'Recapture' of Mosul Dam from Isis a major step forward, says Obama

US President declared ‘major step forward’ in Iraq, as he defended his administration from charges of mission creep

theguardian.com, Spencer Ackerman in New York, Tuesday 19 August 2014

Obama hailed the US military for having ‘stopped the [Isis] advance on the city of
Irbil and pushed back the terrorists.’ Photograph: Charles Dharapak /AP

US President Barack Obama declared a “major step forward” in Iraq on Monday after American fighter jets, bombers and drones assisted Kurdish and Iraqi forces in driving the Islamic State (Isis) back from Iraq’s most important dam.

Obama hailed the cooperation of the Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground at the Mosul Dam, calling effective local ground forces a bulwark against an expanding, unclear US mission.

“If we have effective partners on the ground, mission creep is less likely,” Obama said in a brief press conference Monday afternoon.

He praised the Iraqis and Kurds for “recapturing” the dam, something the US military had yet to definitively announce.

“We continue to see important progress over different parts of our strategy,” Obama said, providing his second declaration of something like victory since Thursday, when he declared Isis’ siege of Sinjar mountain to be “broken.”

US Central Command, operationally in charge of the Iraq strikes, said on Monday that it launched 15 airstrikes against Isis near the Mosul Dam that day alone, bringing the total there to 35 since Saturday. In the first eight days of the newest US campaign in Iraq, 33 airstrikes had been launched in pursuit of what Obama identified as the original purpose of US forces’ return to Iraq: preventing a genocide of Yazidis at Mount Sinjar and protecting US personnel in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

While the goal of taking Mosul Dam from Isis is significantly different from Obama’s two previously stated aims, the president wrapped it in the same language of “force protection” that he used for the Irbil mission.

“If that dam was breached, it could have proven catastrophic,” he said, with flooding reaching down to Baghdad, where hundreds of US diplomats and special-operations “advisers” are stationed.

Defending himself from charges of mission creep, Obama said “we are not reintroducing thousands of troops to engage in combat … We’re not the Iraqi military, we’re not even the Iraqi air force.”

Functionally, that is exactly what the US military has been over the past eleven days, as a mixture of US warplanes have harassed Isis positions and destroyed Isis vehicles and artillery, providing air cover for Kurdish and now Iraqi military units below. US airpower vastly outclasses any air support the Iraqis can offer. Iraqi units have outfitted small, slow Cessna and Beechcraft planes with Hellfire missiles.

Obama hailed the US military for having “stopped the [Isis] advance on the city of Irbil and pushed back the terrorists.”

Yet he declined to say when the US mission will end, or where it will next target Isis. On Monday, the State Department designated a senior Isis member for sanctions on its foreign terrorist organizations list, seemingly an indication of a new focus on Isis leadership.

Obama implored the incoming Iraqi government, helmed by US-backed prime minister designate Haider al-Abadi, to rapidly coalesce around inclusivity as a “long-term” strategy against Isis. He held out the “prospect of Sunni tribes” rejecting Isis as a potential positive consequence of an Iraqi decision to substantially include Sunnis in the nation’s governance, and hinted that further military aid would follow any such decision.

Obama’s decision to use deepening American military involvement in Iraq’s crisis as an incentive for the Iraqi government to heal sectarian divides is the inverse of George W Bush’s 2007 surge strategy, which contended that a stable Iraq was a precondition to inclusivity. The US backed prime minister Nouri al-Maliki opted to instead privilege his Shia co-religionists and later, particularly after US forces withdrew in 2011, himself.

Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington who has for months pressed the administration to expand airstrikes against Isis, praised Obama after his remarks.

“We commend the President’s willingness to stand with the Iraqi people and government against this brutal aggression from inter terrorism,” Faily tweeted.

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Speculations on the Reval, Ascension and the Removal of the Dark – Part 1/2 (Golden Age of Gaia, Steve Beckow, August 9, 2014)

"... ISIS/ISIL

Let me begin by repeating a part of a reading I had with Archangel Michael on July 11, 2014:

S: What is holding up the Reval now?

AAM: ISIS.

S: ISIS! Are they real?

AAM: Yes, they are real.

S: Is it not a CIA creation?

AAM: No. It is a grassroots organization. It is disgruntled ex-military.

S: Oh. Will they be able to hold it up for a long time?

AAM: No. Their goal is to create stability but it is stability at the price of great pain.

S: Yes, indeed.

AAM: There is no conscience. They believe that they act for Allah and to establish a Muslim state. But they are doing so through great violence.

Now this is part of what the Mother referred to as great chaos coming to the forefront. Will they be able to hold it up indefinitely? No. But the difficulty is that, with this Revaluation, if they were given even more money, that they would use it to buy very dangerous weapons.

S: Right. Does that mean that they’ll be able to hold it up indefinitely?

AAM: No. Not necessarily. [Next statement removed by request.]

S: But it won’t be in July.

AAM: It is more likely to be closer to September.

S: Any progress with the Dragons?

AAM: Oh, yes. There has been a great deal of progress with the Dragons. They are primed and ready to go but they are also not willing to allow a terrorist organization, regardless of their mission and purpose, as human as that is, to take that money and harm human beings.” (1)

Keep in mind what he said as we now turn to look at a news story that concerns ISIS or ISIL (they’re the same). ..."

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