The terror war today

While we all anxiously await the President’s strategy for his war against ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State he’ll announce later today, aircraft in Iraq has been pounding targets. Of course, by pounding, I mean it in the manner of this administration, not in the manner of the last administration. From AFP;

American fighter jets, attack and drone aircraft conducted five bombing raids on Monday and Tuesday near the massive Haditha Dam in Anbar province, said the US Central Command, which oversees forces in the region.

The US military said the strikes were in “support of Iraqi Security Forces and Sunni tribes protecting the Haditha Dam” against militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS).

The bombing “destroyed or damaged” eight IS armed vehicles, including two that were “transporting anti-aircraft artillery,” five other vehicles and one transport vehicle, Central Command said.

Meanwhile, south of that scene, in Somalia, the insurgents there have threatened to repay the US for killing their leader with an airstrike, according to Reuters;

Al Shabaab made the threats late on Monday, hours after launching twin attacks inside Somalia against African peacekeepers and a government convoy. The death toll from those bombings rose to at least 18 on Tuesday, police said.

“Let our mujahideen (fighters) wait for good news. And let Obama wait for shocking news,” senior al Shabaab official, Fuad Mohamed Khalaf Shongole, said in a recorded message, promising to avenge the death of Ahmed Godane in a U.S. raid on Sept. 1.

They sound a little like Wickre and Wittgenfeld, don’t they? However the large number of Somali residents inside the US already should give us pause, especially since the government is doing little to keep them out when they return from their jihadist training.

The war in the middle east is complicated by the various groups and their confusing alliances. A group of al-Qaeda jihadists who have been fighting against the Islamic State report that their leader was killed along with 27 other leaders by a bomb, ostensibly placed by Islamic State crackpots, according to Reuters;

Ahrar al-Sham is a hardline Islamist group and part of the Islamic Front alliance that has been in armed conflict with the Islamic State group which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It was at one point considered the strongest insurgent group in the Syrian civil war.

A statement posted on Ahrar al-Sham’s official Twitter feed said the blast had hit a meeting in Idlib province in northwest Syria and confirmed Hassan Aboud, the group’s leader, among at least 12 dead.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 50 of the group’s leaders had been gathered at a house when the blast went off. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said the blast had occurred inside the meeting.

So who are we supposed to cheer for in that incident. Personally, I’m on the bombs’ side.

But the President’s spokesmen say that he doesn’t intend to put any boots on the ground in Iraq, you know, even though there are indeed boots on the ground there, now.

Now the president doesn’t need approval from Congress to take action against ISIS, but he says that he’s going to wait for Congress to give him the “go-ahead”. I guess that’s how he’s going to vote “present” on this.

Category: Terror War