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Page added on August 7, 2014
ISIS Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam
Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.
Residents near the dam and officials in the region confirmed that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, held the dam, a potentially catastrophic development for Iraq’s civilian population.
The dam, which sits on the Tigris River and is about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large amount of territory. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water could be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq.
Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of Nineveh Province, whose capital is Mosul, said in a telephone interview from northern Iraq, where he has fled, that ISIS had secured the dam after what he called an “organized retreat” of Kurdish security forces, known as pesh merga.
ISIS seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, on June 10, and began its latest offensive this week. In a statement issued on a social media account believed to belong to the group, it claimed that it had captured the dam and vowed to continue its offensive northward as it consolidates control and continues to realize its goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate that bridges the borders of Syria and Iraq.
“Our Islamic State forces are still fighting in all directions and we will not step down until the project of the caliphate is established, with the will of God,” the statement said.
ISIS continued on Thursday to battle pesh merga forces for control of towns east of Mosul, in the direction of Erbil, and civilians hoping to flee the fighting flooded the Erbil airport and swamped the Iraqi Airways office in a futile attempt to get tickets to Baghdad.
In the early hours of Thursday, forces from the Kurdish pesh merga left checkpoints guarding several largely Christian settlements east of Mosul because they had been called to defend Kurdish towns closer to Erbil, according to a colonel in the Kurdish Defense Ministry.
By late Wednesday, Kurdish television was reporting that Mahmour and Gwar, two Kurdish settlements less than 20 miles west of Erbil, had fallen to ISIS. By Thursday morning, a colonel in the pesh merga said that Mahmour had been retaken, while militants remained in control of Gwar.
The latest ISIS push followed its pattern of exploratory attacks on the outskirts of an area it wants to take. On Wednesday, it repelled Kurdish efforts east of Mosul and shelled Qaraqosh, which is one of several largely Christian settlements in the area between Mosul and Erbil, 60 miles to the east. As plumes of smoke drifted across the plains of Nineveh between Mosul and Erbil, panicked residents fled from the settlements there in cars and pickup trucks piled with belongings, creating lines more than half a mile long at checkpoints guarded by the pesh merga.
Father Amar said that there were “thousands” of Christian and Arab families marooned at the main pesh merga checkpoint trying to enter the Kurdish region on Thursday morning. No one was being allowed to pass, he said.
West of Mosul, some of the thousands of Iraqi civilians who fled into the mountains around the town of Sinjar have been rescued, United Nations officials said Thursday, but details of the operation remained sketchy.
“Some people have been extracted over the past 24 hours,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman in Geneva for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but he could not confirm how many had left or where they had been taken.
United Nations officials have estimated that 10,000 to 40,000 were trapped in the mountains after ISIS defeated Kurdish forces in the area and attacked Sinjar three days ago.
Most of the civilians are believed to be members of the Yazidi minority, which, like other ethnic and religious minorities in the area, has already been the target of abductions by ISIS forces, according to the United Nations. Reports had reached Erbil that more than 200,000 Yazidis had left Sinjar with nothing except what they were wearing. Yazidis had asked the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to airdrop supplies to them because they could not leave the mountains without being intercepted by ISIS forces.
As the fighting expanded in the north, violence also unfolded elsewhere. In Kirkuk, a northern city long divided between Arabs and Kurds that is now under Kurdish control, two explosions struck near a Shiite mosque, killing 11 people and wounding more than 50 others. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck in Kadhimiya, a Shiite district that is home to an important shrine, killing 15 and wounding 25 others, according to a hospital official and the local police.
25 Comments on "ISIS Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam"
Goat512 on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 2:30 pm
Hot dam!!! This dam apparently was built on loamy soil and does not have a good history of holding up to the pressures of the water behind it. It requires a lot of maintenance in the way of back filling in order to keep the soil from washing out from beneath the dam and causing a major breach. If these isis dudes do not keep that maintenance up, then people downstream may get a wall of water coming at them without warning. It’s a real dam problem.
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 2:33 pm
President O is sending in drones, bombers on a humanitarian mission. (saving the lives of as many Yazidis as possible) air drops of food and water are also planned.
Air support will not be enough to dislodge ‘The Islamic State’ but hundreds of Yazidis children are already dead from lack of water and food.
herrmeier on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 2:54 pm
Can you imagine? With the same energy, enthusiasm and endurance they could be building infrastructure, companies, wealth and opportunity. But they choose to destroy stuff instead. Muslim are stupid.
Plantagenet on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 3:00 pm
Can a dam be considered a weapon of mass destruction?
If the Caliphate destroys the dam, thousands of people downstream from the dam will be killed. Of course, since the Caliphate is out to kill all the infidels, maybe that is just what they are planning.
rockman on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 3:45 pm
What’s interesting is that the POTUS says he doesn’t want to supply military support to the Kurds because of their independence move away from Baghdad. So if ISIS gets control of the area the surviving Kurds will despise both the US and Baghdad. And will have no choice but to cooperate with ISIS which will then have control of the Kurd oil to finance their new govt.
So is that when the US will decide to go against ISIS: when they have ground control, local support and a nice revenue stream? Not an easy situation to deal with. But at the moment the US doesn’t seem ready to deal with it at all. Just MHO but I don’t think ISIS will just go away on their own.
Arthur on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 3:48 pm
As a fine example of innovative Iraqi engineering, this dam is built with… gypsum, the people of Mosul be dam-ned.
11 km3 is a lot of water. Imagine the former WTC tower times two for the edge of a cube of 1 km3. And then 11 of those cubes.
Plantagenet on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 5:14 pm
Obama is a deep thinker. He just can’t make up his mind whether or not the Caliphate is a threat, or whether or not to aid the Kurds, or what else to do. He can’t even make up his mind whether or not to send food aid to the starving Yazidis children who have been expelled from their home villages by the Caliphate. Apparently not enough have died yet to tip the decision in favor of providing food aid to the survivors
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 5:30 pm
Kurds never resisted troops of “The Collation Of the Willing”. Nevertheless, the US has always branded Peshmerga as “terrorists”. If the US blows this chance to support Kurds resisting ‘The Islamic State*’ NATO, USA will NEVER, EVER, live it down.
I believe US will make a half hearted effort to help discarded minority groups. However, at this stage it would take a million troops to defeat ‘The Islamic State’.
If anyone wonders why this fighting has not been more widely reported, see wars in Sudan, DRC, most of all Syria.
Months ago, I wrote here: fighting in Ukraine is a smokescreen to cover horrendous atrocities in Syria.
Today, that misdirection extends to Iraq.
* I’ll stop with the ‘marks’ when National Geographic Atlas names current states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, all one nation: ‘The Islamic State’.
Anyone for an ‘office pool’ for that date?
The day after, peace returns to Ukraine.
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 5:45 pm
Plantagenet, food and water delivery in hostile zones with helicopters w/o air cover is impossible. ISIL
has captured ground to air missiles. (SAMs) Not to mention modern anti aircraft that can blow the wings off any helicopter up to a mile away.
As another poster pointed out, ISIL is holding the Dam
hostage. If we are effective in killing enough ISIL Fighters they will threaten to blow the dam. They may blow it anyway, flooding Baghdad, then at Southern most oil fields.
It will take the best military minds and equipment to dislodge ISIL . I wish we could send you Plant.
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 5:50 pm
Peak Oil Notes – Aug 7
by Tom Whipple, originally published by ASPO-USA | TODAY
Neither the intensifying “2nd Cold War” between Russia and the West nor the worsening chaos across the Middle East seems to be enough to encourage oil traders to build a risk premium into oil prices. This week New York oil futures traded around $97-$98 a barrel and London around $105. The weekly stocks report showed US refining dropping by 1.1 percent to 92.4 percent of capacity — partially due to a fire which closed a refinery in Kansas. New York oil dropped to a 6 month low to close at $96.92 on Wednesday and London closed at $104.59.
US crude inventories were down by 1.8 million barrels last week, but gasoline stocks were down by 4.4 million barrels and distillates down by 1.8 million. Total commercial inventories decreased by 8.4 million barrels. The refinery in Kansas that was shut down normally draws its 115,000 b/d of crude from the Cushing, Okla. storage depot. The loss of this customer led to a 83,000 barrel increase in Cushing’s inventory last week. The refinery is expected to be out of service for a month.
New York natural gas futures climbed this week on the outlook for warmer weather in the last two weeks of August. Gas prices are up about 15 cents per million BTUs so far this week and could be back above $4 shortly if demand picks up.
The Ukrainian crisis tops the list of risks to oil supplies this week with government forces now on the verge of capturing the last major rebel-held city. Russian forces, however, are massing on the border for a possible intervention on behalf of the insurgents. NATO and EU capitols have been sounding alarm bells all week.
So far the exchange of sanctions between Moscow and the West has stayed away from short-term oil and gas sales as both sides are vulnerable. Although Western help in financing and developing new oil reserves is on the sanctions list, nothing has happened to drive oil prices higher as yet. Should Russia invade Ukraine, however, this could change and we could see another round of sanctions which might impact Russian oil and gas sales.
The new Libyan Parliament met this week in Tobruk which is 900 miles east of Tripoli and immune to the heavy fighting still taking place there. Whether the new parliament has any meaningful role is yet to be seen. The Libyan government says it has resolved its oil crisis and that all ports are in operation. However, eight large fuel storage tanks have gone up in flames at Tripoli’s airport, some of which supply fuel to the capitol itself. There seem to be 1.6 million Egyptians doing much of the heavy work in Libya and those that can are trying to get to Tunisia. Given that many if not most foreign technicians are bailing out of the country to avoid the fighting, it is unlikely we will see much oil exported for a while.
In Iraq, the IS continues to storm across the northern part of the country, driving some 200,000 non-Sunnis from their homes and clashing with Kurdistan’s Peshmerga. The IS, which is now better armed with weapons captured from the Iraqi Army, has been overwhelming the Peshmerga in these clashes; however, a counter offensive is expected.
A major humanitarian crisis is developing as tens of thousands of Iraqis have been driven from their homes. Most are making for Kurdistan which is being overwhelmed. The IS seems close to taking over the Mosel Dam, which currently is controlled by Kurdish forces. The dam is in poor shape and without constant maintenance by specialists is likely to flood much of the countryside downstream including Mosel and Baghdad.
In the meantime there has been no political agreement in Baghdad over who will be the next prime minister, and exports of Iraqi oil continue to increase.
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 6:51 pm
Jets, explosions reported near Islamic State lines as Kurds beg for U.S. help
IRBIL, Iraq — Jet aircraft attacked Islamic State positions outside the town of Kalak, 25 miles northwest of Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, a resident of Kalak told McClatchy early Friday.
The resident, reached by phone from Irbil, said she had seen the aircraft and had heard the explosions coming from behind Islamic State lines, which are slightly more than a mile away. The resident said because it was dark she could not see any markings on the aircraft.
Kurdish television reported that the bombers were American. There was no confirmation from U.S. officials in Washington, however, and the Pentagon spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, called reports that the U.S. had conducted airstrikes in Iraq “completely false.”
“No such action was taken,” the tweet said.
Iraqi fighter jets recently received from Russia also reportedly have engaged in bombing runs in the area this week after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki on Monday ordered the Iraqi air force to assist Kurdish forces.
The reported bombing came after a day of panic in the Kurdish capital following Islamic State militants’ seizure of four strategic towns on a key highway and their advance to positions just minutes from Irbil.
Hundreds of Kurdish peshmerga militiamen built earthen berms near Kalak on the highway that links Irbil with Mosul, the Iraqi city whose fall to Islamic State militants in early June touched off a sweep across northern and western Iraq that until Thursday had spared Kurdish areas.
But that quiet appeared to be over, with the Islamic State boldly saying in an Internet posting Thursday that it intended to capture Irbil, a city previously thought so secure that the United States two months ago chose it as one of two Iraqi cities safe enough to receive scores of staffers evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
“The Americans keep saying they will help us,” said Rosg Nuri Shawess, a top Kurdish military commander who was overseeing the defensive preparations. “Well, if they plan to help they had better do it now.”
From Kalak, about 25 miles northwest of Irbil, the front line of the Islamic State, which everyone here refers to as “Daash,” an Arabic acronym, could be seen slightly more than a mile away.
“Daash is testing our defenses,” said Shawess, who is a member of the Iraqi government’s national security council, pointing to two towns that fell Thursday to the Islamic State, Qaraqosh and Bartella, that were visible in the distance. “And if we don’t show them we are strong here, then we have lost Irbil.”
U.S. officials were cagey throughout the day about whether the United States planned to do to help fend off an Islamic State thrust at Irbil, where the U.S. also has recently expanded its CIA station and set up a Joint Operations Center to coordinate military activities with the Kurdish and Iraqi governments.
U.S. officials said specifically that the U.S. was considering dropping supplies to refugees trapped on a mountain near the Islamic State-controlled city of Sinjar.
The Kalak resident told McClatchy that her relatives near Sinjar had been told to stay away from the city and that many Sinjar residents were moving to leave the city.
But there were no specifics about military steps to counter the Islamists’ move toward Irbil. At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest stuck closely to the administration’s months-old position that Iraq’s problems must be solved politically.
“There are no military solutions to the problems of Iraq,” he told reporters. He said the United States would move to protect American personnel but that American military action “would have to be closely tied to Iraqi political reforms.”
A sense of dread fell over the Kurdish capital as the magnitude of the threat became clear.
Western oil companies based in Irbil shut down operations and restricted their employees’ movements out of concerns for safety, while makeshift shelters popped up in public parks and churches in the Ain Kawa neighborhood to accommodate hundreds of people who’d fled the newly occupied towns. There was a noticeable increase in the presence of the Kurdish peshmerga militia in the city, and there were reports that hundreds of residents flooded the airport in hopes of buying tickets to elsewhere.
A refugee camp at Kalak that only two days ago was filled with tens of thousands of refugees who’d fled Mosul when it fell to the Islamic State was empty Thursday as the area became the new front line of a conflict that went from occasional clashes to a full-scale war between the Kurds and the Islamic State in less than a week.
Content to sit in Mosul and consolidate their grip over much of Iraq’s predominately Sunni Arab areas for six weeks, militants from the Islamic State first seized the city of Sinjar and key areas around Mosul Dam from Kurdish forces over the weekend. By Wednesday, the Kurds counterattacked in Sinjar, bolstered by thousands of fellow Kurdish fighters from Syria and Turkey. But the Islamic State responded with a range of attacks along the nearly 900-mile border separating the two sides, then seized the Mosul Dam and captured the Christian towns of Bartella and Qaraqosh on the way to Irbil.
The peshmerga appeared to be preparing to make a last stand at Kalak. Several hundred regulars in uniforms with well-maintained light weapons and heavy machine guns, backed by a few armored vehicles and a single Soviet-era T-55 tank, were digging in with earth movers along a string of desolate desert hills to prepare for what a top security official called a “very serious test.”
Shawess, the officer in charge of the forward lines, said his men were confident and well trained, a claim reinforced by the professional demeanor of his uniformed men. But the peshmerga will face Islamic State fighters armed with advanced U.S. weapons with just a handful of 12.7mm Soviet-era heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
“We need better weapons and help,” Shawess said. “They tried to attack this morning but were just testing us.”
Shawess said those attacks recalled the first Islamic State moves in Mosul before that city fell to the Islamists June 9.
“These tests are critical,” added Shawess. “When they first attacked Mosul I don’t know if they planned to take it, but when there was no resistance they acted quickly. We have to show them here they can’t take Irbil.”
He was hardly exaggerating. The 25 miles from this new front line to the outskirts of Irbil _ barely a 30-minute drive _ remained virtually undefended beyond the occasional cluster of peshmerga fighters on hilltops and another single T-55 tank sitting in an intersection about halfway down the road.
The Kurds have a long, proud history of military prowess, and civilians and retired peshmerga were turning out in force to support their uniformed compatriots. But while they were enthusiastic in their traditional Kurdish clothing, they seemed far more interested in recounting the history of previous victories than in preparing for a soon-to-come onslaught. Their weapons were a motley assortment of family firearms, some modern, many antique. Some men, old and portly or young and untrained, manned a series of checkpoints closer to the capital, with an eye for Arabs driving cars with Mosul plates. Some merely stood around.
“I have come to defend my country,” said Yassin, 60, who wore traditional tribal clothes and carried a Russian-made Dragonov sniper rifle, missing its scope, rendering it basically useless except for close-quarter fighting. “All Kurds know how to fight.”
But despite the positive attitude, word from the various fronts around Kurdistan was grim.
The Mosul Dam had fallen to the Islamic State, U.S. and Kurdish officials confirmed. It is the largest such structure in Iraq and controls a major Iraqi watershed, amid fears that the Islamic State could unleash a torrent of water and inundate hundreds of square miles of Iraq.
The link between Irbil and the Iraqi city of Kirkuk to the south, which fell under Kurdish control when Iraqi soldiers fled in June, also appeared in danger, with reports that the Islamic State had taken at least partial control of Makhmour, a town that lies along the primary highway between the two cities.
Falah Bakir, the foreign minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in an interview with CNN that the Kurds faced disaster and needed immediate assistance. “We are left alone in the front to fight the terrorists of ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State, which used to call itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“I believe the United States has a moral responsibility to support us, because this is a fight against terrorism, and we have proven to be pro-democracy, pro-West and pro-secularism,” Bakir said.
“I now know that the towns of Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella and Karamlesh have been emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants,” Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniyah, told the Agence France Presse news agency. The fall of those villages represented the loss of the largest Christian communities in Iraq.
Kurdish officials repeatedly have claimed that the United States and the Iraqi government in Baghdad have refused to send military aid and that they have only Saddam Hussein-era weapons and limited ammunition to counter Islamic State forces that are armed with advanced American weaponry.
A statement attributed to the Islamic State posted Thursday on the Internet said that the Islamists would target Irbil as retaliation for Kurdish officials’ agreement earlier this week to coordinate operations against the Islamic State with the central government in Baghdad.
“We are pleased to announce to the Islamic nation a new liberation in Nineveh province, teaching the secular Kurds a lesson,” the statement said.
The United States has long been seen as the Kurdish region’s protector. After the first Gulf War ended in 1991, the U.S. imposed a no-fly zone over the region to prevent Saddam’s air force from attacking. The Kurdish zone became a rare outpost of economic development in an era when harsh trade restrictions were imposed on the rest of Iraq. After U.S. forces toppled Saddam in 2003, the region enjoyed enormous autonomy and was largely free of the sectarian warfare and chaos that plagued the rest of Iraq during the American occupation.
Mark Seibel and Nancy A. Youssef in Washington contributed to this report.
Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent. Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @mitchprothero
Newfie on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 7:53 pm
ISIS can shut down the generators thereby instantly sending Iraq back to the Middle Ages. Electricity is essential to run a modern civilization.
Arthur on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 8:26 pm
ISIS is like a magnet for jihadis from all over the world. Now they can kill to their hearts content.
Please Saddam, Bagdad Bob, anyone, please come back, all is forgiven.
Makati1 on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 8:43 pm
For once, I agree with Plant. (I bet it snows in Manila today!) O does not have a clue about anything in the world today except, maybe his golf score. It seems that every time he opens his mouth, all that comes out is hypocrisy or lies. Or both. Ditto for ‘I lost the election’ Kerry.
The US uncorked this bottle of ancient hate and has no idea how to put the Muslim genie back in the bottle. The US has pissed off at least half of the planet since 2000 and is working hard to raise that number to 100%.
bobinget on Thu, 7th Aug 2014 10:17 pm
Without ‘boots on the ground’ there is no F-ing way
we are going to dislodge ISIL. Sure, we can feed 40,000 refugees driven from their homes by insane murderers. But, without the Iraqi Army getting their shit together, Arbil and a million refugees are in peril.
President O has, as I wrote five hours ago, authorized airstrikes.
Too little too late. V. Putin’s strategy is working.
I can’t believe the CIA allowed a phony war in Ukraine to distract from the main game, control of Iraqi Oil.
Might be time for Israel to continue its bombing Gaza unless the world’s 24/7 news cycle
fatigue set in. Apparently, we can talk genocide when it’s Muslim on Muslim violence but never Israel on Arab
mass murder. Funny, cause all children look terrible mutilated.
Time to look at a program to see who is killing who.
Wealthy KSA Royals kicked in seed money for ISIL.
Now the Saudis, fearing backlash after spending millions backing Islamic crazies in Syria, are begging for help from fellow Arabs. None is forthcoming.
Iran and Russia after backing Syria’s ruthless killer Assad, have found an even more inhuman,fierce and remorseless Allie in ISIL a criminal gang calling itself another ‘Nation of Islam’. IMO, Iran believes correctly
ISIL has overstepped and is ruling by fear and a new strategy of acting suicidal but not blowing up all their bravest fighters on purpose. Everyone knows it’s better to get the enemy to die for his country.
Iran and Russia are interested in two things.
Iran wants to rule Islam in the entire region. Russia
feels it needs to guide world oil prices double.
(currently 98.40)
Afghans have NEVER lost a war. Why? Because when leadership senses things are going badly simply switch sides. This is what Russia and Iran, a marriage of convince, have done. All Iran and Russia need do is sit back and watch Sunnis beat the crap out of each other.
Putin doesn’t need to fire one single shot to beat the US at its own FAILED power play.
We simply cannot keep feeding starving Iraqi religious minorities forever. Eventually, we need to get them home and if their homes are burned down we need to build new ones and guard these homes for at least 100 years. (see Pottery Barn)
Oh yeah, don’t think Boko Haram in Nigeria are not paying attention, they are.
Venezuela, Argentina too need higher oil prices. Don’t look to SA for help.
Norm on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 12:09 am
Dam it anyway. Drop the bombs.
Norm on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 12:22 am
Hey. A bunch of religious fanatics stole the dam. What do you say about that? God Dam It ! :o)
MKohnen on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 1:05 am
I would say that IS has to make a play for Saudi Arabia, and rather soon. If they can take that piece of the pie, all the other pieces are in big trouble. Does anyone know if SA is geared toward fighting this kind of enemy? Of course the US would step in and provide all the aid it could to SA. But it’s possible that the IS sees the US getting itself entangled into a tussle with Russia. This would mean that piling up too many carrier groups in the Gulf could make them sitting ducks to Russian missiles. That may be the opportunity IS has gauged it has to launch an attack on SA. No matter how all this plays out, I really can’t see any scenario where IS doesn’t try for SA. Then again, what do I know?
MKohnen on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 1:14 am
Just found this: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/isis-next-targets-jordan-and-saudi-arabia
Don’t blast me if clarionproject is some goofy neo-con or other type group. I only provided the link because it seems somewhat sensible and credible.
Arthur on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 4:13 am
Bobinget: “Without ‘boots on the ground’ there is no F-ing way we are going to dislodge ISIL”
The only time that worked without ending in desaster was against Grenada (10,000 inhabitants) or when your Soviet seniors did most of the work for you during that WW2 of yours, but the ‘Soviets’ are now on the opposite side. Did I mention that 1.3 billion IQ100 Chinese are on the opposite side as well? 1.5 billion IQ80 muslims also? Wow, that is a lot of enemies for 7 million… umm neocons, who have 180 million aging Euros and 150 million young third worlders a la noobtube in an iron grip. Did I mention that the stability of the dollar system is for a large part dependent on the goodwill of the BRICS? Is it smart to antagonize them? But it is already too late: Russia and China have taken up the gauntlet, there is no way back, war is coming.
Meanwhile in Holland, the Dutch are becoming a little bit nervous. 500 trucks with food have been send back from the Russian border. And once Russia has decided that countries that impose sanctions can no longer fly over Russia, we can kiss our national carrier KLM goodbye, since their far east business has been distroyed, now that a KLM ticket will cost 300 euro extra compared to, say Malaysian airlines, because they have to make a huge detour over the ME, as long as that is safe.lol And this is only the beginning. Wait until Russia shuts off oil and gas. Then we will have a lot of time evaluating the value of being a member of the West. I am not sure how many MacDonalds and Apple store windows are going to be smashed in Europe, once sanctions start to bite. Thousands? Bulgaria, an orthodox country, with a language similar to Russian already has defied orders from Washington and Brussels and decided to finish South-Stream pipeline anyway. F the EU! Don’t count on Romania and Hungary either. Hungary is very nationalist, staunch ally of the Germans during WW2. A very nice target for Russia to start with is US lapdog #3 in Europe, Poland (right after Britain and Holland). Gets 65% or so of its energy from Russia. If that will fall away, the entire Polish society is going to collapse. Go, Wlad! Thank God, the US is undergoing an oil and gas glut, so what is the problem?lol
No, the US can’t win this, apart from blowing up the entire world. Perhaps they… umm neocons are crazy enough to do it, because if they fail, the first (and last) global pogrom could be a fact. If Moscow is going to be nuked, expect every British, US and Israeli city to be nuked as well… and the planet will be Chinese. But it is more likely that a coup will take place in the US first, by parts of the US military, who refuse to commit suicide and start to mop up all the… umm neocons, justblike Stalin did in 1953.
The American era is nearly over, let’s see if we can survive the next Cuba crisis. What is next? Easy:
Here is a smart American who openly proclaims to be a European and has enough of ZOG USA of bobinget:
http://www.ramzpaul.com/2014/08/salute-to-european-youth-american.html
There are a lot of Americans thinking like him, although they do not dare to say that aloud. Do not forget to watch the other video of young Europeans who have much less trouble defining their identity than confused Americans and are much harder in defending it. Connecting to Americans like Ramzpaul will be next if the anti-ZOG revolution in Europe has succeeded and the West will be history and the North will be born and carving out a European homeland in North-America will be next.
Questions, bobinget?
Davy on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 6:12 am
Bob, we have boots on the ground with the Kurds and Iraqi armies. They need Western Special Forces in there introducing precision airstrikes and the Kurds need to be armed with advanced and heavy weapons. This worked effectively in Afghanistan with a more formable Taliban in difficult terrain that favored the Taliban. Except for the mountainous terrain of Iraq it is an open desert. ISIL will have to hide among civilians in towns and in the mountains if proper air cover is introduced. This situation is an arm twist on the Kurds to remain in an Iraq federation. It seems US prefers this arrangement. This arrangement is desired probably because Turkey is not interested in a oil rich independent Kurdistan to its south. It needs a weaker yet prosperous Kurdistan autonomous region. We are inflating these ISIL folk’s prowess. They are a primitive warrior group that has limitations. They have multiple fronts and unstable supply lines. If they alienate their benefactors it will be battle spoils they live on for supplies. This cannot last very long once their advance is halted. Currently ISIL is taking advantage of chaos and weakness. Chaos in the Sunni region which is nothing more than a vacuum. Weakness from the Kurds with military equipment deficiencies and funding problems. The Iraqi’s politically and with military organization are ineffective and unorganized. The ball is up in the air as to whether TPTB, Kurds, and Iraqi army can coalesce into an effective line at the Shia and Kurd boarders. This is what matters because that is where the oil is. I doubt the ISIL can be dislodged in the Sunni region. The genie is out of the bottle. The Shia’s created a monster by mistreating the Sunni’s. The best that can be done is a Taliban style situation where the ISIL are prevented from taking over but are never vanquished. This will leave the Sunni’s in Syria and Iraq a warrior culture with nothing but primitive social structures much like Afghanistan now.
Arthur on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 7:27 am
Perhaps the best way forward for the US is to support Assad, for which it is still not too late. Assad was never a threat to pet Israel. Oh wait, Assad is an ally to Russia, so Assad needs to be defeated, end of story, case closed. The circumsized NWO has top priority, of course, so ISIS can continue to create havoc to hearts content. SA next. See you in Riyahd!
bobinget on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 8:00 am
Davy, US launches first airstrikes against ISIL artillery.
Arthur, when was the last time supporting brutal dictatorships worked out well? Don’t tell us we have been doing exactly that for 50 years just to get oil.
We know that. Look where this policy has landed us.
Davy on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 8:40 am
Bob, the battlefield dynamics have changed with this news. I don’t expect them to push ISIL out of Sunni areas though. I believe Afganistan taught us that.
Arthur on Fri, 8th Aug 2014 3:30 pm
Bob, we westerners should accept that Islam exists for 1400 years now and is not going away anytime soon. We should retreat into our own lands and defend them and let nobody in, rather then trying to impose our values on the outside world. In 1900 white people constituted ca 30% of the world population and had all the artifacts to control the rest. These conditions no longer exist. We have reduced to 17%, tendency rapidly further declining. We should concentrate on the survival of our own culture. Nobody is served if we would disappear, not even non-whites.