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THE UNITED STATES launched airstrikes in Syria yesterday, targeting facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups.
The Pentagon said the strikes on facilities near the Iraqi border were in retaliation for a 15 February rocket attack in Iraq that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops.
The airstrike was the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its first weeks has emphasised its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist.
“I’m confident in the target that we went after, we know what we hit,” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington.
“We’re confident that that target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the strikes,” he said, referring to the 15 February attack.
Austin said he had recommended the action to President Joe Biden.
“We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” Austin said. “We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure that we had the right targets.”
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman John Kirby said: “This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners.
“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in eastern Syria and Iraq.”
Kirby said the US airstrikes “destroyed multiple facilities at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups”, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
The US has blamed Kataib Hezbollah for numerous attacks targeting US personnel and interests in Iraq in the past.
Biden administration officials condemned the 15 February rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.
Officials have noted that in the past, Iranian-backed Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket attacks that targeted US personnel or facilities in Iraq.
Kirby had said on Tuesday that Iraq was in charge of investigating the 15 February attack.
“Right now, we’re not able to give you a certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks, what groups, and I’m not going to get into the tactical details of every bit of weaponry used here,” Kirby said.
“Let’s let the investigations complete and conclude, and then when we have more to say, we will.”
A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Awliya al-Dam, Arabic for Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the 15 February attack. A week later, a rocket attack in Baghdad’s Green Zone appeared to target the US Embassy compound, but no one was hurt.
Iran this week said it has no links to the Guardians of Blood Brigade.
The frequency of attacks by Shiite militia groups against US targets in Iraq diminished late last year ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, though now Iran is pressing America to return to Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal.
The US under the previous Trump administration blamed Iran-backed groups for carrying out the attacks. Tensions soared after a Washington-directed drone strike that killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and powerful Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis last year.
Trump had said the death of a US contractor would be a red line and would provoke US escalation in Iraq.
The December 2019 killing of a US civilian contractor in a rocket attack in Kirkuk sparked a tit-for-tat fight on Iraqi soil that brought the country to the brink of a proxy war.
US forces have been significantly reduced in Iraq to 2,500 personnel and no longer partake in combat missions with Iraqi forces in ongoing operations against the Islamic State groups.
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Normal service is resumed
@Expendable: When did it stop?
@Expendable: Don’t try to white-wash the last administration. Trump’s interview with Fox Business, after approving a 59 Tomahawk missile strike on Syria ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ETjmylZaFs ) and not Iraq, as Trump claimed. US military policy is not something I usually approve of, regardless of which president is in office, but the reality is that the countries of the world claim to be civilised, but act solely on the basis of their own long term interests and the civilians caught in the middle are of no importance.
@Expendable: “During Mr Obama’s eight years in office, 1,878 drone strikes were carried out, according to researchers. Since Mr Trump was elected in 2016, there have been 2,243 drone strikes. The Republican president has also made some of the operations, the ones outside of war zones, more secretive. As a result, things have different today: under Mr Trump, there are more drone strikes – and less transparency.”
@Cian Nolan: sure the same folks that gave the orders to Trump are giving them to Biden. The decomratic process is a joke to keep the people fighting while the real owners run off with all the money. Simple strategy and happens to work quite well.
@David Jordan: True. Barack Hussein Obama didn’t seem too interested in destroying ISIS, for some reason.
@bread of heaven: That is complete lies, the US led war against ISIS started under Obama in early 2015.
Here’s the US bombing ISIS, under Obama in early 2015, outside the ISIS besieged Kurdish town of Konani (siege of Kobani March 2014-March 2015).
Kurdish YPG fighters call in a US Air strike on ISIS (Battle of Kobani).
It was Obama that established the coalition cooperation with the Kurdish YPG and supportted their fight against ISIS. The US later, under Obama in October 2015, rebranded them as Syrian Democratic Forces. They were given arms, training and full support by the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Democratic_Forces
However, after their sacrifice, Trump abandoned them and allowed Turkey to invade Rojavia (Syrian Kurdish homeland in Northern Syria). They are now protected from further Turkish aggression by Russia and Syrian government forces.
@bread of heaven: Go asleep and keep dreaming
@Expendable: If anyone thought biden, a strange character who sniffs children’s hair in public and a man so quick to begin to ruin women’s sport within a month of being inaugurated by forcing them to compete against men would be a decent guy then they were deluded, pelosi and obama will call the shots.
@David Jordan: America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
@David Jordan: America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
Given that drones account for only a small portion of the munitions dropped in the past eight years, the numbers of civilians killed by Obama’s bombs could be in the thousands. But we can’t know for sure as the administration, and the mainstream media, has been virtually silent about the civilian toll of the administration’s failed interventions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
4 years of peace under Trump
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: That administration was much less transparent. Both presidents aren’t angels.
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin:
You’re obviously conveniently forgetting the 10,000 kilo “mother of all bombs” trump dropped in Afghanistan and couldn’t wait to brag to the world about it
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: did you decide to ignore all the bombs The Donald dropped?
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: Several of Iraqs and Syrias cities were bombed to dust under Trump, it took over a year to extract all the bodies from the rubble. Far more fighetrs and civilians were killed under Trump that Obama as the fighting moved from rural areas to holdout cites, as the US led anti ISIS coalition sifted from using drones out in rural areas to bombing cities using warplanes from Deago García, Turkey and aircraft carriers in the Gulf. I think people forget how violent the fighting was in the last couple of years of the ISIS Caliphate as it was just ISIS.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians
https://youtu.be/1A6qJhSsuWc and 3pXsUP6Xeiw
@David Jordan: “For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which has a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed.”
“Nobody knows how many thousands of residents died, or how many are now homeless or confined to a wheelchair. What is certain is that the decimation of Raqqa is unlike anything seen in an American conflict since the Second World War.”
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: He preferred to keep it domestic.
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: Dont forget the Don signed off on a 350 billion dollar arms supply deal with the bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia. They can then continue the dirty work on behalf of the US.
@David Jordan: You mean the capital city of Islamic State that both the US, Kurds, and local Iraqi Army tried to dislodge? Weren’t the civilian population warned to get out of Raqqa?
@Jamo: So just imagine back in the day, say Newry had lots of IRA people there. British army go in and level the city killing thousands. Mostly civilians, but hey no problem, we got a few IRA as well. It was the civilians own fault, they should have left.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: Are you seriously comparing a place where 90% of its citizens support IS versus Newry who id say 5% of the population supported the IRA? Are you saying Fintan that IS should have been left alone in Raqqa, the beheading, stoning, burning alive of children, torture of any non believers etc etc allowed to continue?
@Jamo: Supporting ISIS is one thing (even if under false support because of fear). Actively carrying out beheading is another. Majority of Palestinians support Hamas, deemed a terrorist organisation. Should their civilians receive the same faith? And I’d like to see where you got your 5% from. Support for IRA in South Armagh in the 70′s & 80′s was a lot higher than 5%, i.e Crossmaglen, etc. Not easy to flush out the likes of ISIS, but killing the very people you claim you are protecting??? There was no one left for ISIS to stone or behead.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: Newry is in Down Fintan not South Armagh.
@Frank Carty: America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
Trump 2024 ❤❤✌
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: “For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which has a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed.”
“Nobody knows how many thousands of residents died, or how many are now homeless or confined to a wheelchair. What is certain is that the decimation of Raqqa is unlike anything seen in an American conflict since the Second World War.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians
@David Jordan: and ISIS are no more … job done as promised
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: ISIS are still there, job not done.
@NotMyIreland: your mixing them up with SISI
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: Why don’t you move there then.
@Paul Mcnevin: good point …. I’ll certainly get the vaccine quicker
@David Jordan: America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
@Eoin Ó Cuinneagáin: They wouldn’t have you in fairness.
But but but Trump it was Trump it had to be Trump!! Good old Joe back to bombings like it was under Barry O’ Bama. Was it actual militants this time or was it women and children again?
@Jamo: Trump dropped more bombs in 4 years than Obama did in 8. Trump also ordered that the military stopped reporting civilian casualties.
@Rebecca BarrettNp: No he didn’t, can I see proof of this or is it another CNN made up story?
@Jamo: I can’t post links, just Google Obama vs. Trump drone strikes, plenty of sources and well-documented since 2019, it’s crazy to me that you were unaware of this.
@Rebecca BarrettNp: Thats not true.
America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.
While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
@On the right side: It is true, and the article you are quoting is from 2017, Trump was President up until last month.
Ffs,didn’t take long
Any sign of those pesky WMD’s?
Really surprised that a President, whose Secretary of Defence was on the Board of Directors of Raytheon, decided to do this.
The Biden Bomber
More of the same, bombing allegedly terrorist camps or villages of men ,women& children.
Every supposedly targeted strike inevitably kills everyone in the vicinity, & not always the actual targets.
This is a Russia backed Syrian war, so what is the US messing in it?
Dont overlook that Trump betrayed the Kurds in his term & disgraced US involvement there.
If they want to restore influence & honour internationally, just help the Kurds to help themselves.
And leave it at that.
@William Kelly: it was a response to an attack on American contractors one of whom was killed & several injured.
@William Kelly: The US bombed the exact same site, an Iranian military base out in the desert just inside Syria’s border with Iraq in March 2020, for the exact same reasons, Iranian proxies fired rockets on the Baghdad Greenzone.
This is a continuation of the conflict with Iran that was started by Trump after he escalated tensions with Iran. He chose a harder line against Iran, encouraged by John Bolton and other War Hawks. He scraped the Iran nuclear deal and resumed the US official policy…suspended under Obama…that aspires to the overthrow of Iran government.
This led to increased tension and conflict with Iran and its proxies, a culminating in rocket and drone attacks on oil facilities and the Baghdad Greenzone by Iran’s proxies in Iraq, US assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in Jan 2020 and the attack on the Al +-Bukamal base in March 2020. Seems so long ago now.
“Warplanes target area near Syrian town of Al-Bukamal & Iraq’s Anbar province after rocket attack on Iraq base – reports” – https://www.rt.com/news/482883-airstrike-iraq-base-syria/
@Mjhint: What was the ‘contractor’ doing there?
@Bramley Hawthorne: contractors are usually truck divers or work in mine / bomb disposal. Here’s a list of 300 US contractors that were killed in Iraq, many were truck drivers.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5431088
The person in the Oval Office makes no difference. Eisenhower warned about this in his farewell address.
War mongers back in control. Arms industry badly needs a war.
Getting a bit tired of all the MAGA-bots on here.
Again America’s army God bless Trump Nobel price for peace well deserved
Yeah lads, be proud he is Irish.
After 4 years of the peace under the President Trump now the Democrats Biden, Harris controlled war machine has been fired up and back in action.
have your say