BlackAsCoal
Gold Member
- Oct 13, 2008
- 5,199
- 530
- 155
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Now Syria ...
Obama believes the US has the right to invade any nation we choose to invade chasing ghosts/terrorists and anyone who gets in the way be damned.
Blow 'em all up .. let God sort 'em out .. now becomes the official position of the Democratic Party and Obama supporters.
What's Behind the US Military Raid on Syria?
Sunday's surprise raid by helicopter-borne U.S. troops in eastern Syria raises at least three key questions. Given that the U.S. is saying the number of volunteer fighters infiltrating Iraq from Syria has dwindled significantly in the past 18 months, why was this action deemed necessary? Does the raid signal a shift in U.S. tactics in the region? And with just over a week before the U.S. presidential election, why now?
In what is thought to be the first such incursion from the Iraq side since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, at least four U.S. helicopters crossed Iraq's western border with Syria and attacked what officials in Damascus said was a half-constructed building in Sukkariyeh Farm, 5 miles from the Syrian frontier town of Abu Qamal. Eight people were reported to have been killed in the raid. Damascus "condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible," said the Syrian government in a statement that went on to demand that the Iraqi government launch an investigation into "this serious violation."
The flow of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq was Washington's chief complaint with Damascus following the 2003 invasion. Analysis of al-Qaeda documents seized by American troops in Sinjar in northern Iraq last year suggested that 90% of foreign fighters entering Iraq came from Syria. However, the figures have dropped significantly, according to U.S. officials. In July, an estimated 20 fighters per month were reported to be entering Iraq, an 80% drop compared with a year earlier. In September, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that the number of foreign fighters crossing from Syria into Iraq was down. She ascribed the reduction to the efforts of coalition forces and the Iraqis rather than a change of policy by Syria.
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Cross-border strikes are an increasingly common tactic by U.S. forces operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile-launching drones reportedly killed at least 20 people on Sunday in Pakistan's South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area suspected of harboring al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counterinsurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. "The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into safe havens. Operational commanders would have to be thinking, If we can do it in Pakistan, why can't we do it in Syria?" he says.
What's Behind the US Military Raid on Syria? - TIME
Iraqistan will be the democrats war
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Now Syria ...
Obama believes the US has the right to invade any nation we choose to invade chasing ghosts/terrorists and anyone who gets in the way be damned.
Blow 'em all up .. let God sort 'em out .. now becomes the official position of the Democratic Party and Obama supporters.
What's Behind the US Military Raid on Syria?
Sunday's surprise raid by helicopter-borne U.S. troops in eastern Syria raises at least three key questions. Given that the U.S. is saying the number of volunteer fighters infiltrating Iraq from Syria has dwindled significantly in the past 18 months, why was this action deemed necessary? Does the raid signal a shift in U.S. tactics in the region? And with just over a week before the U.S. presidential election, why now?
In what is thought to be the first such incursion from the Iraq side since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, at least four U.S. helicopters crossed Iraq's western border with Syria and attacked what officials in Damascus said was a half-constructed building in Sukkariyeh Farm, 5 miles from the Syrian frontier town of Abu Qamal. Eight people were reported to have been killed in the raid. Damascus "condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible," said the Syrian government in a statement that went on to demand that the Iraqi government launch an investigation into "this serious violation."
The flow of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq was Washington's chief complaint with Damascus following the 2003 invasion. Analysis of al-Qaeda documents seized by American troops in Sinjar in northern Iraq last year suggested that 90% of foreign fighters entering Iraq came from Syria. However, the figures have dropped significantly, according to U.S. officials. In July, an estimated 20 fighters per month were reported to be entering Iraq, an 80% drop compared with a year earlier. In September, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that the number of foreign fighters crossing from Syria into Iraq was down. She ascribed the reduction to the efforts of coalition forces and the Iraqis rather than a change of policy by Syria.
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Cross-border strikes are an increasingly common tactic by U.S. forces operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile-launching drones reportedly killed at least 20 people on Sunday in Pakistan's South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area suspected of harboring al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counterinsurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. "The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into safe havens. Operational commanders would have to be thinking, If we can do it in Pakistan, why can't we do it in Syria?" he says.
What's Behind the US Military Raid on Syria? - TIME
Iraqistan will be the democrats war
