one for getting into other nation’s business, but I do have to ask, why are we bombing limited artillery of the Islamic State instead of seeking out the individual jihadists who have a death wish to go be with their 72 virgins and have no problem slaughtering their own people to advance the caliphate? From my position this is nothing more than to make Obama appear as though he is doing the right thing, when he is simply bombing insignificant targets.
