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”,….

It’s about friggin’ time !   President Obama says the action is to prevent “genocide” and provide relief to thousands of Iraqi religious minorities who have fled to the Northern mountains of Iraq.  [Video ADDED 9:50pm EST More updates will follow soon]

(more…)

The New York Times is reporting -based on ground sources in the region- that the U.S. is bombing ISIS positions in Northern Iraq.

However, I share with an abundance of caution -and I can most certainly be wrong-  but my hunch is the ground reports, and as a consequence the New York Times, are crediting the wrong air force.
Additionally, the White House is strongly refuting the claims by the NYT.  Here’s the report from the Times:

DOHUK, Iraq — American military forces bombed at least two targets in northern Iraq on Thursday night to rout Islamist insurgents who have trapped tens of thousands of religious minorities in Kurdish areas, Kurdish officials said.

Word of the bombings, reported on Kurdish television from the city of Erbil, came as President Obama was preparing to make a statement in Washington.

Kurdish officials said the bombings targeted fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria who had seized two towns, Gwer and Mahmour. Residents who had fled those areas by car were heard honking their horns in approval.

(more…)

The current situation in Northern Iraq gives us an opportunity to once again check the litmus test of Obama’s R2P intervention.

March 2011 approximately 100,000 al-Qaeda radical Islamists were fighting in Benghazi Libya – President Gaddaffi’s military was en route to eliminate them – when Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and President Obama announced the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) Doctrine:

 …“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -more profoundly- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. 

Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.  The United States of America is different.  And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”… 

~President Obama

The R2P goal was to “save the Libyan rebels”.   The “rebels” -as you are aware- were al-Qaeda affiliates, Ansar al-Sharia, or essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood. (more…)