The United States knew that ISIS was planning an offensive strike on Ramadi, the strategic city in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reported that the U.S. had significant intelligence about the offensive, even as it was happening. The U.S. watched ISIS fighters, vehicles and heavy equipment gather on the outskirts of Ramadi before the group retook the city in mid May.
Bloomberg quoted Ari Force Lt. General David Deptula (ret,) who planned and executed major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that restrictive rules of engagement for American pilots was part of the problem.
Pilots flying sorties in Iraq “have to call back and ask, ‘mother may I’ before they can engage,” said the retired general, who was the first deputy chief of staff for the Air Force for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
“The current rules of engagement are intentionally designed to restrict the effectiveness of air power to prevent potential collateral damage,” he later added. “That results in ISIS getting the freedom of action so they can commit genocide against civilians. Does this make any sense?”
Genieve David, a spokeswoman for U.S. Central Command, acknowledged that the U.S. employs a “dynamic targeting process” in Iraq and Syria, with a focus on limiting civilian casualties and collateral damage.
According to Lt. Gen. Deptula, the restrictive rules of engagement are benefiting the enemy.
Another major setback in the battle for Ramadi was the Iraqi military abandoning their positions, and not having enough weapons and ammunition. As well, U.S Special Operation forces were not authorized to accompany Iraqi troops in battle.
Toby Harnden, Washington Bureau Chief of the Sunday Times, writes of the Mad Max, post Apocalyptic scenes as a “hulking bulldozer emerged through a swirling sandstorm, with a suicide bomber at the wheel and armored plates welded to its chassis, the vehicle crashed through concrete blast barriers surrounding the Iraqi police headquarters.” Then its explosive load was detonated. Waves of fortified dump trucks and souped-up Humvees followed as ISIS fighters fanned out across Ramadi.
There were estimated to be about 30 vehicle-borne suicide bombs that ripped through Ramadi. About 10 of them were estimated to be the size of the Oklahoma City Bomb which killed 168 Americans twenty years ago.
“Senior US military officers and intelligence officials agree that Obama’s counter-ISIS strategy of limited airstrikes, a handful of special forces raids and the small-scale training of Iraqi forces needs to be overhauled.”
President Obama has apparently given up on the Iraqi military because they ran away. If they won’t stand up and fight, Obama won’t support them. It takes a lot of training and good equipment to stand up to 30 suicide bombers driving dump trucks loaded with explosives and ISIS fighters swarming through the city killing everyone on sight. Obama has had major problems before with restrictive rules of engagement that get American troops killed.
It is believed that Obama’s overriding goal in the Middle East is to secure a nuclear deal with Iran so that he can reopen diplomatic relations with Tehran as a major achievement for his legacy. It is such a denial of basic facts that I can barely grasp his aims, and keep referring to Daniel Pipes’ explanation:
As a man of the Left, Obama sees the United States historically as having exerted a malign influence on the outside world. Greedy corporations, an overly powerful military-industrial complex, a yahoo nationalism, engrained racism, and cultural imperialism combined to render America, on balance, a force for evil.
The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.
Several assumptions underlie this approach: The U.S. government morally must compensate for its prior errors. Smiling at hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate. Using force creates more problems than it solves.
Sorry, I don’t believe that smiling at Iran will change its aims in any way. When they chant “Death to America,” I believe they not only mean it, but expect to carry it out.
ISIS has captured the ancient city of Palmyra, and has put the 2,000 year old Roman Amphitheater back into use as a site for executions as entertainment .Barbarians.
Filed under: Global Warming | Tags: Climate Change, Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Studies
Renowned Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies is interviewed by Stuart McNish for “Conversations that Matter.”
Here are some astounding pictures of the heights to which these animals go. I will observe from a distance, thank you.
More from all over the world.…
Cuba has been removed from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations, where it has resided for 33 years. Raul Castro demanded removal from the terror list as a condition for resumption of diplomatic relations. Have they done anything to warrant removal from the list? Not that you might notice.
While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a state sponsor of terrorism designation,” the State Department said in a statement.
The list, which also includes Syria, Iran and Sudan, is reserved for nations that repeatedly provide support for international acts of premeditated, politically motivated violence against non-combatants.
The problem seems to be that Cuba is too broke to afford to support terrorism around Latin America as they once did. Resumed tourism will bolster Cuba’s ability to spread their influence. Investors reports that a Chinese-flagged ship called the Da Dan Xia is moored off Cartagena, Colombia after being detained by Colombian authorities in late February, They found 3,000 artillery shells, about 100 tons of explosives, 99 projectiles and 2.6 million detonators bound for Cuba on the vessel.
Raul Castro said that Cuba has no intention of changing its actions. It remains a Communist dictatorship, and its people get to live on $20 a month plus food rations. Liberals,according to Twitter, are excited about going to Cuba to see the charming crumbling buildings and ancient cars. That the people have been essentially prisoners for 33 years doesn’t penetrate the liberal mind. They are concerned about getting there before the charm is ruined by McDonalds and Starbucks. That people have died trying to escape doesn’t penetrate the liberal mind either.
The mysterious death of Ladies In White dissident Laura Pollan in a Havana hospital a week after she was attacked by a Castroite mob with some sort of poison handkerchief is highly suspicious. Even more suspicious is the mysterious car crash that took the life of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
A former Cuban bodyguard of Fidel Castro who published an expose this month identifying Castro as a drug dealer suddenly died from a “pulmonary ailment.” Is it wrong to think an investigation is warranted before Cuba is cleared of being a terror state?
Obama is lifting the terror designation for political reasons, not for reasons of security. What he thinks he is gaining remains a mystery. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the United States has done nothing except grant concessions to Cuba, making no demands on the Castro Regime. I guess Obama thinks this is an accomplishment.
Daniel Pipes explained:
As a man of the Left, Obama sees the United States historically as having exerted a malign influence on the outside world. Greedy corporations, an overly powerful military-industrial complex, a yahoo nationalism, engrained racism, and cultural imperialism combined to render America, on balance, a force for evil.
The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.
Several assumptions underlie this approach: The U.S. government morally must compensate for its prior errors. Smiling at hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate. Using force creates more problems than it solves.
Filed under: Economy | Tags: big government, Capitalism, Free Markets, Obama Administration
The revised figures for the first quarter show that the American economy shrank by 0.7 percent — January through March. The administration did not, however try to blame it on Bush, they blamed it on the harsh winter. It was a brutal winter on the east coast and in the Midwest. It is the third quarter in which the economy has actually contracted (the other two were the first quarters of 2011 and 2014).
This has been the slowest, most sluggish recovery since World War II. The strong dollar has meant that American exports are down. but other economies are not healthy either, including China’s. The Obama administration’s big-government, big-deficit, big waste and big-regulation policies are not a recipe for growth or recovery.
A new study finds that overhead costs are exploding under ObamaCare. Another promise up in smoke. The Health Affairs Blog published a study based on numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that runs ObamaCare and found that ObamaCare increased health care costs by $17 billion last year, and by 2020 will add a total of more than $270 billion.Twenty-two percent of all new spending is going to overhead, paperwork, not patient care.
The United States spends more on regulation than ever before. The amount spent has increased significantly as has the number of people who are employed to write and enforce the increasing number of government regulations. In 1990, total spending on regulatory activity was $20.6 billion. This year it will clock in at $60.1 billion, a 192% increase. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that in 2012 the total cost of federal regulations was just over $2 trillion — 13 5 of that year’s GDP.
Is this unruly Americans who need more careful control? Not likely. It is an administration that sees power and control as a goal. Not a climate in which free enterprise can prosper.
Filed under: Capitalism, Freedom | Tags: Capitalism, Free Enterprise, Free Markets / Free People
Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, economist, and french horn player, gives a short class in Capitalism, always a worthy endeavor. Free enterprise works to lift people all over the world out of poverty.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: big government, Democrat Corruption, Hillary's Laugh
It’s just Hillary.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, National Security | Tags: Bret Stephens, Superpower, World Police
Bret Stephens is the foreign-affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal where he is also deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the editorial pages of the Journal’s European and Asian editions. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. I recommend his 2014 book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder unreservedly. Here he is for Praeger University:
What can one say? This is not a joke.
In a communication from the State Department Press Corps,via JWF Jammie Wearing Fools
“Starting June 1, Marie Harf will be beginning in a new role as Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications for Secretary John Kerry. In this position, she will continue her work leading on the Iran Negotiations communications strategy and other priorities.
Mark Toner will be assuming the role of Deputy Spokesperson, a position he held previously when Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland was Spokesperson. Mark returns to the Spokesperson’s Office from the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where he has been serving as a Deputy Assistant Secretary.”
The inmates are running the asylum, and we’re all doomed.
From William Voegeli’s The Pity Party:
The question of self-reliance affects the relationship between emphathizers and empathizees in a further way. If compassion rules out expecting much from those who suffer, then the moral and political leverage that empathizees wield against those who feel sorry for them will come to depend on their own incapacity. This correlation of moral forces operates with particular strength when empathizers and empathizees unite in the belief that the historic grievances of those who suffer preclude anyone else from calling on them to be self-reliant.
The basic choice open to blacks after the landmark legislation and court decisions of the civil rights era, according to the Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele,* was between advancing “through education, skill development, and entrepreneuralism,” or “pressuring the society that had wronged us into taking the lion’s share of the responsibility for resurrecting us.” The second course became all but inevitable when the post-civil rights narrative of white guilt and black victimhood decreed “that no black problem— whether high crime rates, poor academic performance, or high illegitimacy rates—could be defined as largely a black responsibility, because it was an injustice to make victims responsible for their own problems.”
*Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2006)
American Elephants 