Obama is finally acting after reports of the desperate humanitarian disaster looming in Iraq overtook the Israel/Hamas conflict as a top news story. Ignoring the situation is no longer feasible.
The United States has airdropped meals and water in Iraq, sending aid to minority groups trapped as brutal Islamist fighters advance.
“The mission was conducted by a number of U.S. military aircraft under the direction of U.S. Central Command,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “The aircraft that dropped the humanitarian supplies have now safely exited the immediate airspace over the drop area.”
And U.S. President Barack Obama — scheduled to give a statement on Iraq at 9:30 p.m. ET Thursday — is weighing a key question: Should airstrikes be next?
Obama also said Thursday he will authorize targeted airstrikes in Iraq to protect American personnel.
“We do whatever is necessary to protect our people. We support our allies when they’re in danger,” Obama said.
Obama also said he’d authorized targeted airstrikes “if necessary” to help forces in Iraq fighting to protect civilians trapped in the mountains as brutal Islamist fighters advance.
“When we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” Obama said.
The United States dropped laser-guided bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said — the beginning of airstrikes threatened a day earlier by President Barack Obama.
The bombs, 500 pounds each, were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said.
The fighter jets took off from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, in the Persian Gulf. The mission marked a return to U.S. military engagement in Iraq, three years after Obama removed U.S. forces.
Lt Col Ralph Peters was on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer, Monday to talk about the gains being made by the brutal Islamist terrorists ISIS throughout Iraq. Peters criticized the Obama administration for refusing to arm the Kurds – opting instead to back the broken and paralyzed Iraqi government.
“While the whole world – led by the UN is ganging up on Israel – which is trying desperately to prevent civilian deaths, the Islamic State – this emerging caliphate – is slaughtering not just soldiers, captive Kurds… they’re slaughtering innocent people,” Peters exclaimed. “And in those villages – especially in Sinjar, one of the towns up there in the Northwest – the populous is largely Yazidis.”
“It’s a small sect … goes back to Zoroastrian fire worshipers – they’re not Christians, they’re not Muslims, and these Islamic State fanatics butcher them – they’re going to kill them – and there’s tens of thousands – perhaps 200,000 total up there. There’s a looming genocide,” Peters warned, as Hemmer began to cut him off. ” A looming genocide and nobody’s paying attention.”
No, nobody’s paying attention. Why is that? Why is the ObaMedia focusing on demonizing Israel as they win their war against Hamas – while mostly ignoring the genocide of Christians and other minorities in Muslim lands?
To date, neither President Obama nor Secretary Kerry has mentioned the epic humanitarian and human-rights catastrophe underway in this large agricultural province that for over a millennium has been home to Christians, Yazidis, and various ethnic Sunnis and Shiites. The U.S. has provided humanitarian aid in the wake of each attack, but the Islamic State’s siege of Nineveh requires immediate additional measures to protect Iraq’s uniquely vulnerable minorities.
This is a tactic employed by Obama — when he chooses not to do anything about a problem, he completely hushes up about the problem’s existence, hoping that the press will take its cues from him and not mention the problem at all.
Thus keeping the American public in the dark about it.
This tactic has succeeded every single time. If Obama doesn’t want to score political points on an issue, the press follows his lead and embargoes the issue entirely.
Some in the MSM are dutifully reporting on the Yazidi disaster. They’re just not flooding the zone like they do with stories they know the master wants out there.
“The Islamic State’s takeover of Sinjar is the first major setback for Kurdish forces protecting the country’s north,” the Washington Postdutifully reports. The United Nations estimates about 200,000 people have fled their homes. “Some 147,000 have arrived in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, flooding refugee camps.”
Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst.
Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children.
Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.
“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” said Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”
Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
Gateway Punditrecaps the past several weeks of gut-wrenching carnage in Iraq. For the Iraqi people Armageddon is right here and now.
ISIS is starving the Christians, the Shiites, the Turks, the Yazidis from water in northern Iraq. It is Genocide.
Yazidi Member of Iraqi Parliament Fiyan Dakheel (of the Kurdistan Alliance) collapsed in tears after calling upon her fellow countrymen to rescue the Yazidis from Genocide.
“Mr. Speaker we are being butchered under the banner of There is no God but Allah. Until now 500 men and boys have been butchered… Please, Mr. Speaker allow me to finish. My family is being butchered… I am speaking here in the name of humanity. Please Save Us! Please Save Us!”
The United States military has the ability to help those people. They could conduct an airlift to save the thousands who are stranded on the mountain. They could arm the Kurds to fight ISIS. They could bomb the terrorists from the air as they move from town to town. The United States is doing nothing – Obama is squandering all of the US military’s hard fought gains and allowing the Middle East to descend into violent chaos. Evil is winning because good men are standing down. Good men are standing down because we have an evil man in the White House.
Kerry, of course is committed to forcing some kind peace deal between Israel and Hamas to Hamas’ benefit – so he can win a Nobel Peace Prize. He’ll also be focusing like a laser beam on “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” – as big a threat as terrorism, poverty, and WMDs– that threat being of course – Global Warming.
I wonder how concerned those people on that mountaintop are about global warming.
No hard numbers, yet – but at least “some of the tens of thousands” of stranded Yazidis have been rescued, the U.N. said Thursday.
“People over the last 24 hours have been extracted and the U.N. is mobilizing resources to ensure that these people are assisted on arrival,” U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman David Swanson said Thursday. “This is a tragedy of immense proportions, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.” Many of the displaced people urgently need water, food, shelter and medicine, Swanson added. Another U.N. official said many of the children on the mountain were suffering from dehydration and at least 40 had died.
More help may be on the way for the tens of thousands of ethnic minorities struggling to survive on Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq. Many of the children on the mountain are suffering from dehydration and at least 40 have died according to UN officials.
White House Dossier reports that the president is considering airstrikes or food and supply airdrops to aid the mostly Yazidi minorities who are stranded on a mountaintop.
The president, in meetings with his national security team at the White House on Thursday morning, has been weighing a series of options ranging from dropping humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to military strikes on the fighters from ISIS now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said.
Nice Deb 