The Common Ills: Hejira

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Hejira

US tax dollars fund the never-ending Iraq War.

Though many Americans have tuned out since 2009, they need to be paying attention.

Muhanad Seloom ‏@M_Seloom 7 hours ago

Graphic Shia Militias cut off a Sunni man's ear to show how "tough" they are with suspects of terrorism. #Iraq

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60 retweets 18 likes

And it is graphic.

And guess what?

You don't have the right to look away.

‏@The_NewArab

#Iraqi militiamen cut off captive's ear http://goo.gl/Di3xUO

2 retweets 3 likes

When Iraqis don't have the right to safety in their country because thugs were put in charge by the US government and thugs continued to be backed by the US government, you don't have the luxury of looking away.

Above?

That's outrageous.

There's no legal justification for it.

Not even in the joke that is the Iraqi legal system.

What happened should result in immediate prosecution.

Those are War Crimes.

The prime minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi, should be denouncing the crimes.

Any refusal to do so should result in the US Congress exploring whether or not they should continue their support of Haider's government.

The US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in Iraq

Coalition forces used rocket artillery, fighter, bomber, and remotely piloted aircraft to conduct 15 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Albu Hayat, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit, wounded an ISIL fighter, and destroyed an ISIL weapons cache and an ISIL building.

-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Kisik, two strikes destroyed five ISIL assembly areas and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck an ISIL headquarters building and destroyed an ISIL excavator.

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL weapons caches, and two ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units, wounded three ISIL fighters, denied ISIL access to terrain, and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL tactical vehicle, an ISIL training facility, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL recoilless rifle.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike struck an ISIL-used bridge.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Haider al-Abadi's government is not paying for those strikes. Yet again, the US taxpayer is on the hook. All the more reason that a failure on the part of Haider al-Abadi to denounce the war crimes taking place should result in the US Congress pulling funding for these actions.

XINHUA reports:

Iraqi security forces on Sunday continued fighting the Islamic State (IS) and cleared new areas in the city of Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar.
Fierce clashes erupted in the morning as Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters launched an operation to flush out IS militants from Soufiyah district in the eastern part of Ramadi, some 110 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing at least 22 militants, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber attacked the security forces near the government complex in the center of Ramadi, killing nine security members and wounding 12 others, the source said.

Wait.

For two weeks now we've been told that Ramadi was liberated.

It's still not liberated?

Still?

How inept are Haider's forces?

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4497 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).

The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated: