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| Iraq |
| EU urged to join US in arming Kurds against Islamic State |
| 2014-08-12 |
| [ARABNEWS] As the United States confirmed on Monday that it has begun urgently shipping arms and ammunition to the Iraqi Kurdish forces battling an advance by Death Eater Islamic State (IS) krazed killers, La Belle France called on the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... to do the same. "It is crucial that the European Union mobilizes from today to respond to this appeal (by Kurds) for help," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a letter to EU foreign affairs supremo Catherine Ashton. Fabius, who has just returned from a trip to Iraq where he met Iraqi Kurdish president Massud Barzani, explained that the latter had stressed "the urgent need for weapons and ammunition that would allow them to confront and beat the terrorist group Islamic State." La Belle France and Britannia have pledged support for a US-led operation helping Iraqi civilians — many of them from the Yazidi minority — who are fleeing a deadly advance by IS krazed killers. While all three Western countries are providing emergency aid for the besieged civilians, the United States has also been conducting air strikes on IS positions. On Monday, a US State Department spokeswoman said Washington has also started sending weapons to Kurdish fighters. "We're working with the government of Iraq to increasingly and very quickly get urgently needed arms to the Kurds," Marie Harf told CNN. "This includes the Iraqis providing their own weapons from their own stocks, and we're working to do the same thing from our stocks of weapons that we have." Harf said the effort had been underway since last week, but did not say which US agency was leading the effort or how many and what type of weapons had been sent. The United States has a consulate and other facilities in Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, and last week President Barack Obama I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go... announced air strikes to protect the city from the IS advance. Efforts to support Kurdish peshmerga forces could complicated the United States' ties to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which is also fighting the Islamic State but has tense relations with Arbil. But Harf insisted that, in the current crisis, the two are working together. "We have seen an unprecedented level of cooperation between the Iraqi forces and the Kurdish forces. We hadn't seen that in the past. They're helping each other out," Harf said. "So any way we can get the very urgently needed arms to the Kurds we are actively working on," she said. "We'll work with the government of Iraq to do that, but we believe again there is such an urgent situation that we need to do this." Fabius reiterated his call for "all the politicians in Iraq to hold talks to find a quick political solution that is acceptable to all parts of the country." Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini also called earlier on Monday for a special EU meeting to discuss "Iraq, Gazoo and Libya, three crises which concern Europe directly." "We're not talking about military intervention but providing support, even of a military sort, to the Kurdish government," Mogherini said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 Because it was an uncomfortable truthy. The electorate wasn't really willing to commit to a 50-year war with the jihadis, even after 9/11 The Cold War was palatable (and went on as long as it did) because everyone profited from it, including the American Left. Not so much with the war since 2001. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-08-12 21:23 |
| #6 See also TOPIX > [New StatesMAN] THE US + UK CAN'T DEFEAT ISIS - ARAB STATES WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE LEAD. * RELATED SAME > [VDARE] IRAQ AND ISIS: LET MIDDLE EASTERNERS TAKE THE LEAD IN FIGHTING THE NEWEST MIDDLE EAST WAR. IOW, let Globalist POTUS Obama do what he's been doing - IMO the Bammer is willfully + deliberately unilaterally on the sidelines in order to allow IRAN, RUSSIA, CHINA?, ETAL. FUTURE [US-style?] OWG CO-SUPERPOWERS TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES + EXPAND THEIR SPHERES OF INFLUENCE, BY MILITARY FORCE OR AGGRESSION IFF NEED BE + EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF TRADITIONAL US-WESTERN ALLIES + NEUTRALS. As warned before, the Bammer + Globies are walking very dangerous Geopol or MilPol tightrope = "slippery slope" that can easily come to existentially threaten the US = US-Allies/West per se. WHAT THE BAMMER + GLOBIES HAVE DONE TO US OVERSEAS ALLIES + NEUTRALS IN THE NAME OF OWG-NWO + "GLOBALISM", ETC. - I.E. INDUCING OR CAUSING US ALLIES TO LOSE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY(S) - CAN ALSO BE DONE BY ANGRY US ALLIES TO THE US IN A SSSSSSHH .... CCCCCCC "LETS SEE HOW THE US LIKES IT/LETS SEE IFF THE US LIKES TO LOSE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY" MILITARY CONFLICT. ["WICKED WEBS" + ALL THAT here]. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-08-12 20:45 |
| #5 It took 50 years of patience and the presence of US troops to allow South Korea to gel as a first-world democracy. We're reaping the benefits of that patience today with a stable, prosperous Korea. Why this example wasn't pointed out more clearly in the debate over our continued presence in Iraq, I don't know. Because it was an uncomfortable truthy. The electorate wasn't really willing to commit to a 50-year war with the jihadis, even after 9/11. Jerry Pournelle was pointing that success would take a very long time, at least by 2003 if not earlier, but he doesn't count. I have been saying similar things since 2003, on the 'Burg and elsewhere, but rarely get any answer/comment to my posts one way or the other. I don't count either, I'm just a poorly informed voter / civilian, who has been reading up on this stuff since about 1956 & the Hungarian uprising. I started reading more about Islam & jihad when the old USSR invaded Afghanistan about 1979. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-08-12 15:25 |
| #4 The EU can't hear right now---being in the middle one of their "Juden" tirades. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-08-12 14:23 |
| #3 The Truman-Eisenhower generation had learned the hard price in blood and resources the cost of being in the audience rather than on the world stage. Even then America wanted to go back to being isolationist, but the Berlin Blockade showed the adults in charge that either you ride the tiger or get eaten by the tiger. Realpolitik. That generation was replaced by the Trust Fund generation who's expanded idle time is more concerned with the newest gadget or personality. They lack the understanding that there is no perfect but serious trade offs in life and patience is required for evolution in mass societies. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-08-12 09:39 |
| #2 It took 50 years of patience and the presence of US troops to allow South Korea to gel as a first-world democracy. We're reaping the benefits of that patience today with a stable, prosperous Korea. Why this example wasn't pointed out more clearly in the debate over our continued presence in Iraq, I don't know. Korea. If we'd stuck with Iraq we would one day have a Federated Republic of Iraq that would be first-world, stable, prosperous, and democratic. Might have taken 50 years. But it's just the sort of long-term investment in our global vision that we should have made. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2014-08-12 09:08 |
| #1 The government in Baghdad represents only the government in Baghdad. Not the nation as a whole, not the Kurds, and not the Sunnis whom they have driven over into ISIS hands. When will the state Dept give up on that illusion that never really existed without US troops there as a unifying force? Bremer followed by Obama. what a disaster. Thats what happens when the State Department runs what should be a military operation (Occupation & rebuild) |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-08-12 08:33 |