by xbradtc | July 2, 2014 · 11:29 am
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Escalations in Iraq
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Abruptly withdrawing all US forces from Iraq was one of the Obama administration’s proudest achievements. Using the supposed issue of a Status of Forces Agreement as a smoke screen to cover the abandonment of the Iraqi government, the US lest a mostly stable, but very nascent Iraq to its own devices. In the years since, the situation has deteriorated (as many outside the administration predicted). And of course, today the Islamic terror group ISIS has seized much of the northern and western regions of Iraq.
Seeing few options, the Maliki regime has turned to Iran for help.
On July 1, all seven of the operational Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (the informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) completed their deployment to Imam Ali Airbase in Baghdad.
The planes will join ex-Russian Air Force Su-25s already delivered to Iraq in the air war against ISIS.
But the US is also being drawn back to Iraq. While ISIS is likely to see far more effective resistance to its attacks on the Baghdad metroplex than in the regions it has already seized, even the Obama administration can grasp that the fall of the Iraqi government to ISIS would be a catastrophe. So the administration finally announced it was sending 275 Special Forces as advisors to the Iraqi Army. That mission has quietly but steadily grown in the past few days.
The United States has sent Apache attack helicopters to Iraq as part of the buildup in U.S. military personnel, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Officials would not say how many of the armed helicopters have been sent to the country, stating only that they will be based in Baghdad and could assist with evacuations of American personnel.
The Pentagon also sent over additional surveillance drones.
President Obama on Monday sent 200 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to protect diplomatic facilities and personnel amid growing fears that Sunni militants in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could overrun the country. The order brought the total number of U.S. ground forces in Iraq to 750.
As a legal matter, I believe the President has the authority to deploy forces to Iraq under the 2002 AUMF, which Congress hasn’t seen fit to rescind. But the President would be well advised to at least consult with congressional leadership in an attempt to build a consensus, and establish both support for the mission, and parameters which will hopefully permit it to be effective, while minimizing mission creep.
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