Posted on 06/29/2014 10:14:31 AM PDT by wetphoenix
After the United States delayed a sale of fighter jets to Iraq, Russia sold planes to the Iraqi government. Now they've sent military experts to Baghdad.
Gen. Anwar Hama Ameen, who heads the Iraqi air force, explained that the secondhand jets would quickly be deployed in the government's fight against the Sunni extremist group ISIS.
In the coming three or four days the aircraft will be in service to support our forces in the fight.” Ameen also said that the presence of Russian military experts would be short-lived. Nevertheless, here's how Rod Nordland characterized the development:
The move was at least an implicit rebuke to the United States, where concerns in Congress about the political viability of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government have stalled sales of advanced jet and helicopter combat planes to Iraq."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Obama ‘has warned’ Putin to stay out of Iraq. Putin’s action asks Obama “What are YOU going to do about it, Mister American President?”
Putin has a lot of gonads compared to the feckless fool on the hill.
So are they going to get together with U.S. experts and share ideas? World peace breaking out soon, thanks to Obama!
We are such a generous nation, turning over the vast oil fields in Iraq to Putin. But, our feckless fool has always been in Russia’s pocket.
““What are YOU going to do about it, Mister American President?””
“I’ll threaten to hold my breath.”
Geopolitics is a game best played by serious men (and women).
Our guy qualified for Pep Club...
Our friends don’t trust us - our enemies don’t fear us... what could go wrong?
Until the wholesale carpet bombing of the region commences, the US will be called gutless and weak. After the bombing, the US will be called heartless butchers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. At least the damned won’t have to worry about a bunch of crazy muslim jihadis stabbing them in the back anymore, after the bombings that is.
Pep Club? This feckless fool didn’t make it off the bench in little league.
The Russians are seizing a rare strategic opportunity. They realize that the ISIL fighters are dangerously overextended. They have Hezbollah fighters and Syrian air harrassing their rear and strafing their supply convoys. Fierce Kurd who will hold and are anxious to seize more territory are on their center flank. The Iraqi army bolstered by enthusiastic Shi’ite militia are stopping their advance outside of Baghdad. The Russians know that with strategic leadership, logistics and coordination, a counterattack would put the ISIL fighters in a vise. Given their barbaric behavior and the customs of the region , they would be slaughtered mercilessly. Russia has a strong national interest to see ISIL destroyed. If Syria comes under the rule if fundamentalist Muslims, it will become a haven and a base for the jihadists who are causing mayhem in southern Russia. Putin is not playing checkers.
That wouldn't be a bad idea. Get together the military assigned to Iraq from US, Russia, Syria, Iran, others who have an interest in world sanity. Let them figure out how to get rid of ISIS which is a threat to everyone.
They're the ones who end up dead or maimed, not the pols making the decisions. Egypt's milirary showed how it's done when faced with an out-of-control fanatical government.
A Russian flag soon over the Baghdad embassy we paid 750 million to build? Nothing would surprise me anymore.
Iraq was a client state of Russia prior to the US invasion of Iraq. After the freeing of Kuwait and the retreating Iraqi were being decimated on the highway between Kuwait and Iraq, a number of Russians were counted among the dead. They had been advisors to the Iraqi. And the Iraqi equipment was Russian made. The Russians are picking up from where there once were, IMO.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
The Russians are merely fulfilling a need. The territory now known as Iraq needs an outside agency to set things right, and Russians have few compunctions about helping out the Shi’ites (and thus indirectly, Iran), and to putting a pinch on the ISIL-ISIS because they are also waging atrocities on the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, another vassal state that is more or less under the protective wing of the Russians.
Meanwhile Iraq continues to spin apart into what will be essentially three countries. One will be a vassal state to Iran, if not actually annexed. One will be the Levantine Caliphate, carved out of Syria and central Iraq, and the third will be the nucleus of the republic of Kurdistan, which may also have territory taken from Turkey, Iran, Syria and other smaller provinces immediately adjacent.
The Ottoman Empire may yet be resurrected, but as long as Sunnis are in daily combat with Shi’ites, that possibility will remain shelved.
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