Of course, the announcement's a little late in coming since they've been attempting to retake Sinjar since before August 2014 -- if anyone bothers to remember that.
Sri Lanka's The Nation newspaper explains, "The town sits on an important highway Islamic State uses to ferry supplies from Raqqa, Syria to Mosul in northern Iraq. Islamic State seized the city last summer in a major offensive, widening its self-described caliphate to about an hour’s drive from the Kurdish capital, Erbil." AFP adds, "Kurdish forces and the U.S. military said the number of Islamic State fighters in the town had increased to nearly 600 after reinforcements arrived in the run-up to the offensive, which has been expected for weeks but delayed by weather and friction between various Kurdish and Yazidi forces in Sinjar."
So 600. And they need to undertake (another) massive mission?
BBC News is alone in reminding of just how long this 're-taking' has actually already taken: "The IS attack on Sinjar in August 2014 was one of the reasons the US began air strikes against IS positions in Iraq, amid a warning of genocide."
That failed August 2014 operation left Yazidis still trapped on the mountain though the US government spin could have misled you.
Over a year later and Sinjar's still held by the Islamic State.
Who thinks Barack's 'plan' is working at this point?
Former prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki has waded into the discussion and called out the US. He says there's no way the Islamic State could survive these bombings and fears some nations (he means the US in that "some") want to see the Islamic State succeed.
Barack looks like an idiot because he's set himself up to be.
In June 2014, he was full of talk about how this would require a political solution -- Iraq's crises -- and how this or that (military actions) would not fix the problems.
And the bombings weren't intended to.
Until Barack lost any interest in a political solution.
That was somewhere around the time the US State Dept began acting as an auxiliary to the US Defense Dept and you had Brett McGurk acting like Military Wanna Be McJerk and focusing on everything but the political issues at stake in Iraq (which can mainly be boiled down to a lack of inclusion).
Barack's 'plan' is a failure and he's got no one to blame but himself.
He needs to realize that as Nouri continues to serve him up to the press.
The following community sites -- plus Susan's On the Edge -- updated:
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