Operation Featherweight: Day 3.

Since January 2014 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been marauding across Iraq like some sort of modern day Mongol horde. Wherever they have gone they have simply executed all Shia civilians. Any Sunnis, Christians or members of other religious groups such as the Yazardis have been faced with a simple choice; Convert to ISIL's brand of Sunni Islam which is considered too extreme for either Al Qaeda or the Taliban, leave or be executed. Those who have chosen to convert have then been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment including genital mutilation, slavery, sexual slavery and extra-judicial execution often by way of beheading or crucifixion.

In June 2014 the United Nations estimated the scale of ISIL's genocide at over 5,500 people which is widely considered to be an underestimate. In the last week of July ISIL began a large offensive against ethnic Kurds in the Nineveh and Arbil provinces. On a single day in the Nineveh town of Qaraqosh ISIL executed 2,400 people. In the city of Sinjar 1,500 people were executed and more then 200,000 Yazardis were forced to flee to Arbil province. A further 40,000 who were not able to escape east were forced into the Sinjar mountains were they have been trapped in 50C heat without food or water. As a result they have been dying of thirst at a rate of around 45 people per day.

This atrocity alone stirred up such a level of anger amongst the US press corp that on Thursday (7/8/14) at a normally friendly daily press briefing senior journalists from respected news agencies demanded to know why the US who has 300 military advisers on the ground in Iraq and a carrier group equipped with 90 ground attack aircraft just off-shore is simply standing by and watching people being slaughtered. The New York Times then went further and circulated a false story about the US undertaking air-strikes in Iraq in order to force the US government to deny the claim and in the process explain why it was not undertaking air-strikes.

Faced with this level of political backlash ahead of a mid-term election US President Barack Obama immediately went into damage control mode. Later on Thursday evening he addressed the nation to announce that he had authorised air-strikes and aid-drops in Iraq. However if you got into the detail rather then authorising military action Obama was actually erecting a series of barriers on order to make it much more difficult for the US to take military action. For example Obama declared that action will only be taken if ISIL advance on the Abril city of Irbil and only then if that advance places US lives at risk. Obama then made the rather insane claim - that has been repeatedly frequently since - that there is no military solution to ISIL's advance. After all in Obamaworld apparently blowing people into tiny pieces will not in anyway effect their ability to carry out massacres.

Since then US government outlets and - as far as I can tell - US news networks have treated us to relentless coverage of the story all showing the same footage of a single US air-strike and a single US aid-drop interspersed with segments of Obama's speeches in which he repeats the lie that there is no military solution to ISIL's advance. This has been accompanied by in depth analysis of the US' long term objectives for Iraq and estimates of how much it will cost the nation. From watching this coverage you would get the impression that Obama had just launched the largest military mobilisation in all of human history to help the Iraq people and stop ISIL in their tracks.

As a result I think it's important to look at what the US has actually done;

Since Thursday the US has dropped 52,000 'meals' onto Sinjar mountain. Assuming that water is considered part of those 'meals' the 40,000 people on the mountain will each require at least 1 'meal' per day. So in order to meet that need the US will have needed to have dropped 120,000 meals onto the mountain since Thursday. Putting aside the fact that the US has only met around 43% of the most basic needs of the people on the mountain unofficial estimates report that over 30% (15,600) of those 'meals' have been destroyed on impact and are unusable.

On the military front on Friday (8/8/14) two F-18 jets dropped a single 500lb bomb on a single ISIL artillery gun that was firing on Ibril. That was followed up by a F-18 and Predator drone strike which dropped a combination of Hellfire missiles and 500lb bombs on an ISIL mortar position and a convoy of up to 4 vehicles. On Saturday (9/8/14) a mixture of F-18's and Predator drones carried out four strikes hitting 3 ISIL Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) and a so-called "Technical" armed picked-up truck. Today F-18's struck 5 undisclosed ISIL targets that are believed to be a single mortar position and 4 APC's/Technicals.

To put that in perspective in the first three days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the US carried out in excess of 1,700 air-strikes including the use of over 500 Tomahawk Cruise missiles that each carry a 1000lb warhead. This was probably the only part of the 2003 invasion that was a success because the Iraq military was destroyed as a fighting force and the Iraqi government was toppled inside of three weeks. Unfortunately the US then made the twin mistakes of disbanding the Iraqi army and the Iraqi civil service (Ba'ath Party) creating a disaster that Obama decided to retreat from just before the 2012 Presidential election.

Based on his statements and his actions it is quite clear that Obama has no intention of repeating the use of military force against ISIL. However it is equally apparent that he is very interested in seeing the overthrow of the Iraqi government and the disintegration of the Iraqi army. So with all his talk of the need to find a political solution and of a long-term US engagement in Iraq it seems clear that Obama is intent of repeating the mistakes of the 2003 invasion but has absolutely no interest in repeating its one success.

The futility and I would say borderline criminality of Obama's plan for Iraq was called into sharp focus yesterday. Here ISIL forces had advanced to surround the towns of Hatimiya, Qaboshi and Koja. Being connected to the outside world residents were able tell relatives that they had been given until sunrise today (02:18 GMT/05:18 local) to convert or be executed. Since then nothing has been heard from people in those towns and there are ominous reports of up to 500 people being discovered buried alive in mass graves. As such the question simply is;

"Why did the US not carry out air-strikes against the ISIL forces encircling those towns?"

(Originally Posted) 16:50 on 10/8/14 (UK date).