The Army has identified the command elements that will be heading to Iraq to lead the fight against remnants of the Islamic State and to Afghanistan as peace talks with the Taliban continue.
The 1st Armored Division Headquarters stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas,
will be tapped to relieve 4th Infantry Division Headquarters as part of
a regular rotation of forces in support of Operation Freedom’s
Sentinel, the Army announced Friday.
On those going to Iraq, KWTX notes, "Fort Hood’s III Corps Headquarters is headed back to Iraq this fall for a third time as part of a regular force rotation, replacing XVIII Airborne Corps Headquarters, as the headquarters of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, the Department of the Army announced Friday." But Texas isn't th eonly state from which they're deploying to Iraq. Alaska's "Fort Wainwright Soldiers were in the Yukon Training Area this week completing their last certification before their upcoming deployment to Iraq."
Again, the Iraq War is not ending. US House Rep Duncan Hunter is in the news over his time in Iraq.
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- Rep. Duncan Hunter said that his unit in Iraq "killed probably hundreds of civilians" https://cnn.it/2HTnUdX
Congressman Duncan Hunter says he probably “killed hundreds of civilians” while a soldier in Iraq; therefore the other war criminals Trump is considering pardoning should be given a break. Makes sense when you just accept how morally bankrupt all this is:
This comes as a civilian body count is in the news. BBC NEWS reports:
The US-led coalition against the
Islamic State (IS) group says it has unintentionally killed more than
1,300 civilians in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
In a statement, the coalition said it had carried out 34,502 strikes since its air campaign against IS began there nearly five years ago.A UK-based monitoring group says the true toll is much higher, estimating up to nearly 13,000 civilian fatalities.
Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) observes, "It has been a recurring reality that US figures on civilian deaths have been dramatically less than the real figures, mostly because major incidents where the US killed dozens or scores of civilians ended up either ignored, or listed at far lower tolls than they actually were." Meanwhile Amnesty International issued the following Friday:
Responding to today’s announcement by the US-led Coalition that at least 1,302 civilians have been unintentionally killed by Coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq between August 2014 and the end of April 2019, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser Donatella Rovera said:
“While all admissions of responsibility by the US-led Coalition for civilian casualties are welcome, the Coalition remains deeply in denial about the devastating scale of the civilian casualties caused by their operations in both Iraq and Syria.
“A comprehensive investigation by Amnesty International in partnership with Airwars, launched last month, revealed that more than 1,600 civilians were killed in the Raqqa offensive alone in 2017 – meaning the acknowledged deaths are just a fraction of the total numbers killed.
“Today’s acknowledgement of further civilian deaths underscores the urgent need for thorough, independent investigations that can uncover the true scale of civilian casualties caused by Coalition strikes, examine whether each attack complied with international humanitarian law and provide full reparation to victims.
“Even in cases where the Coalition has admitted responsibility this has only happened after civilian deaths were investigated and brought to its attention by organizations such as Amnesty International and Airwars. The Coalition has so far failed to carry out investigations on the ground or provide reasons for the civilian casualties. Without a clear examination of what went wrong in each case lessons can never be learned.”
Amnesty International has carried out in-depth field investigations, interviews with survivors and witnesses in both Raqqa and Mosul, documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed in Coalition strikes. For more information on this work see:
Rhetoric versus Reality: How the ‘most precise air campaign in history’ left Raqqa the most destroyed city in modern times
‘War of annihilation’: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqa – Syria,
At Any Cost: The Civilian Catastrophe in West Mosul, Iraq
Iraq: Civilians killed by airstrikes in their homes after they were told not to flee Mosul
The violence continues in Iraq. ALSUMARIA reports that an attorney, who was kidnapped in Dhi Qar, five days ago turned up today. His corpse was dumped in a waste container and he had been shot in the head. He'd been handcuffed before he was killed and was still wearing the handcuffs. The Iraqi Bar Association identified him as Akram al-Saidi. In addition, XINHUA notes, "Three civilians were killed by unidentified gunmen in a village near the town of Abu Saida, some 90 km northeast of Baghdad, Ghalib al-Attiyah, spokesman for Diyala's provincial police, told Xinhua."
Meanwhile, nothing ever changes. Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert is the UN Secretary General's specail envoy to Iraq. She has insisted that the Green Zone will be phased out. The Green Zone is the area the US secured in Iraq. It used to be referred to as "the heavily fortified Green Zone." At one point, the US government tried to rebrand it "the International Zone" but that never took. To this day, it remains the Green Zone. In 2006, the US government had a panic. Nouri al-Maliki had just become prime minister and there was an attempt to storm the Green Zone. The only Iraqis allowed in are government officials or government workers. The Iraqi politicians hide away in the Green Zone and then so many of them leave Iraq for the rest of the year. The US Embassy in Baghdad is in the Green Zone. The area is carved out for all those who need to be protected, in fact, and, of course, the ones needing protecting never seem to include the Iraqi people.
The Green Zone continues. Bassem Mrou (AP) notes the latest claim that the Green Zone will be opened to the people and notes how Hayder al-Abadi promised the same thing when he was prime minister in 2015.
Staying with the topic of Hayder al-Abadi, ALL IRAQ NEWS reports that Hayder has now announced his resignation from the political party Dawa. He says that a critical reassessment of Dawa is needed. Ali Hussein (ALMADA) covers the resignation as well and explains the resignation is only from leadership positions. This comes amidst a power struggle in Dawa. Mohammed Sabah (ALMADA) reports that there are two major wings -- one siding with Hayder and the other with former prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki. Sabah notes that there have been efforts for two years now to heal the rift between the two factions but that the healing has yet to take place.
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