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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumInitial Thoughts On: Armed drones now flying over Iraq, DOD confirms
Armed drones now flying over Iraq, DOD confirmsSource: Politico
It is well beyond time many people in this community get their heads out of the sand and stop putting so much faith in Obama on this Iraq redeployment thing.
With the introduction now of additional U.S. personnel, in advisory capacity designed to go outside the Embassy confines, the commander on the ground
thought it was prudent to arm some of these aircraft to make sure we had additional force protection measures in place, he said.
Assuming the "commander on the ground" did make this decision what else can he request in the future? Additional grounds troops to protect the soldiers we already have? After all, armed drones provide a false sense of security and cannot always identify targets correctly, especially in combat situations. The road from advisers to outright military intervention with tens of thousands of soldiers (if not more) is far shorter than may in the Democratic Underground community would like to admit.
Additionally, there are more soldiers on the ground than we were told would be there:
About 180 of the 300 special operations advisers President Barack Obama said he could send to Iraq are there now, according to the Pentagon, and there are about 500 American troops overall. The American advisers are armed for their own self defense, but they are not taking heavy weapons or their own vehicles or aircraft. The armed drone orbits overhead buy the U.S. troops some additional insurance.
Emphasis Add.
But don't worry, before we ratchet it up in Iraq and sacrifice the lives of our own soldiers again the Iraqi forces that are fleeing from the ISIS forces taking over Iraq will have plenty more American weapons to drop when they run away in the future.
Obama administration officials have also said they wanted to expedite deliveries of military supplies to Iraq, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has complained that the U.S. is delaying the deliveries of Lockheed Martin-built F-16 fighters. He has opted to buy used Russian warplanes instead to help attack ISILs positions.
The new circumstances in Iraq have imminent American foreign policy disaster written all over them. We are screwed as a country if we cannot even learned the lessons within the last decade or so. Screwed.
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Initial Thoughts On: Armed drones now flying over Iraq, DOD confirms (Original Post)
EEO
Jun 2014
OP
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)1. Europe, the ME countries, the UN and the rest of the world
need to step up to the plate.
EEO
(1,620 posts)2. "You broke it, you fix it." Is most likely their perspective.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)3. It's Europe's backyard
and the ME countries' frontyard.
They have a vested interest in getting their sh%t together asap.
EEO
(1,620 posts)4. They would much rather have us do it.
And allow us to waste lives and money while they sit back.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)5. Lots of Britts there, French and several other countries. Seems like they have stopped taking over
the small border 'towns'. Stopped advancing toward main populated cities. I guess time will tell.
Wish someone would have grabbed Assad and about 10 of his family members back when they had the chance. Before they all ran away to their mansionlands in 'we are neutral' Geneva, Swiss.
quadrature
(2,049 posts)6. the Maliki regime will be swept out like yesterdays newspaper
the whole world is tired of
US meddling in Iraq