The Middle East Problem

[falken]

Send Dick Cheney there so they can chop off his head.

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[safeorigin]

sa bawat baril na pumutok meron kumikita.

ano ba ang ginagamit ng mga yan para pumatay? sila ba ang nag manufacture or delivered by another country?

kung puputulin mo ang supply ng weapons, kaya na ba i-manage ang patayan?

ang mga pumapatay ay tinatawag na terorista. ano ba ang pwedeng itawag sa mga nag manufacture ng baril na ginagamit ng mga terorista?

e kung ung gumagawa ng baril at ibinebenta ang baril nya sa terorista ang papatayin?

the problem with that is that the "person in-charge" has the monopoly of arms trading. Most of their arsenal are imported from North Korea.

[safeorigin]

And who are providing arms to these scoundrels???

Al Nusra has been doing that long before they got rebranded to ISIS. But of course, western countries can't let that out in media because they're their friends - Well, they used to be friends.

[uls]

Same age old problem...Sunnis fighting Shias... ISIS is Sunnis being financed by America's pal, House of Saud. While unfriendly countries get sanctioned left and right by the Western world with the mere mention of "terrorist financier"...

from page 1

ISIS/ISIL are Sunni Arabs and they're killing Shia Arabs

Sunni backer ang Saudi Arabia, Shia backer ang Iran

current Iraq govt is Shia so Iran is helping Iraq fight ISIS/ISIL

Iraq claims Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS/ISIL but there's no evidence

magulo ang Middle East

[uls]

there's a long-running feud between leaders of the Kurdistan region of Iraq and the Shi'ite govt of Iraq over land and oil

the Kurds want independence from Iraq. If Kurdistan becomes an independent state Iraq loses valuable land and oil

recently, the Kurds lost territory to Islamic State militants

guess what...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iraqi government provided a planeload of ammunition to Peshmerga fighters from Iraq's semi autonomous Kurdish region on Friday, a U.S. official said, in an unprecedented act of military cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces brought on by an urgent militant threat.

The official said Iraqi security forces flew a C-130 cargo plane loaded with mostly small-arms ammunition to Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in a bid to strengthen the region's Peshmerga fighters as they struggle to keep militants from the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot, at bay.

the enemy of my enemy is my friend

[dr. d]

the enemy of my enemy, is a potential, temporary ally. today. only.
what happens tomorrow is something else..

lessons from world war 2 (aka world war 1, part 2).

[uls]

yes definitely

for now IS is a threat to both Iraq and the Kurds

aanuhin nila ang pinag aawayan nilang lupa at langis kung mapupunta sa IS ang buong Iraq?

ayusin muna nila ang problema nila sa IS

[safeorigin]

mission accomplished! great f***ing work america!

[crosswind]

One of the issues to is
MERS-Cov/Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus

[Monseratto]

America's screwed up policy... US equipment being used against an US ally...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, Kurdish officials have beseeched the Obama administration to let them buy U.S. weapons. And for just as long, the administration has rebuffed the Kurds, America's closest allies in Iraq.

U.S. officials insisted they could only sell arms to the government in Baghdad, even after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki broke a written promise to deliver some of them to the Kurds, whose peaceful, semi-autonomous northern region had been the lone success story to come out of the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Now, the administration is confronting the consequences of that policy. The Islamic State group, which some American officials have dubbed "a terrorist army," overpowered lightly armed Kurdish units in a blitzkrieg that has threatened the Kurdish region and the American personnel stationed there.

In a bitter irony, the extremists used American armored vehicles and weapons they had seized from the hapless Iraqi military to defeat Kurdish fighters who were blocked from acquiring just such equipment, U.S. and Kurdish officials said.

The U.S. sought to halt the extremists' advance Friday with airstrikes, but Kurdish officials also say Washington has promised to begin sending them arms. Pentagon officials say their policy hasn't changed — they will only sell arms to Baghdad.

The U.S. has not wanted to stoke the Kurds' desire for, and Baghdad's fear of, an independent Kurdish state. Officials tried to steer some of the aid to the Kurds, but it didn't work.

Under the Pentagon's foreign military sales program, some $200 million worth of American weapons that was supposed to be earmarked for the Kurds by the Maliki government was never delivered to them, Barbero said.

"This policy of one Iraq, everything goes through Baghdad, ignores the reality on the ground," Barbero said in an interview.

Zebari and Barbero said Kurdish forces have been outgunned by ISIL troops driving in armored American Humvees and firing American machine guns seized from the Iraqi army.

"It's not that the peshmerga forces are scared or not willing to fight," Zebari said, referring to the Kurdish militia. "They are coming at us with armored Humvees and we're throwing these AK-47 bullets at them. It doesn't do anything. At some point you run out of bullets."

The Kurds have some tanks and armored vehicles, but not in Sinjar, a city far from the Kurdish seats of power in Irbil and Suliminiya. That city fell swiftly to an onslaught from Islamic State fighters, leading thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority to flee to a mountaintop, where the U.S. has airdropped supplies to stave off deaths from hunger and thirst.

Many of the peshmerga soldiers defending Sinjar had just six magazines of ammunition, said a former CIA official with close ties to the region who spoke on condition of anonymity because he got the information in confidence.

U.S. airstrikes are not "the endgame," Zebari said. "What has changed for the peshmerga on the ground? Nothing. We still need that military equipment."