Strikes in Iraq
Rocket artillery and attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 22 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:
-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit.
-- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun.
-- Near Hit, two strikes struck an
ISIL tactical unit, destroying a bridge ISIL had used, an ISIL vehicle
bomb factory, 22 ISIL boats and an ISIL beddown location and denying
ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck
an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL
mortar system, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Mosul, six strikes struck
six separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas,
an ISIL machine gun and two ISIL vehicles.
-- Near Qayyarah, six strikes
struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL weapons storage facility and
destroyed four ISIL mortar firing positions, an ISIL supply cache, an
ISIL vehicle bomb production facility and 13 ISIL staging areas.
-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle.
-- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed four ISIL assembly areas and an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Tal Afar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL mortar system.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 one 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.
The bombings continue and the same stories continue.
Corruption in Iraq?
Erika Solomon (FINANCIAL TIMES) points out:
Corruption is always a worry in Iraq, a country ranked 161/168 in Transparency International’s global index. According to Adnan al-Janabi, who recently sat on parliament’s finance committee, around $113bn went missing between 2006-14. “Really this is the disease – not lack of revenues,” he said. “Poverty is increasing despite the fact we have had almost $1tn in income since 2003.”
Since Isis blitzed across Iraq in 2014, Mr Janabi estimates unemployment has risen to 50 per cent, and perhaps 80 per cent in areas occupied by the militants.
And let's not just note the corruption in Iraq, let's bring it back to the United States.
The People For Bernie Sanders 2016 shared their video.
"How did we have so much money to go to war in Iraq but somehow we don't have enough to rebuild the pipes in Flint? " — Bernie Sanders
-2:33
The #FlintWaterCrisis is another tragic example of how the system and establishment politics have failed the American people.
Bernie Sanders is running for President because he wants to change this.
Bernie Sanders is running for President because he wants to change this.
The US infrastructure is crumbling.
It's not being addressed.
The homeless? They're not being addressed.
But there's still money to keep up the war on Iraq, to prop up the US controlled government in Iraq -- don't call it the "government of Iraq" because it doesn't represent the Iraqi people.
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] 4498 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Diana Ross releases a masterpiece (belatedly)" went up earlier and the following community sites updated:
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
