BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL AID TABLE
REACHED FOR COMMENT BY THESE REPORTERS, CRANKY ADMITTED SHE WAS BORN WITH THE POWER TO SHRIVEL ANY AND ALL ERECTIONS, HOWEVER HER ABILITY TO CAUSE WAR WAS SOMETHING SHE REALLY HAD TO WORK AT.
"AND I'M PROUD OF BOTH,'' SHE INSISTED. "BUT MAYBE A LITTLE PROUDER OF MY ABILITY TO CAUSE WAR SINCE IT UPSETS SO MANY MORE PEOPLE."
Larisa Epatko (THE NEWSHOUR) explains, "About 2 million people lived in Iraq’s second largest city before the Islamic State, or ISIL, siege in June 2014. Since then, some residents, including Yazidis, Turkmen and other ethnic and religious minorities have fled to other parts of the country."
The ASSOCIATED PRESS notes, "It was not immediately clear how long such a complex and taxing offensive would take."
- Iraqi army starts Mosul offensive, liberates several villages
#BreakingNews#Iraq
Press TV Breaking While Iran's PRESS TV is rah-rah, others are a bit more down to earth. For example, CBS NEWS offers:
Indeed, a senior U.S. military official told CBS News that Thursday's advance was a "small operation to liberate some villages near Makhmour and push the foreign line of troops west." A commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces characterized the operation in the same way.
And Jane Onyanga-Omara and Jim Michaels (USA TODAY) provide this clarity:
Still, the Iraqi ground operations are preliminary and Iraqi forces are still about 75 miles away from Mosul.
Iraq's military has yet to assemble enough trained forces needed to seize the city, a complex operation that will exceed anything Iraqi forces have accomplished since the country's military collapsed in the face of an Islamic State onslaught two years ago.
Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) sees something more than liberating Mosul as the point of the current operation focusing on Makhmour:
The Makhmur District is also a key to holding oil fields around Kirkuk, and the ISIS offensive is seen by many analysts as part of an effort to ultimately regain control over those lucrative oil fields, and have been “outgunning” the thousands of Iraqi troops in the area.
Whether they’re trying to save Iraqi ground troops who still can’t stand up to ISIS, or save oil fields, however, the latest escalation puts US troops even further in harm’s way, and has put the war even further afield from the “no boots on the ground” affair initially promised by the Obama Administration.
The "no boots on the ground" promise is now forgotten.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
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