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Benghazi Index
Posted on 12/10/2012 7:20:50 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
More than 3,000 U.S. military personnel have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait and 17,000 more are on their way in response to the civil war in Syria that has spilled over into northern Iraq, according to a report published Monday by Iran's Press TV.
The news follows by four days a report from the Russian news service RT that the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower has joined the USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Syria. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week issued stern warnings to Syria about unspecified but serious "consequences" that would follow if government forces in Syria were to use chemical weapons against insurgents fighting to overthrow the government led by President Bashar al-Assad. The warnings came after reports that intelligence sources have reported signs of activity where the Assad regime is believed to have chemical weapons stored. At the same time, U.S. officials have expressed concern over the possibility that Jihadist elements among the rebel forces might capture those same weapons. Israel is worried — along with Western nations — that the militant Islamic group Hezbollah, an ally of Iran and enemy of Israel, might be among the rebels likely to get hold of and use chemical weapons.
The United States and other nations wanting to help the Syrian rebels in their efforts to topple the Assad regime are also concerned about Nusra Front, the one Syrian rebel group with the explicit "stamp of approval from al Qaeda," according to a New York Times report that identified the group as "a direct offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq." A veteran of the al-Qaeda force in Iraq, who said he has led the Nusra Front's efforts in Syria, is quoted in the Times as saying: "This is just a simple way of returning the favor to our Syrian brothers that fought with us on the lands of Iraq."
Faisal al-Maqdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, denied last week that his government has chemical weapons and called the warnings a "pretext for invasion" of Syria by Western nations. "Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide," Maqdad, said in apparent recognition of the retaliation by outside forces that the use of such weapons would bring.
Without citing specific numbers of troops on the U.S. ships off the Syrian coast, RT reported that the Eisenhower is equipped to carry eight fighter-bombers and 8,000 men, while the Iwo Jima is designed to carry 2,500 U.S. Marines. RT last week also quoted an Australian news report of U.S. covert forces either in or very near Syria, ready to strike. "We have (US) special operations forces at the right posture, they don't have to be sent," an unnamed U.S. official told The Australian.
Germany's cabinet, meanwhile, has approved stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries on Turkey's border with Syria, a step requiring deployment of NATO troops and arousing fears by the Assad regime that the move is a prelude to an imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the rebels from aerial bombardment by government forces.
There has been no United Nations resolution authorizing the establishment of either a no-fly zone or of U.S. ground forces. More importantly for the United States, there has been no authorization from Congress, as the Constitution requires, for the Obama administration to intervene militarily in the Syrian conflict. There is, however, a long line of precedents of presidents waging war without congressional approval, including the aerial campaign ordered by President Obama in 2011 in a "humanitarian intervention" to save the rebel forces that toppled the Moammar Gadhafi regime in Libya. Anti-Western, militant Islamic groups involved in the fighting against Gadhafi's forces later participated in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
So Mr. Obama is sending US troops to Iraq on rumors from American intelligence that an Arab dictator might have weapons of mass destruction? Am I getting this right?
Well, that was Bush's mistake -- he went and got a resolution from the UN, and permission from the US Congress, and he went on TV, and he was very straightforward about the whole thing. What a moron!
Obama's going about it just right -- he's quietly sneaking US troops into Iraq so that we can fight Syria and install yet another al Qaeda dictatorship in the Middle East. America will wake up some day and say "Wha' happen?" Now that's the way to git 'er done!
May not be reliable reports....but bears watching.
Ssshhhhhh... We have to keep this secret. Otherwise, people might start to think we shouldn’t have exited Iraq so quickly. I mean, now that the election is over maybe we’re needed there again.
Uh oh, Russia Today is about as credible as Debka.
For posting this item earlier today on this thread:
Thank I heard about another President doing something similar....
I seem to remember a couple. Weren’t they related in some way?
Damn, we’re back in Iraq defending these ungrateful ragheads once again..
That is why I said what I did in post #4.
That is the part that was quoted from Russia Today. Hasn't that also been reported by American and British press?
Don’t know if it is true.
Couldn’t possibly be correct. I mean, those that elected Obama are convinced he’ll not be involved in another war, nobel peace prize and all.
I was probably posting as you put that in ... ;)
Some of Russia Today is reported from London, I think.
Or seems so when I see it on TV. Will probably see some of it later tonight.
When is Code Pink gonna protest Obama?
Democrats warned us that if we voted for Romney we would see American troops involved in a mid-east war with Syria.
It turns out they were correct.
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LOL....funny how that happens.
I saw this earlier. The Iranian press is reporting this:
— - — - - - - - - -
“Over 3,000 US troops have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait for missions pertaining to the recent developments in Syria and northern Iraq, Press TV reports.
According to our correspondent, the US troops have secretly entered Iraq in multiple stages and are mostly stationed at Balad military garrison in Salahuddin province and al-Asad air base in al-Anbar province.
Reports say the troops include US Army officers and almost 17,000 more are set to secretly return to Iraq via the same route.
All US troops left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a 2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries. The troops left Iraq for the neighboring Kuwait.
Washington decided to pull out all its troops from Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant legal immunity to the remaining US soldiers.
Washington claims that the only US military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers responsible for training at the US Embassy, as well as a small contingent of marines protecting the diplomatic mission.
US-led forces attacked Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction. But no WMD was ever discovered in Iraq. At the peak of the US-led military operation in Iraq, there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.
More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/09/277127/3000-us-troops-secretly-return-to-iraq/
Hey, that pig isn’t watching the instruments nor the horizon!!
Syrian Jihad Group Takes Gov’t Base, U.S. Designates It Terrorist Organization
As the Post goes on to remind us, at the end of last week, member groups of the new Syrian opposition command, the Syrian Opposition Coalition, met in Turkey, but the Nusrah Front was not invited. It is expected that the U.S. will recognize this umbrella group as the legitimate representative of Syria on Wednesday at a meeting in Morocco — meanwhile, the military and tactical vanguard of the rebel forces continues to be undeniably jihadist elements such as the Nusrah group, by their advantages in organization, commitment, expertise gathered in places such as Iraq, enthusiastic funding from Gulf Sunnis, etc., a trend no level of involvement the U.S. is considering seems likely to reverse.
Geez,....seems to me...that Team Obama is gonna have a problem at some point here...
No different then the garbage they have been pulling on us. They excluded their armed, funded and trained terrorist Al Qeada force from the Umbrella Leadership Group, and viola, they are no longer responsible.
Thank, yes, that is the same article quoted and linked to in the original article of this thread.
No mention of what they have in Syria.
I think I heard about the USS Eisenhower on Fox News the other day.
Only if someone someday somewhere on planet Earth holds him accountable for something he has done or said. The next time will be the first time.
Middle East to Become an EVEN MORE Convoluted Mess as Syria Splits....
These guys are the ones doing the real damage to Assad.
There might be a problem ahead.
The Iranians have been yapping for days about a captured US drone.
LOL... yes, seems right.
But, but,.. I thought he said that “.... America’s war in Iraq will be over”?!?!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20123800-503544/obama-announces-end-of-iraq-war-troops-to-return-home-by-year-end/
Gosh darn that evil GW Bush....
Obama’s got more Muslim radical pals who need American blood for their moon god.
Definitely. Hillary's signature is on the Federal Register notice identifying Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization. They are more or less now admitting they have been working with Al Qeada terrorist in Syria. They claim they are blacklisting them now to gain broad international support for the new leadership coalition they are building. Jabhat will be a problem for anyone who goes into Syria now. Just as they were in Iraq. My guess is the administration now realizes that Jabhat was so successful they have come to acquire Syrian WMD. So they are running away from the terrorist group.
I’m sure 0bungles got legal immunity for these guys before sending them back in. /s
Al Nusrah Front, foreign jihadists seize key Syrian base in Aleppo ( Chemical Weapons here?)
FR could use its own spy satellites or drones
That's because he's flying by the seat of his pants.
I just posted this on another thread. Fits here as well.:
This is a real quandary for obama and hillary. Thus far, neither has made any serious moves to interfere with Iran which is allied with both Turkey AND Syria...and now Egypt. OTHER Western countries want assad’s hide, but i-bama is stalling. It will be interesting to see how he extricates himself from having to make a decision in front of the rest of the western world.
Interesting that our nephew-in-law, a member of the military, went to Iraq a few months ago - we can write him and send Christmas presents, but we can’t address him using his military rank - I guess if we don’t actually call them military we can still claim that we have all our troops out of the country......
As has happened before, when we leave a war zone too quickly, we end up having to go back for one reason or another. Keeping the peace means keeping war away. We are an impatient people and never seem to learn, muchless against an enemy for whom eternity is a blink of the eye. No matter how hard he tries, he leaves “Bush’s war” and goes back, it’s Obama’s war now.
Now that is interesting....raises questions of just what is really happening.
I hope this won’t interfere with the Obamalamadingdong’s upcoming 3-week, $40,000,000.00 Hawaiian vacation.
Jabhat al-Nusra is Iraq Al Qeada. So everything they acquire in Syria, can be transported back to Iraq. They are Sunni.
The al Qaeda whackjobs are battling for control of the Syrian government using the weapons supplied to them in Benghazi, courtesy of the United States. When they topple the Assad regime, they will have complete control of whatever WMD Quadaffi had squirreld away in Libya, plus Syria's WMD, as well as the WMD transferred into Syria by Saddam in 2003.
Of course there's no reason to fear that they will turn these weapons on Israel. Of course not.
Thanks Ernest.
Huh? 8 fighter bombers... Just where did these guys pulls this from?
The current Strike Fighter compliment of Carrier Air Wing 7 (Nominal Aircraft):
VFA-83 Strike Fighter Squadron 83 Rampagers F/A-18C Hornet - 12 Aircraft
VFA-103 Strike Fighter Squadron 103 Jolly Rogers F/A-18F Super Hornet - 12 Aircraft
VFA-131 Strike Fighter Squadron 131 Wildcats F/A-18C Hornet - 12 Aircraft
VFA-143 Strike Fighter Squadron 143 Pukin Dogs F/A-18E Super Hornet - 12 Aircraft
So, at a minimum, there are 48 strike aircraft onboard. 8... I think not.
Just what could possibly go wrong? All praise nobama!
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