...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....
group, days after members said the strikes were having effect.
"At the moment, a major raid is taking place," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFMTV, refusing to detail the targets or the number of jets involved.
He said French planes based in the United Arab Emirates and more recently in Jordan had carried out "120 to 130 missions" since the start of the coalition offensive.
These include intelligence gathering missions. Compared to the United States, La Belle France has carried out only a handful of strikes on the turbans.
The coalition of around 60 mainly Western and Arab states was formed several months after IS jihadists swept across northern Iraq, seizing swathes of territory and proclaiming a caliphate in parts of the country and neighbouring Syria.
Gay Paree has so far refused to join the United States in its air war against IS in Syria, but on Wednesday, President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
said La Belle France was ready to step up its actions against the murderous Moslems in Iraq.
The same day, a meeting in Brussels of countries in the coalition concluded that the IS group's advance was finally being stopped thanks to the strikes -- a claim reiterated Friday by Le Drian.
"But this halt does not mean that the war is over," he warned.
In an interview this week with French weekly Gay Paree Match, however, Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
differed, saying the strikes were having no impact.
Le Drian hit out at Assad's comments.
"It's vile for someone who has the deaths of 200,000 of his countrymen and women on his conscience to give lessons," he said.
| Surely no more than half of those deaths are due to Assad, the other half -- or more -- being courtesy of ISIS, Al Nusra, and the rest. |