Reposted: Why Would We Let People Like This In?

Steve Gern posted a video on his Facebook homepage, since gone viral with over 50 million views, about how unsafe it was for him to go outside in Iraq.

He made more comments on video as he was flown out of danger after receiving many death threats because of his video.

Steve is now out of Iraq and most likely will never be able to return. However, the question remains, why allow these people in America?
Obviously we will not like the answer.

Source

US Military Not Reporting Air Strikes

From the Military Times:

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll.

One Man Answers the Question: Why Would We Allow People Like This To Come To America?

Listen here to one man's recent experience with Iraqis as they respond to President Trump's temporary ban on immigration to the US.

Why would we allow people like this to enter the US?

Are We Looking At Another Benghazi?

Marine reinforcements are being sent to the US Embassy in Baghdad. I hope there are minefields and concealed machine guns surrounding the embassy.

From Fox News:

The U.S. military has sent a platoon of Marines to bolster security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad following recent protests led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Twenty-five U.S. Marine infantrymen arrived late Thursday night, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The move comes amid the Sadr-led protests against the rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, which escalated last weekend with protesters storming the Green Zone in Baghdad where the embassy is located.

[...]A U.S. Marine rifle company of more than 150 Marines, in addition to private security contractors, has been protecting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and will continue to do so.

I hate to even speculate about this, but with SecState Kerry leading the show I do not have any confidence that our people will be protected at any cost.

Obama Demostrates His New Iraqi Policy

The Iraqi government only controls about half of Iraq.

Last week President Obama caused a bit of consternation when he admitted that he still lacks a policy for Iraq's serious ISIS infestation. Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq is under ISIS control as well as other cities, such as Ramadi.

For the most part, Iraq forces trained under US military advisers melt away from ISIS fighters.

From CNN:

President Barack Obama said Monday his top national security advisers were still working to solidify training plans for Iraqi defense forces battling ISIS in their own country.

"We don't yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis," Obama said during concluding remarks at the G7 conference in Germany, citing recruitment as a key stumbling block facing the central government in Iraq.

Not to worry, Obama really does have a secret plan for Iraq and this he demonstrated by trying it out on the Iraqi Prime Minister.

He simply ignored him and walked away.

Map source here.

Feel Good Video Of The Day

An ISIS suicide bomber gets blown up by a roadside IED while driving his explosives-laden vehicle against a Kurdish site.  Then while in the air from the first explosion, his vehicle detonates resulting in an extraordinarily satisfying viewing experience.

The video is here.


Ba da bing...

Ba da boom...

I laughed.

I cried.

It became a part of me.

Fair And Balanced

Fair and Balanced and Heavily Medicated. That's me.
Not all Muslims are haters.
It's just so hard to develop munitions that only kill the maniacs.

Given the radical Islamic insurgence in their country, it would seem that the Iraqi Muslims in this video are literally taking their lives into their hands by speaking out about the plight of Christians in Iraq.




My Army daughter had an Iraqi Christian friend while she was studying in Cairo. We never met Susan (that's what she wanted to be called) but from my daughter's stories, she is a very sweet young woman.

Her friend's parents packed up the family and left Iraq after Saddam Hussein's regime fell due to fear of radical Islam. Many, many Christians have left Iraq. Susan's family now lives in Chicago, they are still friends. It is for these Christians that the TV personalities weep.

Iraq - Another Exercise In Futility

There is a reason why strong despots are (were?) the rule in the Middle East; they kept a lid on the Islamic nut cases that wanted to impose Sharia law on everyone. History will decide if the stupidest thing we've done in the last 100 years was to depose Saddam Hussein.

And now that they're killing each other in droves again, do we want to go back? Invest more lives, more treasure in the Muslim trailer park? We invested over 4,000 lives and $25 billion in rebuilding the Iraqi security forces so they could take care of themselves. For what?

The American Conservative has a compelling article on why the Iraqi security forces- some 900,000 men - has folded before an ISIS invasion of no more than 50,000. Entire battalions (63 so far) have melted away before the fundamentalist onslaught. Tens of billions of dollars of military equipment were abandoned and are now being used by terrorists.

The reasons? Culture and corruption.

Culture - it's how they have been socialized for centuries. Iraqis are not Americans and will never be. They are not Christians nor have they been exposed to Christian values. They do not think like we do and they do not act like we do. It is insanity to train them like we do.

...loyalty was the biggest factor in the Iraqi failures. After their own families, the soldiers and leaders were loyal to their tribes and then their religion, he said. “Iraq as a nation falls at the bottom of the list. Combine this with lack of cohesion, unity, loyalty, and camaraderie among themselves, and you have an organization that will disintegrate under pressure,”

Corruption - Bakeesh is a way of life in the Middle East and under Islamic law, rape isn't such a bad thing either.

Leaders looked out for themselves first by making side deals involving food, water, and even electricity if they were sitting on top of a generator. I got the first two battalion commanders I worked with fired for corruption that involved taking money out of soldier’s salaries and the rape of local Sunni women by the Shia soldiers. I understand what we consider corrupt in our culture was not in theirs, and I was learning to live with it. But I told them if it starts directly involving the welfare of their men, then I would come after them.

There's more than enough blame to go around. Our generals certainly may have had a hand in it also as they apparently were more concerned about greasing their own careers rather than reporting the facts.

“Claims by Petraeus, Dempsey, and other U.S. generals of Iraqi effectiveness were always exaggerated or false,” said (Ret.) Col. Doug Macgregor, an author and Army consultant who served in the first Gulf War. “The generals were simply cultivating their Bush administration sponsors in pursuit of further promotion.”

And we're inviting the same kind of failure in Afghanistan.

Urkel Bombs Erbil

AN F-18 drops guided munitions

We're back in the game?

The United States dropped laser-guided bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said — the beginning of airstrikes threatened a day earlier by President Barack Obama.

The bombs, 500 pounds each, were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said.

 ISIL artillery is being used to kill and conquer Iraqi territory ...
Oh, nevermind, it's our artillery, it just does that automatically.

The strikes marked a return to U.S. military engagement in Iraq, three years after Obama removed U.S. forces.

Obama, in a speech Thursday night from the White House, said that he was authorizing airstrikes to protect American interests in Iraq and drops of food and water for tens of thousands of refugees trapped by ISIS on a mountain in Iraq.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday: “As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities.” ISIS and ISIL are acronyms to describe the same Islamic militant group.

Story here and here.

Just a thought - how did the ISIS manage to roll up the Iraqi army after years of US training?

Iraqi soldiers who fled ISIS advance accuse officers of treason
Iraqi soldiers deny abandoning their posts following ISIS advance

Erbil, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iraqi troops who fled the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters into Mosul have denied that they abandoned their posts, saying that they had received orders to flee from up the chain of command.

Another thought - firing an accurate artillery barrage is not like firing a rifle. It takes training and logistics. Where did these savages learn to fire sophisticated modern artillery?  (This link is interesting)

[...]there's been an influx of skilled Saddam-era military leaders and soldiers into ISIS' ranks. "When you look at some of the reports about the leadership under [ISIS commander Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi," Rosenblatt said, "those second-in-command guys have very strong ties to Saddam's army." Acquiring lots of weapons, money, and experience over the course of the Syrian war allowed them to translate that new training into real military effectiveness.

Just one more thought - What can slow the advance of ISIS forces? ISIS is now messing with the Kurds and the US may finally be rousing from its sleep.

[...]an unexpected military intervention by a third party. The semi-autonomous Kurdish area in northwest Iraq is adjacent to ISIS' stronghold. Their powerful military, which has already had small clashes with ISIS-aligned forces, could challenge ISIS. And who knows what effect a large-scale American air campaign against ISIS would have on the balance of power.