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Obama rebuffed Iraqi government requests for airstrikes against Islamic jihadists

Jun 12, 2014 1:04 pm By Robert Spencer

obama-finger-It is no surprise that Obama turned down these requests. After all, he is aiding the same jihadists in Syria who are now advancing against the Maliki government. He couldn’t very well turn around and attack them in Iraq. That would only bring more attention to what he is doing in Syria.

“U.S. Said to Rebuff Iraqi Request to Strike Militants,” by Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, June 11, 2014 (thanks to Nick):

WASHINGTON — As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s requests. “We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions,” she said in a statement. “The current focus of our discussions with the government of Iraq and our policy considerations is to build the capacity of the Iraqis to successfully confront” the Islamic extremists.

The Obama administration has carried out drone strikes against militants in Yemen and Pakistan, where it fears terrorists have been hatching plans to attack the United States. But despite the fact that Sunni militants have been making steady advances and may be carving out new havens from which they could carry out attacks against the West, administration spokesmen have insisted that the United States is not actively considering using warplanes or armed drones to strike them.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister, last year floated the idea that armed American-operated Predator or Reaper drones might be used to respond to the expanding militant network in Iraq. American officials dismissed that suggestion at the time, saying that the request had not come from Mr. Maliki.

By March, however, American experts who visited Baghdad were being told that Iraq’s top leaders were hoping that American air power could be used to strike the militants’ staging and training areas inside Iraq, and help Iraq’s beleaguered forces stop them from crossing into Iraq from Syria.

“Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps in the Jazira desert,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and who visited Baghdad in early March. ISIS is the acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as the militant group is known.

As the Sunni insurgents have grown in strength those requests have persisted. In a May 11 meeting with American diplomats and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, Mr. Maliki said he would like the United States to provide Iraq with the ability to operate drones. But if the United States was not willing to do that, Mr. Maliki indicated he was prepared to allow the United States to carry out strikes using warplanes or drones.

In a May 16 phone call with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Maliki again suggested that the United States consider using American air power. A written request repeating that point was submitted soon afterward, officials said….

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Iraq Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Joeb says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 1:18 pm

    There are a number of pictures of Barry giving the middle finger. Interesting…

    • john spielman says

      Jun 12, 2014 at 1:42 pm

      perhaps the joints of his middle finger are fused!(sarc) He hust doesn’t give a D….

    • georgert says

      Jun 12, 2014 at 3:12 pm

      Spencer’s just trying to make a point, i.e., he doesn’t like Obama and anything he can do to suggest the president is insensitive to the situation is fair game.

  2. CogitoErgoSum says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 2:04 pm

    The ISIL fighters were outnumbered 15 to 1 in Mosul but the Iraqi forces chose not to make a stand but rather to take off their uniforms and run away. The Iraqi people do not seem to be willing to fight for themselves so they will soon be getting the type of government they deserve. Once the Caliphate is established President Obama will have to re-think whether the United States is not nor ever will be at war with Islam. The same situation occurring in Iraq is coming for the rest of the world ……whether now or two and a half years from now…… war with the pure and unadulterated version of Islam is coming. Sooner or later people are going to have to stop running away and choose where and with whom they wish to make their stand.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 12, 2014 at 2:28 pm

      Yes. And stop playing “good cop, bad cop” with the simultaneously advancing Stealth Jihad.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 12, 2014 at 3:07 pm

      Barry has never admitted a mistake or misjudgment and probably never will.

      • Budvarakbar says

        Jun 12, 2014 at 3:14 pm

        Why do you think he is making mistakes?

        • John C. Barile says

          Jun 12, 2014 at 3:24 pm

          Well now, B. H. Obama doesn’t think he’s making mistakes–but if you think he’s following a laid-out plan, it’s someone else’s plan. Mr. Obama is the ultimate appeaser and useful idiot.

  3. wildjew says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 2:23 pm

    I like the image attached to this story.

  4. John C. Barile says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 2:25 pm

    I sincerely hope that the Kurdish Pesh Merga can hold its own against ISIL; but, then again, they wouldn’t count on any help from Turkey, Iran, or Obama’s America–maybe Israel?

    • umbra says

      Jun 13, 2014 at 2:57 am

      Perhaps covert russian arms assistance. Israel will get burnt if she assist and is discovered to have assisted … it’s an islamic thing, always blame Jews.

  5. John C. Barile says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 2:51 pm

    Whether we like it or not–we are already seeing the emergence of World War III. Obama, Biden, Hillary, Kerry and their party have ensured this will happen; all the while they minimize threats, shift our attention, and evade responsibility.

  6. John C. Barile says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 2:57 pm

    The fall of Ramadi and Falluja were galling enough–but the capture of Mosul–Ninevah, if you will–Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and formerly an Ottoman provincial capital–is doubtlessly a watershed in history, and greatly accelerates the Third Wave of world Jihad.

  7. Salah says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 3:31 pm

    “U.S. Said to Rebuff Iraqi Request to Strike Militants,”

    You still don’t get it, do you?
    Obama is only following orders, he’s not running the WH, the Muslim brotherhood are.
    The American people MUST throw him and his masters out of the WH.
    Impeachment, is not a solution. Elections will only bring more of the same. This guy and his mafia gang must be arrested, brought to trial and executed. Period.

  8. SpiritOf1683 says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    Obviously the Jihadis are winning. The Iraqi army is poor and the West is crippled by political correctness and is scared of killing its enemies. Confirmation of us being losers first reared its head in Afghanistan when we consulted a lawyer to ask whether it was legal to blow up Mullah Omar when he was in the sights of a predator drone. Naturally he escaped, and when there are 10,000 lawyers in the Department of Defense, how can we be expected to win a summons let alone a war against the Jihadis? Does anyone imagine Sir Winston Churchill or Sir Arthur Harris would have consulted a lawyer if Hitler was lined up in the sights of a Mosquito fighter bomber?

  9. WTD says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    Just think about this. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS/ISIL was a detainee at GITMO prior to the 2009 release of detainees by then SoS Hillary Clinton and the current occupant of the Oval Office, presumed CiC.
    FoxNews’ Meghan Kelly reminds us of Obama’s response to the rise of ISIS/ISIL in Faluja in January…ff to 4 minute mark in video :

    NYMag: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a Jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” -January 27, 2014

    Is it that much of a stretch to think that over the last ten years American tax dollars sheltered, supported the health & well being of well fed, 5 rejuvenated senior members of alQaeda’s Varsity team which ‘his’ government unilaterally released is simply coincidental to this ISIS/ISIL surge for the resurgent Caliphate?

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 12, 2014 at 7:01 pm

      ISIS sure captured a whole lotta Lakers’ uniforms; now, didn’t they, Barry?

  10. King Dave says

    Jun 12, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    Another obvious and well known outcome from the US withdrawal of Iraq is that well armed Islamic bigots would not hesitate to rape, behead, pillage and usurp power from any type of non Sharia government.

    Even if the Obama administration continues to hands these Jihadists billions of dollars in funds and millions of heavy weapons, as soon as they reclaim the Middle East and Africa, they will turn turn these weapons on the USA

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