WASHINGTON — The U.S. is weighing a military mission in Iraq to rescue thousands of Yazidi refugees, a move that risks putting American forces in direct confrontation with Sunni fighters for the Islamic State.

The proposal is still under development and hasn’t been approved by President Barack Obama. U.S. officials said the rescue mission is one of many options the U.S. military is weighing after dropping food and water to dying refugees over the past six days.

“People are looking at ways to do something more than just drop water and supplies,” one senior U.S. official said. “You can only do that for so long.” (more…)

Rut Roh, what are the progs gonna do now ?   The libs were in a generally swoony state with the “progressive” Pope Francis.   However, now he’s calling up round #5 of the modern crusades – oh my.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – You know a situation is bad when a pope calls for an armed response. Pope Francis, widely appreciated as a practical and realistic man, is not just calling for a cease-fire or negotiations. Instead, he is inviting an armed response to the terrorism of the Islamic State.
Such a call is virtually unprecedented for a pontiff in modern times, but our age is an extraordinary one and the Islamic State has no interest in a bargaining table. Instead, the Islamic State is bent on genocide and barbarism, ruthlessly exterminating anyone who opposes them.
On Sunday, Pope Francis said he held “dismay and disbelief” over what is happening in Iraq. He called the Islamic State fighters terrorists and said there was a need for “a professional, well-equipped army.” “The situation is going from bad to worse,” he warned.
Meanwhile, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad said, “There is a need of international support and a professional, well-equipped army. The situation is going from bad to worse.” (more…)

Considering Recep Erdogan is President Obama’s primary best friend at any of the G-20 events, the latest developments have, well, a particular familiarity to them.  Read on…

TURKEY – Transfixed by the chaos engulfing swathes of the Middle East, it is no surprise that the West has not given Turkey’s first direct presidential election the attention it merits – and would have received in more peaceable times. This is a pity because the tectonic plates are shifting fast in the country, which is a crucial link between East and West, and the changes may be both permanent and troubling.

Go figure.   Turkey claims they refuse to support U.S. attacks against ISIL because some of their people are “hostages” to ISIL.  

Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that Turkey coordinated the 2012 arms shipments for ISIL, and provided the training base for the Jihadist goals in Syria.  Nah, couldn’t be.  

TURKEY – Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz has ruled out any support from Turkey for the US military airstrike that began on Friday targeting artillery belonging to the al-Qaeda splinter group, the terrorist “Islamic State” (IS), near Arbil, in Iraq.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday in the province of Sivas, Yılmaz said: “We are not providing any kind of support [to the US military strikes on the IS in Iraq]. The US, using its own means, with its military aircraft launched from warships [in the Gulf area], is bombing IS positions that the US sees as a threat.”
Turkey is sensitive about becoming involved in the US military hitting IS targets in Iraq due to a hostage crisis. (more…)

For those who pay attention to the dysfunction of Obama’s foreign policy you’ll note there’s currently a battle between Obama and Clinton to distance and blame the other for the rise of ISIS and radical jihad.

They both agree the origin of ISIS is the Syrian civil war 2011 and 2012.   The argument between them is one of “who’s policy is to blame”?

Clinton argues she wanted to arm the rebels early in the 2011/2012 Syrian uprising.   And if the “moderates” had been supported the “radicals” would not have been able to rise.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,”   ~Hillary Clinton

President Obama argues there was no option to arm the moderates because they were not capable of fighting.

The president rejected criticism that the military advances by ISIS in Iraq could have been prevented if he had been willing months ago to provide heavy armaments to the Syrian rebels who were fighting against ISIS and the forces of President Bashar al-Assad in that country.

“It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”  ~ President Obama

The answer to who is correct is actually neither. (more…)

IRAQ – U.S. military forces conducted four more airstrikes on Islamic militants in Iraq Saturday, taking out armored carriers firing ‘indiscriminately’ on civilians, US military officials said.
U.S. Central Command said the strikes on the Islamic State (IS), the militant group formerly known as ISIS, were spread out, with three before noon Eastern Time on Saturday and one at about 3 p.m.
“At approximately 11:20 a.m. EDT, a mix of U.S. fighters and remotely piloted aircraft struck one of two ISIL armored personnel carriers firing on Yazidi civilians near Sinjar, destroying the APC,” a statement released late Saturday by US Central Command said.
The statement said that all indications suggested that all strikes were successful in destroying the armored vehicles, and that all aircraft left the area safely. (more…)

[Warning Graphic Imagery] If you ever wondered whether or not applied Liberalism can factually disconnect brain synapses these two recent examples should answer the question.

The United States has factually and officially considered Hamas a terrorist organization since 1997.  In part because the foundational charter of Hamas calls for all Jews to be killed and all Muslims are responsible to wage jihad against Israel.
But the top Democrat, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, takes to the airwaves and appears on CNN last week to proclaim:

….” […] we have to confer with the Qataris, who have told me over and over again that Hamas is a humanitarian organization.”…

One would think the former Speaker, and formerly 2nd in the succession chain to become President in an emergency, would know better.   One would think.
However, not to be outdone this week we find Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, a potential presidential candidate in 2016, discussing the situation in Iraq and the extreme terror group ISIL.  Warren states: (more…)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants with “vicious plans,” an Iraqi official said Friday, further underscoring the dire plight of Iraq’s minorities at the hands of the Islamic State group.

Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.
“We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them,” Amin told The Associated Press. “We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values.” (more…)

More brilliance from the simultaneously firing synapses of The Harf.

(Via PJ Media) Another classic from the “promise of hashtag” crowd.
During today’s State Department press briefing, deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf addressed the unfolding crisis in Iraq.

That crisis has many sources, but its chief source is ISIL. ISIL has taken hold of a large swath of northern Iraq and is killing anyone and everyone who gets in their way, or who refuses to bow to their take on Islam. Currently ISIL has about 40,000 men, women and children holed up on top of a mountain, starving them to death.
A reporter asked if there is a “confrontation to stop” ISIL’s spread.

Harf: “It’s not just a humanitarian crisis. I mean, that’s certainly a key piece of particularly what we’ve seen over the last 48 hours, certainly. But there’s a huge security challenge – if you talk about the Mosul dam, if you talk about other places.
ISIL is a threat not just because they kill innocent civilians because of their religion, but because they’re a huge security threat to the stability of certain parts of Iraq. And that’s why throughout this conflict you have seen us continue to ramp up our support and continue to look very urgently at other things we could do to help fight this threat, because at the end of the day we can help the Iraqis, but the Iraqis also have to stand up, they have to pull themselves together, with our help, because this is a threat that certainly they but no one else in the region wants to see grow any more.”

.¶…”The wheels on the bike go harf, harf. harf”,….