BLAD AL_ARAB AUTANI: Hejira

Monday, 7 March 2016

Hejira

The Common Ills

The US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in Iraq
Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Bayji, a strike suppressed an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Hit, two strikes struck an ISIL improvised weapons factory and an ISIL weapons storage facility.

-- Near Kirkuk, a strike destroyed three ISIL bulldozers.

-- Near Kisik, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck an ISIL weapons production facility and destroyed an ISIL vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Ramadi, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL frontend loader.

-- Near Sinjar, two strikes destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position and an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIL assembly area.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Well thank goodness for that, right?

It's provided so much safety in Iraq.

Uh . . .

Except for the big bombing today.

AP notes the suicide truck bombing in Hillah. BBC NEWS notes at least 47 dead. REUTERS explains at least 60 or dead with over seventy injured. Mohammed Tawfeeq and Chandrika Narayan (CNN) report the Islamic State have claimed the bombing.

So the US bombings aren't really solving anything.

This despite the claims Barack's special envoy Brett McGurk made to Robin Wright -- which THE NEW YORKER published yesterday.

By the way, do you think Gina Chon freaks out every time Brett speaks to a female reporter?

Once a cheater . . .

We will give Brett credit for one thing.

Though not credited by Brett, that's Stuart Jones, US Ambassador to Iraq, in the photo with Brett and Ammar.

Good for Brett for meeting with Ammar al-Hakim, leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

For those not paying attention, the US government had a good relationship with Ammar -- a relationship that they let splinter and fall apart in 2014.

I'll give him credit for working to re-establish that relationship.

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4497 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).

The following community sites -- plus PBS NEWSHOUR, NPR and Jody Watley -- updated: