Obama's Motto: Speak Mildly And Wave An Olive Branch. Quite A Difference Between That And What Teddy R Said

Obama Leaves U.S. Navy Without Carrier at Sea for 1st Time Since WWII

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For the first time since World War II, there is no U.S. aircraft carrier at sea to respond to threats, according to Fox News.

In a nearly unprecedented move, there will likely be a nearly one-month gap between the docking of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which docked last Friday, and the deployment of the USS George H.W. Bush, the ship meant to replace it. According to Defense News, the Bush is not scheduled to leave the port of Norfolk until at least the Jan. 20 inauguration of Donald Trump, and it could possibly leave later.

The Bush, Fox News reported, has been delayed in the shipyards for over six months. A carrier at port could be “surged” in order to meet any threat that emerges, the Navy said. However, at a time of geopolitical instability, it is notable that our president has taken arguably taken our most important tool of military prestige and removed it from the waters of the world.

The Navy, meanwhile, refrained from comment on the matter.

“We are not going to discuss the timing of operational movements of carrier strike groups into and out of the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility,” U.S. Naval Forces Central Command spokesman Capt. Terry Shannon told Fox News.

The Eisenhower’s return to port was preceded by a seven-month tour in the Middle East, where the carrier launched hundreds of attacks against Islamic State group targets in Iraq and Syria, both from the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, off the shores of Yemen, two American destroyers were recently attacked by Houthi rebels, a group sponsored by Iran. There are also, as you may have heard, significant geopolitical difficulties involving both Russia and China.

President Obama has overseen one of the largest downgrades in military prestige that we’ve seen from the executive branch. However, not having a carrier at sea — much less in the Middle East — for the first time since World War II is one of its most disgraceful moves yet. To make things worse, it comes at a perilous time.

While there are other ways that the United States can strike back in case of an attack, the aircraft carrier is the safest, surest projection of strength we have. The fact that Obama has chosen this time, close to a transfer of power in the United States of America, is telling.

We need a president whose leadership can keep America safe. This certainly isn’t how its done. We can only hope Donald Trump does better.

H/T Zero Hedge

Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree that what Obama did is an outrage.

What are your thoughts on Obama's move?

The Obama Administration Knew Ramadi Would Fall To ISIS But Sat On Its Hands. Is There A Reason? Could It Be They WANT ISIS To Win?

U.S. SAW ISLAMIC STATE COMING, LET IT TAKE RAMADI

BY | MAY 29, 2015 · 12:00 AM

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Author(s):  Eli Lake
Source:  Bloomberg.     Article date: May 29th, 2015

The U.S. watched Islamic State fighters, vehicles and heavy equipment gather on the outskirts of Ramadi before the group retook the city in mid-May. But the U.S. did not order airstrikes against the convoys before the battle started. It left the fighting to Iraqi troops, who ultimately abandoned their positions.

U.S. intelligence and military officials told me recently, on the condition of anonymity, that the U.S. had significant intelligence about the pending Islamic State offensive in Ramadi. For the U.S. military, it was an open secret even at the time.

The Islamic State had been contesting territory in and around Ramadi for more than a year and had spoken of the importance of recapturing the city. The U.S. intelligence community had good warning that the Islamic State intended a new and bolder offensive on Ramadi because it was able to identify the convoys of heavy artillery, vehicle bombs and reinforcements through overhead imagery and eavesdropping on chatter from local Islamic State commanders. It surprised no one, one U.S. intelligence official told me.

Other observers were willing to speak on the record about how many had seen the Islamic State's assault on Ramadi coming. “The operations on Ramadi have been ongoing for 16 months,” said Derek Harvey, a former intelligence adviser to David Petraeus when he commanded the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Harvey said many observers had seen the Islamic State's series of probing attacks and psychological operations aimed at the Iraqi army and local tribes: “Everyone knew that Ramadi for some reason was a major focus.” He conceded that he did not know the exact timing of the Ramadi offensive beforehand and acknowledged that he was surprised at how effective the operations were.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, had also been warning in policy papers that the Islamic State had set its eyes on Ramadi. Kim Kagan, the think tank's president, told me her institute “assessed that ISIS would undertake tactical offensives in different areas of Iraq in April and May in order to disperse the Iraqi Security Forces and prevent them from consolidating their gains after the fall of Tikrit.” She said that “ISIS began alternating attacks between Anbar and the Baiji oil refinery in mid-April,” which prompted General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to say in Congressional testimony that the U.S. was prioritizing the defense of Baiji over Ramadi. Kagan said the Islamic State's attack on Ramadi was not a “strategic surprise.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Central Command declined to discuss any specific intelligence. But she did say the U.S.-led coalition provided both airstrikes and surveillance to the Iraqi Security Forces in support of the Ramadi defense. The U.S. has also flown airstrikes in the past against Islamic State forces in Ramadi.

” Conducting air operations in heavily populated areas where ISIL hides can present challenges,” the spokeswoman, Genieve David, said. “Through our dynamic targeting process we carefully consider each target, in collaboration with our coalition partners and Iraqi forces, to ensure we do our best to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage”

But other observers said this dynamic targeting process was part of the problem. Dave Deptula, a retired general who was the first deputy chief of staff for the Air Force for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told me that airmen flying sorties in Iraq “have to call back and ask, 'mother may I' before they can engage.”

The restrictive rules of engagement for U.S. aircraft were explored this week in a devastating New York Times article that found that there are on average 15 airstrikes per day in Syria and Iraq in the new war, compared to 800 daily airstrikes in Iraq in 2003.  Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, last week said only one in four air missions actually result in airstrikes in the current war.  

“If the administration is only going to use airstrikes, they are going to have expand what constitutes a target,” Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me. “I have been concerned for a long time that the limited number of targets would ultimately lead to the fall of many cities in Iraq. This didn't come as any surprise to me that Ramadi fell.”

Deptula agreed. “The current rules of engagement are intentionally designed to restrict the effectiveness of air power to prevent potential collateral damage,” he told me. “That results in ISIS getting the freedom of action so they can commit genocide against civilians. Does this make any sense?”

To be sure, the rules of engagement for U.S. airstrikes were not the only setback in the battle for Ramadi. The Iraqi military withdrew from its positions in the city. This prompted Defense Secretary Ash Carter over the weekend to tell CNN that the U.S. was surprised the Iraqis lacked the will to fight.

But the forces deployed in Ramadi also were not properly resupplied, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials. Harvey, the former Petraeus adviser, told me that “since September, Iraqi forces deployed to Anbar have had to purchase some weapons and ammunition on the black market because supplies are not getting to them.”

Another problem in the battle was that although the U.S. special operations forces have been training Iraqi troops since the summer in bases, they are still not authorized to accompany the Iraqis into battle. This is standard procedure in Afghanistan and other theaters where the U.S. trains security forces.

“I am hearing a lot within the special operations community that we are leaving options on the table and not employing lower-risk capabilities that would make a difference,” Harvey told me. Harvey added that these low-risk options included using U.S. personnel on the ground to select targets for airstrikes, conducting special operations raids on Islamic State targets in Iraq and embedding special operations forces with the Iraqi units they were training.

Harvey contrasted this approach to the surge in 2007 and 2008, when U.S. soldiers patrolled Iraqi cities and engaged in direct combat with al Qaeda and other insurgent groups. It's not clear whether Harvey's recommendations would violate President Obama's own red lines against authorizing ground combat operations in Iraq. What is clear is that while the U.S. is holding back from those measures nearly a year into Obama's new Iraq war, the Islamic State has been able to hold Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, and has just taken the strategically important city of Ramadi.

UN Should Get Off Its Butt, Condemn ISIS, And Send In Troops To Stop ISIS. Why Aren't They?

UN: Hundreds of Civilians Will Be 'Massacred' If ISIS Takes Kobani

(Umit Bektas/Reuters/Landov)

Friday, 10 Oct 2014 11:31 AM

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At least 500 civilians who remain trapped in the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani are likely to be "massacred" if it falls to the Islamic State group, the U.N. envoy to Syria warned Friday, calling on the world to help avert a catastrophe as the extremists pushed deeper into the embattled town.
Staffan de Mistura raised the specter of some of the worst genocides of the 20th century during a news conference in Geneva, where he held up a map of the town along the Syria-Turkey border and said a U.N. analysis shows only a small corridor remains open for people to enter or flee Kobani.
The dramatic warning came as the Islamic State group pushed into Kobani from the south and east, taking over most of the so-called "Kurdish security quarter" — an area where Kurdish militiamen who are struggling to defend the town maintain security buildings and where the police station, the municipality and other local government offices are located.

The onslaught by the Islamic State group on Kobani, which began in mid-September, has forced more than 200,000 to flee across the border into Turkey. Activists say the fighting has already killed more than 500 people.
"The city is in danger," said Farhad Shami, a Kurdish activist in Kobani reached by phone from Beirut. He reported heavy fighting on the town's southern and eastern sides and said the Islamic State group was bringing in more reinforcements.
U.S.-led airstrikes against the extremists appear to have failed to blunt their push on Kobani. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that with the new advances, the Islamic State group was now in control of 40 percent of the town.
The Observatory, which collects its information from a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said a suicide bomber from the Islamic State group blew his car up near the Grand Mosque just west of the security quarter, but there was no immediate word of casualties.
The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the U.S.-led coalition conducted nine airstrikes in Syria on Thursday and Friday. It said strikes near Kobani destroyed two Islamic State training facilities, as well as vehicles and tanks. Another strike in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour — controlled by the extremists — destroyed an Islamic Statearmored vehicle staging facility, it said.
On Friday, the militants shelled Kobani's single border crossing with Turkey in an effort to capture it and seal off the town, a local Kurdish official and Syrian activists said.

The official, Idriss Nassan, said Islamic State fighters aim to seize the crossing in order toclose the noose around the town's Kurdish defenders and prevent anyone from entering or leaving Kobani.
By midmorning Friday, occasional gunfire and explosions that appeared to be rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells could be heard from across the border in Turkey, and plumes of smoke were seen rising in the distance. The Observatory said the militants shelled several areas in Kobani, including the border crossing.
"Daesh is doing all it can to take the border crossing point through the farmlands east of the city," Nassan said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State group. "They think there might be help (for the Kurdish militia) coming through the crossing so they want to control the border."
In Geneva, de Mistura said that a U.N. analysis of the situation on the ground shows that only a small portion of the town remains open for people to enter or flee. He said there were 500 to 700 elderly people and other civilians still trapped there while 10,000 to 13,000 remain stuck in an area nearby, close to the border.
De Mistura invoked the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 as he appealed to the world to prevent another catastrophe.
If the town falls to the Islamic State fighters, "we know what they are capable of doing," said the Italian-Swedish diplomat, who was appointed to the U.N. post in July.
The civilians of Kobani "will be most likely massacred," de Mistura said. "When there is an imminent threat to civilians, we cannot, we should not be silent."
"You remember Srebrenica? We do. We never forgot. And probably we never forgave ourselves for that," he said. In both Rwanda and Srebrenica, the U.N. had troops on the ground but they failed to save the lives of the civilians they were mandated to protect.

There are no U.N. troops in Syria. Turkey has deployed troops and tanks across the border, but despite U.S. pressure, Ankara has said it will not join the fight unless the U.S.-led coalition also goes after the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
De Mistura appealed to Turkish authorities to allow volunteers and equipment to flow into Kobani and help its Syrian Kurdish defenders.
Without more such help, he added, Kobani is "likely to fall."
The fight over Kobani has eclipsed the larger Syrian civil war, where Assad's forces continue to fight rebels seeking to topple him in many parts of the country.
On Friday, activists said at least nine civilians were killed in a government airstrike that targeted the village of Harra in the southern province of Daraa. More than 20 people were also killed a day earlier in government airstrikes in Damascus suburbs, they said.
The Syrian National Coalition, Syria's Western-backed main opposition group, accused Assad of "openly exploiting" the coalition's war against the Islamic State group to continue killing Syrians.

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