US conducts airstrikes in Iraq, Syria

[task0778]

The U.S. military carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday — days after a U.S. defense contractor was killed at a military compound in a rocket attack.

Military jet fighters conducted "precision defensive strikes" on five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, Jonathan Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Pentagon told Fox News. Two defense officials added that Air Force F-15 jet fighters carried out the strikes.

U.S. officials have blamed the militia for a rocket barrage Friday that killed a U.S. defense contractor, wounded four U.S. troops and two members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.

U.S. Air Force F-15 jet fighters carried out the strikes, two U.S. defense officials told Fox News. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Chris Thornbury, File)

Military forces said the attackers fired more than 30 rockets in Friday's assault — the 11th rocket attack on U.S. and Iraqi forces since late October, according to a U.S. defense official.

Five locations — including three Kataeb Hezbollah areas in Iraq and two in Syria — were targeted, Hoffman said in a statement.

He said the U.S. strikes will weaken the group's ability to carry out future attacks on Americans and their Iraqi government allies.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for two separate rocket attacks on the Baghdad International Airport, on Dec. 9 and 11, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are located on the other side of the commercial airport.

Pompeo said if any Americans were harmed in the future, it would "be answered with a decisive U.S. response."

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., responded: "Today's strikes against Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria are a justified response to the killing of an American and the wounding of several American service members and Iraqis. Tehran must stop attacking Americans or else face even graver consequences."


Me: blow to sonsabitches to hell. No more pussyfooting around.

 

[Rambunctious]

Good clear the earth of those 12th century scumbags....

 

[Augustine_]

If not for the Middle East, what in the world would the U.S. spend all of its free time doing?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

If not for the Middle East, what in the world would the U.S. spend all of its free time doing?

Addressing crushing poverty and disease at home, when the economy collapses due to the oil market falling apart.

 

[Jackson]

I support this action by the president.

 

[sparky]

If not for the Middle East, what in the world would the U.S. spend all of its free time doing?

~S~

 

[Zorro!]

THEY’RE NUTS: Check Out All the Unhinged Celebrity Reactions to Trump Defending our Embassy.

This time the Hollywood crowd is losing their minds over the killing of the world's number-one bad guy in Iran, General Qasem Soleimani. To remind everyone, Soleimani has long been known as a killer and was once called the "Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror" by the New York Post. He was responsible for the Benghazi embassy attack, and was in bed with Barack Obama.

He’s the Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror, the most dreaded and most effective terrorist alive.​

He is Qassem Suleymani, the head of the Quds Force, an organization that acts as a combination CIA and Green Berets for Iran, and a man who has orchestrated a campaign of chaos against the United States around the world.​

The Obama Administration allied itself with Suleymani to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.​

The article goes into the grasp, the wide and violent reach that Soleimani had, to the detriment of American lives like that of Ambassador Chris Stevens. But defending our embassy in Iraq from violent attack and eviscerating the guy who was responsible for the deaths of many Americans over many years in the process was very bad news to the anti-Trump Hollywood crowd.

Major Gen. Qassem Suleymani was the powerful figure behind the 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya​

Then the Terrorist commander came to Baghdad in the midst of the attacks on our embassy and found out that elections really do make a difference.

“Iran wants chaos. They want to generate anti-American anger, radicalize the rebels, and maintain a climate of war,” a former Iranian intelligence chief for Western Europe said. “They are very serious about this. They want to damage the reputation of the United States as a freedom-loving country in the eyes of the Arabs.”​

Suleymani had orchestrated attacks in everywhere from Lebanon to Thailand. He tried to hire a Mexican drug cartel to blow up the Saudi Ambassador to the United States while he was in Washington, DC.

Suleymani was involved in an even more direct attack on the US — the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya.

“In Libya, Iran wanted to block US influence, which they saw as a threat,” the intelligence chief said. “They saw the uprising against Khadafy — and the Arab Spring more generally — as an opportunity to accomplish this.”​

The CIA Annex in Benghazi housed an NSA listening post that secretly monitored communications of jihadi groups.

Late in the afternoon on Monday, July 30, 2012, the Annex ears picked up chatter in Persian between a pair of operators from Quds Force.

The NSA translator brought an English transcript of their conversation to the chief of base.

​

The chief of base had been given intelligence that Iran would send operatives into the area. He tasked several agents in his employ who worked for the Zintan militia, which ran the Benghazi airport, with tracking the seven Iranians scheduled to arrive that day from Tripoli.

They were operating undercover as part of a Red Crescent medical team — a doctor, male nurses, medics and administrator — and undoubtedly thought the Americans didn’t have a clue as to who they really were. At least, that’s what the chief of base had surmised from the intercepted coms.​

But he knew that the Red Crescent team included operations officers the Iranians had dispatched to Benghazi to carry out an attack on the diplomatic compound.

​

The CIA chief of base didn’t know whether their plan was to kidnap the ambassador, kill him, hire locals to drive car bombs through the perimeter wall, or what.

All he knew was, they were the bad guys and they had come to fulfill his worst nightmares.

Their orders were to kidnap or kill the US ambassador to Libya, to send a message to the United States that they could act against them at will anywhere and at any time in the Middle East.

Suleymani and his Quds Force operators were so successful at killing Americans in Iraq because they had penetrated US operations.

They didn’t just randomly place an IED on a roadside, Maguire said. They placed the IED where and when they knew an American convoy was going to pass.

“They were into our coms. They were into our operational planning. That’s how they were able to kill so many Americans,” Maguire said.

The Quds Force was using operatives recruited in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Turkey and Egypt to finance, train and equip the radical group Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, careful to show their hand only to a select few.

To anyone on the ground, these Iranian operatives would look and speak just like Arabs or Turks. They helped to create a series of small, radical militias to block any progress toward democracy.

The Iranians recruited more than 1,000 Libyan fighters for these militias who were “in direct contact with Quds Force officers.”

By mid-August 2012, planning for the attacks on the US diplomatic compound and the CIA intelligence base in Benghazi had been in the works for two months.

The head of the Iranian team in Benghazi was a senior Quds Force officer named Ibrahim Mohammed Joudaki. He had gotten his start killing Kurds in northwestern Iran, and later ended up in Lebanon where he trained Hezbollah fighters.

His deputy, Khalil Harb, was someone he had known and worked with for years in Lebanon.

Harb was a top Hezbollah operative and a deputy to Quds Force chieftain Qassem Suleymani. As an Arab, it was easier for him to interface directly with the local militias and handle the logistics of the operation itself.

Over those first two months, Joudaki spread money around, while Harb and his team of hardened killers gathered intelligence, recruited militiamen, and refined the operational plan.

Harb had a total of some 50 Quds Force operatives on the ground to manage the attacks.

Their initial orders were to kidnap the US ambassador while he was visiting Benghazi, and to destroy the CIA Annex. They wanted to drive the United States out of Benghazi, where they believed the CIA was supervising weapons transfers to the Syrian rebels.

“Iran saw the CIA presence on the ground in Benghazi as a direct threat,” the former Western European intelligence chief said.

​

On Sept. 11, 2012, Ansar al-Sharia attacked the consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Stevens.

Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the suspected ringleaders in the attack, was captured by US forces. Although Ansar al-Sharia was supported by Iranian money, Qassem Suleymani and his Quds Force kept their fingerprints off the operation.