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US Secretly Unleashed Drones Over Iraq But Admits "Not Like It Did Any Good"
Because drones have done so much for the "we love American exceptionalism" belief across the middle east, the US decided that since last year, secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft over Iraq - to collect intelligence of insurgents - would be good idea. The intelligence (and use the term loosely) was share with Iraqi forces but as WSJ reports, one secnior US official admitted "It's not like it did any good," as the rapid territorial gains by the Islamist forces loyal to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, caught the U.S. by surprise.
As The Wall Street Journal reports,
The program was limited in size and proved little use to U.S. and Iraqi officials when Islamist fighters moved swiftly this week to seize two major Iraqi cities, the officials said.
Before the Islamist offensive, the program was expanded based on growing U.S. and Iraqi concerns about the expanded military activities of al Qaeda-linked fighters.
Officials wouldn't say what types of drones were being used but said the flights were conducted only for surveillance purposes.
Following this total clusterfuck, administration and military officials say they are drawing up short- and long-term options to combat the Islamist threat in Iraq.
The shortlist ranges from possible U.S. airstrikes, intelligence sharing and accelerated delivery of military equipment already in the pipeline.
Long-term options include expanded training of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, officials said.
We are sure this will all end well..
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The Drones
So drones are ineffective when the whole fucking country hates you?
Ruh Roh
This is such BS
So between the drones and the NSA, it's all "aces, mate!"
They do love their drones looking down and beaming images back to DC/Langley, did the same thing in Benghazi.
Yep, all's well, nothing to see here!!!
It was so comforting for the Transportation Secretary to see the live drone images of that 23 mile long line of sand colored, machine gun mounted Toyota pickups all driving so safely with their lights on, separated by reasonable pickup lengths, at moderate speed...
The Arab Army of Armageddon has been nominated for the "Better Safe than Sorry Obama Good Driving Award.".
The Government would have had more information about these assholes if they all had Facebook accounts, FFS
You know what they say. Click it or Tikrit.
" Long-term options include expanded training of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, officials said"
So... tell me again... exactly how did that work out for them the last time? Right.
Not a training issue.
These kids merely didn't wish to risk their lives to protect a corrupt government or the foreign multinational oil companies... and until that changes nothing is going to change...
< Everything is a surprise to Obama.
< Everything is a miracle to an idiot.
We lost Vietnam. We lost Iraq.
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2014/06/why-america-lost-vietnam-war-full....
No no.... don't despair.... our oil companies are still there... plus it's never over until we win.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/ap/vietnam
And we always WIN.
This Map Shows How Violence In Iraq Could Threaten The Oil Supply
Thi
As long as they demand the USD we're winning, regardless of who 'owns' the oil, if we own the currency it gets paid for with, we own the oil.
as the rapid territorial gains by the Islamist forces loyal to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, caught the U.S. by surprise.
lulz, yeah, right, they had no idea! Pet Sunni mini-caliphate to keep Iran occupied, anyone?
The Kurds don't need it and the Iraqi's won't make use of it.
lol...and brand new pick-em-ups too!
Now just think, if they would have run a few those along the US-Mexican border they might have stopped four year old children from scaling barbed wire fences and saved them from the dysentery of Taco Bell-style American food in the military internment camps.
But I guess that IS part of the plan, nice guys.
US Military Intelligence Ehhh??
Great news for ISIS:
The shortlist ranges from possible U.S. airstrikes, intelligence sharing and accelerated delivery of military equipment already in the pipeline.
Reaction from ISIS:
The idiots are delivering more weapons soon, we just gotta hang out in the caves for a few days....Barak Ahkbahr!!!!!
How the fuck is US Military Intelligence considered the best in the world???
It isn't. Both The Germans and Russians consider it a joke.
"What difference does it make?!"
oblig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwLrszpNrH4
Training...that worked in Iraq
Iraq III The drone wars. Is Obama Darth Vader? I would say no because he is a ball less turd. just askin...
Next to Obama, Vader's as pale as a cracker.
now that's just not true. in africa when they are told u.s. people consider obama black they laugh.
Please don't insult Darth.
I can just hear Darth now; "Bend Over"
just in time to mesh with the new 24 tv series - how bizarre; hopefully the enemy doesnt hijack the drones in real life
they already got helicopters.
too bad for the zionists that reality doesn't work as well for them as do their hollywood versions of it.
Drones - designed and built by experts so that morons can use them.
DavidC
Umm, designed and built by the lowest bidder...
The opposite of a free market, which is why it will never work properly.
Well of course we have and will use drones in Iraq. How else is Al Quaeda going to get the stuff they order from Amazon? We can't allow anything to hamper the MoMo's parabolic ascent. Drones it is. Hopefully the Al-Quaeda guys submit favorable reviews of their transactions, and are willing to respond promptly to questions from prospective buyers. "Why, yes, I did purchase the Sarin gas from seller 'NSA.' The instructions were difficult to follow and a bit sketchy, and the shipping through Turkey was needlessly time-consuming, but the results spoke for themselves. Yes, I would recommend this purchase, and I would buy it agin."
swmnguy FTW!!
Plan C -- train and arm camels. They can store extra ammo in their humps, and they can walk long distances in the desert to designated targets. Their spit could be laced with all manner of toxic nerve agents for the unsuspecting enemy. Anything to avoid the political suicide of sending American GIs back in to reAccomplish the Mission.
Well, come on, now. After all, HObie-in-Chains did say that everything including military action was on the table, then excluded some shit, so we know that....
Er... maybe that's a pretty good idea, after all....
Y'all know that if we did decide to do something we'd first better figure "whose" side "whose" is on ....
OK, everybody in favor of Omar the Tent maker raise your hands. Not that hand, the one you eat with, FFS..
I mean...
They actually do have a secret plan. Turns out that ISIS has one weakness -- a reactor shaft. With a perfectly placed shot, the whole insurgency blows up. Chewie is gassin' up the Falcon as we speak.
Psst.
Oil this second is $107.59.
Abundance!
Good thing the American consumer has extra spending cash laying around for the new higher normal prices at the pump.
Just means a higher student loan next semester.
Wonder if they got any Stingers along with those Blackhawks as they abosrbed all our equipement...
Hope UPS is on the lookout for those
Nah... no Stingers. But fully racked with a buncha Hellfires, no doubt.
What I'd like to know is: who is flying them? You can't just strap yourself in and go for a joyride in one of these things. They require training, and lots of it.
Mahmood and Abdul disagree, Allah will guide them and help flying these bitches. Expect some crazy LiveLeak video's.
Send in the drones...there ought to be drones....don't bother, they're here
Now I got Send in the Clowns on the brain, thanks a bunch ;-)
Must purge!...lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY3LAFJbKyY
Waaaay too appropriate...
Waaaay too appropriate...
"The intelligence was share" Way to call someone unintelligent and totally fuck it up in the same sentence. This (zerohedge) is becoming a fkn rag!
"...but as WSJ reports, one secnior US official admitted "It's not like it did any good," as the rapid territorial gains by the Islamist forces loyal to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, caught the U.S. by surprise. ..."
The US uses these engagements to test new technologies in live situations.
The US has done this many times in the past.
Desert Storm (early 1990s) was a beta for many new missile technologies.
So it does do good, but not the kind of good you would expect - testing technology on live targets.
Surveillance is like walking the bases before a baseball game. It doesn't stop the game, it just vets details before the game is played.
When you leave a power vacuum and have extremists stalking the lands all over the area... what do you expect.
When you vote for a guy named Barry Hussein bin Obamarama (who swears he's from Hawaii) what do you expect?
All people who've had brain implants by the Rectilians (they leave nasty scars behind the right ear) say they're from Hawaii. It's programmed right into their new chips.
See see see, I todja so
not what you got from a guy named george walker bush.
but get it you did.
the problem is not what they disagree on but what they agree on.
Is it worth defending Iraq?
Do we stand up for Bush's gaffe?
Did Uday and Qusay die for nothing?
Did Colon Powell get it right?
Was Blackwater really wearing a white hat?
Did we spill American oil for nothing? Blood is cheaper
Well, the Kurds are kinda happy with the outcome (so far).
They took Kirkuk, now, when ISIS turns their "affections" on them its gonna get nasty.
they may not. the kurds got better morale than the iraqi central government.
imo three pieces of the pie with the real fighting in the central and the south over rumaila and west qurna oil fields.
ISIS just uses Google maps, good enough.
Do drone operators have to go through boot camp? Or do they just have to be really good at World of Warcraft?
This will answer your all questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF1mx-Dcek8
I hear there's this guy named Osama who is willing to work for the U.S. for large sums of money and arms to fight a common enemy. What could go wrong with that plan?
Hard to rank this in terms of all the monumental US foreign
policy fuckups.
Somewhere between the Bay of Pigs, and Nixon openning up China.
the latter was a success. almost always better to trade than to war.
the u.s. had the world by the balls after ww2. it lasted for a few decades but it was never going to last indefinitely.
The phrase "CalvinBall-esque" springs to mind here...
Hard to rank this in terms of all the monumental US foreign policy fuckups.
Somewhere between the Bay of Pigs, and Nixon openning up China.
Why do I keep hearing this? ZATO's biggest impediment in the region is Shiite Iran. ISIS will set up a Sunni mini-caliphate-for-hire right on its borders, have oil revenue, modern weapons, and be a source of sectarian violence across the whole Arab world while being a thorn in the Persian's side. It's a zioinst's wet dream... Oded Yinons', to be precise.
Does ANYBODY believe the US/UK/NATO/Turkey/Russia/Kurds and Israel did not know what was going on east of Mosul for the last year?
Has ANYBODY ever heard of 1000 Tunisian/Chechen/Egyptian/Syrian/Yemeni "jihadists" driving out of the desert in new Ford F-350 technicals like Lawrence of Arabia to the Battle of Aqaba - into a city defended by 2 divisions of Iraqi mechanized forces and effectively taking no casualties while they take the entire northern half of the country and driving 500,000 refugees in less than 48 hours? AND on to other fronts? It took Desert Sword 100 hours and that wasn't even to the outskirts of Baghdad and that was after six months of air dominance campaign.
Maybe if I had some skin in the game I would care, but this complete abortion of media control and full-spec dominance warfare overwhelms the senses.
What did America fight for all these years? Only to have Obama hand it over to another set of plans within plans.
Just send in the nerve gas and be done with it already.
What did America fight for all these years?
answer -for someone elze OIL
They give a fack about people.
don't forget the likud party.
the guys that planned the iraq war didn't work in the oil industry.
they worked for ariel sharon and the Project for the New American Century, broadly defined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
bankonchina
Dude, post of the day. I absolutely, positively believe NOTHING I get from the "media." Nothing. The fucking sheer plasticity of the whole fucking simulation, from day one (or "ground zero" as they cal 9/11) all the way to this, the lies reflecting back against the gaslighted counter-lies are absolutely stunning. It's like living in a room full of mirrors.
My hope is (and this is slim), is that maybe, maybe some of the fucking morons who comprise the US military will look at this this and start thinking about laying down their arms and walking off the goddamned job.
Pfft, what am I thinking, like they will suddenly start reading Rothbard and thinking for themselves.
Indeed, what proportion of career military men suddenly got a conscience during Viet Nam? Soldiers are soldiers the world over and throughout history. They are - generally speaking - physically courageous moral automatons. If they weren't, they wouldn't have voluntarily signed up in the first place.
Obviously, there are exceptions... WWII, for instance, when people signed up because their country was genuinely under attack. But they weren't soldiers - they were citizens who took up arms temporarily to get the job of genuine defence done.
DC US drones only have eyes for schools and wedding parties.
pay your taxes folks. then we can spend 2 trillion on a war 3 trillion on a police state, kill a few million of "ours" and "theirs" to make sure you can save a nickel on gas for your staycation to wally world.
Brought to you by the best NGOs tax exempt deductions can buy.
i hope the terrorists don't hurt MY OIL
Don't worry, there's a reason their flag is black.
I wonder how badly they are going to miss A-10 warthogs if we end up in Iraq war III (or WWIII)? Supposedly the AF is going to mothball them because they're ugly and they work, neither of which is popular in the new AF. They better buy extra drones and pimple-faced operators to bomb weddings advancing troops.
The A-10 is straight up bad-ass.
It was one of the few modern aircraft where they just let the engineers go wild and design something based on actually military needs as opposed to all the other political bullshit that usually goes into aircraft design (see the F35). This was because the airforce didn't want it, they were told they had to have a close air support craft, so everyone left them alone. So it is not surprise it actually works and is affordable, but apparently neither is needed in today's world.
Correct. Don't forget that the pilot sits inside of what basically amounts to a titanium bathtub. Armored as hell while he rains down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon you.
its a real bummer about the spent uranium shells though. great for ripping through tanks, but also a serious environmental and health problem when it's over.
not like that shit would matter if we were in a war in which they were really needed. im sure that would be a pretty serious conflict.
Most of the fairchild engineers would say that the typical IRS agent is a badass as long as lois learner is in tow missile posture.
the Devil's Cross...
This is so predictable, it was in fact predicted from the very outset. So I don't believe the US government didn't see this coming. Why, then, would we follow a policy that could lead only to this situation? Well, why does anyone follow a course of action that leads to an obvious conclusion? Because that's what they want, that's why. So the strategy is, in fact, a success. It actually took a fair amount of work to get the various parties in Iraq to go for each other's throats. But they're getting the hang of it. Now all that oil is under contention, so we can keep the price up and rising. As long as they continue to take US Dollars in payment, so much the better. Now they can self-fund the jihad in Syria. The Sunnis will remain at the throats of the Shi'a, surrounding Russia and China with fire and keeping bloody chaos on top of the oil and the trans-shipment routes.
The only downside is Obama has to take still more shit from the public for doing the job and following the orders he was selected in early 2008 to perform. But that's the deal he took. I have no sympathy. I do chuckle remembering The Onion's 2008 election headline, "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job." But he knew what he signed up for.
i don't think higher oil prices are in the best interests of the anglo american banking cartel; they will bankrupt their nations and reduce their protections.
i also don't think obama has any idea what the next two years will be like.
but i could be wrong.
Of course the US Government saw this coming! Why else do you think they have been recording all our phone calls and emails and text messages!!?
Duuuuhhhhh!
/sarc
uh, live aerial reconaissance doesn't help at all? how can that be possible?
its quite possibly one of the dumbest things i've ever heard attributed to a military commander.
I'm waiting for an air force drone officer to be arrested in Europe by the Hague for war crimes against humanity. Imagine if small countries filed a claim saying the killing of innocent citizens without trial is a war crime. Snowden could post a list of all the drone pilots; names, addresses, family members in the US.
Hey, Russia could pop some rogue oligarch in downtown London with their version of a Hellfire. Howja like that you Limeys?
Barack got your back?
Thank goodness, though, that we have the NSA recording our phone calls and reading our emails and text messages!
/sarc
The drones fly slower than camels on the move?