|
U.S. Ups Pressure on IS with first B-52 Bomber Strike
 [AnNahar] The U.S. Air Force for the first time deployed a B-52 bomber against the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... , the Pentagon said Wednesday as it ramps up a 20-month campaign to smash the jihadists. The bombing mission, in which a hulking B-52 destroyed a weapons storage facility south of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , comes the same week that Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited Baghdad and announced extra U.S. troops, cash and equipment for the anti-IS campaign in Iraq. In other signs of an increasing tempo, U.S. commandos working with Kurdish troops conducted a raid targeting a senior IS group figure and the Pentagon said it has changed how air strikes risking civilian deaths are approved. Under the new rules, authority now comes from the commanding three-star U.S. general in Baghdad, instead of going through a four-star at the U.S. Central Command's headquarters in Florida. Baghdad-based military front man Colonel Steve Warren insisted the changes do not lessen oversight standards in determining when civilian losses are an acceptable risk. "This does not translate to more civilian casualties, this translates to a more rapid execution of strikes," Warren said. The Pentagon has acknowledged 26 civilian deaths due to U.S.-led coalition strikes since the campaign began in August 2014 in Iraq, and credits the use of guided missiles in keeping the number relatively low -- though independent observers say the figure is far higher. Monday's strike by a B-52 Stratofortress blew up an IS weapons storage facility in the town of Qayyarah, about 35 miles (60 kilometers) south of Mosul. The enormous planes, originally designed in the 1950s, became a symbol of U.S. might during the Cold War and the aircraft was used to conduct carpet bombing in Vietnam. Warren said the B-52s are only being armed with guided bombs. "There are memories in the collective unconscious of B-52s, decades ago, doing... arguably indiscriminate bombing," Warren said. "Those days are long gone. The B-52 is a precision-strike weapons platform and it will conduct the same type of precision strikes that we have seen for the last 20 months." Several B-52s arrived in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... earlier this month to replace a contingent of newer B-1 bombers that had been working in Iraq and Syria for about a year. Warren also announced that U.S. commandos in northern Iraq had targeted Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, "one of ISIS's military emirs and an ISIS war council member." The Kurdish regional security council said Jabouri was killed in the raid, conducted jointly with Kurdish fighters. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-04-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=453449 |