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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Puzzle Palace sees long haul ahead for |
| 2014-10-19 |
| From the Press Agency that Cannot Be Named: Ten weeks into its war against Islamic State extremists, the Pentagon is settling in for the long haul, short on big early successes but still banking on enlisting Syrians and Iraqis to fight the ground war so that U.S. troops won't have to. The U.S. general overseeing the campaign on Friday predicted that the jihadists will be "much degraded" by airstrikes a year from now, in part because he is focusing attacks on those resources that enable IS to sustain itself and resupply its fighters. In his first public overview of the campaign he leads from the Florida headquarters of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin cautioned against expecting quick progress. He said he cannot predict how long it will take to right a wobbly Iraqi army and build a viable opposition ground force in Syria. While hammering the jihadists daily from the air, the U.S. military is talking of a years-long effort - one that will require more than aerial bombardment, will show results only gradually and may eventually call for a more aggressive use of U.S. military advisers in Iraq. That is one reason why the Pentagon is preparing to set up a more formally organized command structure, known in military parlance as a joint task force, to lead and coordinate the campaign from a forward headquarters, perhaps in Kuwait. Officials say the strikes have squeezed IS and slowed its battlefield momentum. More specifically, they claim they have destroyed an array of Islamic State military targets: command posts, sniper positions, artillery guns, armed trucks, tanks, mortar positions, buildings, mobile oil refineries and more. "The air war is really degrading their infrastructure," said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who just returned from a trip that included a briefing at the U.S. air operation center at al-Udeid air base in Qatar. "At some point in the next several months, they are not going to have tanks, they are not going have (U.S.-made mine-resistant vehicles), they are not going have the stuff that they stole from the Iraqis. They are going to have AK-47s," he said, and at that point Iraqi and U.S.-trained Syrian opposition fighters can make inroads. |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #1 FYI as per FREEREPUBLIC + TOPIX, Turkey PM Erdogan is agz any US plan to arm the Kurds in Kobane/Kobani agz the ISIS. Not that Anti-US OWG Globalist POTUS Obama was going to arm the Kurds anyway like he did NOT arm the anti-Assad Syrian Rebs + Ukraine, etc. BUT DATS BESIDE THE POINT. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-10-19 22:21 |