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Initial Thoughts On: Armed drones now flying over Iraq, DOD confirms
Armed drones now flying over Iraq, DOD confirmsSource: Politico
It is well beyond time many people in this community get their heads out of the sand and stop putting so much faith in Obama on this Iraq redeployment thing.
“With the introduction now of additional U.S. personnel, in advisory capacity designed to go outside the Embassy confines, the commander on the ground … thought it was prudent to arm some of these aircraft to make sure we had additional force protection measures in place,” he said.
Assuming the "commander on the ground" did make this decision what else can he request in the future? Additional grounds troops to protect the soldiers we already have? After all, armed drones provide a false sense of security and cannot always identify targets correctly, especially in combat situations. The road from advisers to outright military intervention with tens of thousands of soldiers (if not more) is far shorter than may in the Democratic Underground community would like to admit.
Additionally, there are more soldiers on the ground than we were told would be there:
About 180 of the 300 special operations advisers President Barack Obama said he could send to Iraq are there now, according to the Pentagon, and there are about 500 American troops overall. The American advisers are armed for their own self defense, but they are not taking heavy weapons or their own vehicles or aircraft. The armed drone orbits overhead buy the U.S. troops some additional insurance.
Emphasis Add.
But don't worry, before we ratchet it up in Iraq and sacrifice the lives of our own soldiers again the Iraqi forces that are fleeing from the ISIS forces taking over Iraq will have plenty more American weapons to drop when they run away in the future.
Obama administration officials have also said they wanted to “expedite” deliveries of military supplies to Iraq, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has complained that the U.S. is delaying the deliveries of Lockheed Martin-built F-16 fighters. He has opted to buy used Russian warplanes instead to help attack ISIL’s positions.
The new circumstances in Iraq have imminent American foreign policy disaster written all over them. We are screwed as a country if we cannot even learned the lessons within the last decade or so. Screwed.
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