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A member of the Iraqi special forces patrols a street in eastern Mosul. Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty

Iraqi government troops say they are in full control of east Mosul three months into a major operation to recapture the countrys second city, despite some Islamic State fighters remaining along the Tigris river.

The Iraqi armys Lt Gen Talib Shaghati, who commands the counter-terrorism forces, hailed what he called a big victory and told reporters that plans were now being drawn up to retake the Isis-held western part of the city. He did not elaborate on when that part of the operation would begin.

Sheghati added however that while the east of the city could be considered under government control, some work remained to flush out the last Isis fighters. Important lines and important areas are finished ... there is only a bit of the northern (front) remaining, he said at a press conference.

Wednesdays advance came after Iraqi troops over the past few days intensified their push into the last Isis-held neighbourhoods in east Mosul, closing in on the Tigris river. Stiff resistance by the militants, thousands of civilians being trapped in their houses by the fighting, and bad weather, had previously slowed the advances of the troops.

Skirmishes and clashes have continued in some pockets along the Tigris in east Mosul, according to Iraqi special forces Maj Ali Hussein, who said his unit was still pushing into the Ghabat area along the riverbank. Small arms fire could be heard and at least one civilian was wounded by mortar fire.

The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, issued a statement saying that work is underway to liberate Ghabat and the area housing Saddam Husseins former presidential palaces in east Mosul. He also vowed to liberate the western side of the city.

The task of retaking west Mosul is likely to be a difficult one for Iraqi forces. It is home to some of Mosuls oldest neighbourhoods, with narrow streets packed with buildings that will further complicate the urban fight.

Mosul fell to Isis in the summer of 2014, when the militant group captured large swaths of northern and western Iraq. It is the groups last remaining major stronghold in Iraq.

Original post:
Iraq has retaken east Mosul from Isis, says army general - The Guardian

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AFNS) -- Reservists from the 315th Airlift Wing delivered humanitarian aid here Jan. 13 while also conducting a multifaceted training mission; the aid is bound for refugee camps in northern Iraq.

From a big picture stand point, even though the Reserve crews are training to stay proficient, we were able to help Kurdish refugees who were fleeing (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), said Master Sgt. Chris Fabel, a 315th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief stationed at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina.

The humanitarian aid was flown using the Denton Amendment, a State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development program that allows humanitarian supplies to be flown aboard Air Force aircraft on a space available basis.

According to the Denton cargo application, Global Samaritan Resources, a nonprofit corporation located in Abilene, Texas, donated 35 pallets, containing more than 275,000 dehydrated rice soy casserole meals intended for the refugees.

Our mission is simple, yet significant; we help people help people, said Danny Sims, the executive director of Global Samaritan Resources. It makes me proud as a U.S. citizen to know we are sending food, and proud to know that the U.S. Air Force is delivering it.

The donated meals, worth approximately $85,000, will feed an estimated 285,000 Kurdish men, women, and children who have fled ISIL-controlled areas and are currently living in refugee camps in northern Iraq.

The mission was difficult, yet rewarding, according to Tech. Sgt. Brian Farmintino, one of the loadmasters from the 300th Airlift Squadron who was on the mission.

Personally, I love flying these types of missions, Farmintino said. They really show the flexibility of our wing. We combined a training mission with evaluations and an instructional ride with a real-world humanitarian mission and added an aeromedical evacuation trainer on top of that.

The dehydrated food was delivered to Germany by the 315th AW and will be flown later to Iraq, and trucked to Barzani for distribution throughout the refugee camps in that area.

When asked about the importance of helping those in need, Sims said it was the most important and most gratifying part of his life.

I believe pretty much everyone wants to help someone else, its written in our DNA, he said. "But regardless, we all understand the beauty of helping people. That is something that transcends our differences and brings us together. It is a beautiful thing.

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Airmen deliver aid to refugees in northern Iraq - Edwards Air Force Base

WASHINGTON

Sending thousands more American troops into Iraq or Syria in a bid to accelerate the defeat of the Islamic State group would push U.S. allies to the exits, create more anti-U.S. resistance and give up the U.S. military's key advantages, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in an Associated Press interview.

Speaking from his Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac River on Wednesday, Carter said he favors looking for ways to speed up the counter-IS campaign, which administration critics including the president-elect, Donald Trump, have called slow-footed and overly cautious.

But he outlined numerous reasons why he believes strongly in the current approach of letting local Iraqi and Syrian forces set the pace.

"If we were to take over the war in Iraq and Syria entirely ourselves, first of all, in the near term it would be entirely by ourselves, because there is no one else volunteering to do that," he said. "We could get past that. But secondly, we would risk turning people who are currently inclined to resist ISIL" or to join ranks with the coalition, "potentially into resisting us, and that would increase the strength of the enemy."

Taking over the war also would amount to "fighting on the enemy's terms, which is infantry fighting in towns in a foreign country," he said. While U.S. troops can do that, it would not leverage the U.S. military's biggest strengths, which are special operation forces, mobility, air power and intelligence-gathering technologies "exquisite capabilities that no one else has," he said to enable local troops to do the fighting and own the outcome.

So while he believes faster is better, "It's important that it be done in a way that victory sticks." That was a reference to avoiding a repeat of the disastrous events of 2014, when Islamic State militants swept into western and northern Iraq from Syria and grabbed control of large swaths of territory as the Iraqi army collapsed. The Obama administration was caught by surprise at the hollowness of the Iraqi army, weakened by political and ethnic strife.

The AP interview was Carter's last as defense secretary. His designated successor, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, is expected to win easy Senate confirmation shortly after Trump is inaugurated on Friday. Carter will step down at noon on Friday.

At his confirmation hearing last week, Mattis gave only glimpses of his thinking on Iraq and Syria. When asked how his recommended way forward there would differ from the current approach, Mattis said, "You give it full resourcing to get there as rapidly as possible, and I think it's getting there as rapidly as possible is probably where it would differ from the current administration, where it would be a more accelerated campaign from what the president-elect has already called for."

Trump has not explained his plan for defeating the Islamic State militants but has sometimes suggested he would send more troops.

The U.S. war against the Islamic State group, which began in 2014, the year before Carter took office, became a major focus of his tenure, along with his efforts to modernize the Pentagon's approach to recruiting and maintaining talent. He has often said Obama was open to every suggestion for devoting more resources to the war, short of committing large numbers of combat troops.

"Early on, we were very limited by the meager intelligence we had on ISIL," he said. "That limited how many bombs we could drop, because we didn't have targets, it limited where we could conduct raids, where we could vector forces, where we could try to create opposition to ISIL."

But as increasing amounts of territory have been recaptured in both Iraq and Syria, and growing numbers of ISIL leaders have been taken off the battlefield, the amount of useful intelligence has grown, he said.

"Even if you kill a guy, you get his phone and you learn something about ISIL," he said, adding that as the military campaign achieves more successes, "more and more people come over and volunteer information; that creates yet more opportunities. So there's this virtuous circle, where the more you do, the more you have opportunity to do even more."

Carter dismissed the idea that Obama has dragged his feet in Iraq or Syria.

"Everything we have been able to identify that would accelerate the defeat of ISIL, we have done," he said. "We have not been, and we should not be, shy about asking for more" authority or resources from the president to push the military campaign harder. "I asked President Obama for more. I would encourage Jim Mattis, if he sees opportunities to accelerate, to ask for more."

See more here:
Carter: more US troops will not fix Iraq or Syria - WPBF West Palm Beach

NEW YORK A federal judge scolded the government on Wednesday for being overprotective of potentially disturbing images of how the military treated prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and proceeding as if court review of its decisions about the pictures should not exist. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in a written decision that the government had not explained the criteria it considered in determining that the release of an undetermined number of pictures he had already ordered released would threaten Americans overseas. The government has said release of the photographs showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan could provoke attacks against U.S. military forces or incite anti-U.S. sentiment across the region. It released 198 pictures last year, but hundreds or thousands more are believed to exist. The judge said the government fell far short of defending its claims, including by failing to explain why the photographs would produce such results. He chastised the government for arguing that judicial review of national security judgments is disallowed. "But that is not the law," he said. An aerial view of Pol-i-Charkhi Prison in Afghanistan. Photo Credit: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction The judge noted U.S. involvement in the region has changed dramatically in the 12 years of his rulings regarding an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act to force release of the pictures. He said the government should consider that U.S. troop presence in Iraq has declined from more than 100,000 troops in 2009 to approximately 5,000 today and it should determine whether the many photographs of abuse already released have caused violence. International outrage resulted after some images of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq appeared publicly in 2004 and 2006. "To give in to fear of our enemies, their propaganda, or their blackmail, is to surrender some of our dearest held values," he wrote. He cited the Islamic State group's presence in parts of Iraq and said the group's "pernicious campaign of public beheadings, enslavement, and indiscriminate killings of people it considers apostates are indisputable proof that its members ... 'do not need pretexts for their barbarism.'" A spokesman for government lawyers declined to comment. The director of the ACLU National Security Project, Hina Shamsi, called the decision "a victory for government transparency on national security issues." "All of the pictures must be released to help ensure the full story of American torture is truly known," Shamsi said. "This is important now more than ever in light of recent calls by some to return to torture." In 2009, Congress passed a law letting the government keep the photos secret if the secretary of defense certified that unveiling them would endanger U.S. citizens or government or military personnel. Defense secretaries have since done so, but the judge said the government must provide enough information to make judicial review possible.

He said the latest government claim was "vague and unlimited as to who is endangered." He said the Department of Defense secretary's methodologies and criteria must be disclosed.

Originally posted here:
Judge scolds government over Iraq detainee abuse pictures - Military Times

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Posted: Jan 19, 2017 12:01 AM

President Barack Obama and his teamstillengage in a hissy fit over Donald Trump's questioning Obama's place of birth. To even raise the issue is to "otherwise" the first black President. In short, they argue, it is racist. But to claim that Vladimir Putin put Trump in the White House is nothing more than an obvious observation, right? When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush in 2000, a number of disgruntled Democrats referred to him as "President Select."

Now President-elect Trump is being hammered over his refusal to except the intelligence community's consensus about Russia's alleged role in the election. All of the intel agencies maintain that the Russian government attempted to influence our election, and that Russia preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton.

From the outset, Trump doubted both the argument that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and that the release of damaging emails was designed to give him an advantage over his rival. Trump, at least before his recent national security briefing, argued that the hacking could've been done by a number of actors, including China and other state and non-state entities. Trump's reluctance to accept the apparent unanimous opinion of our intel agencies probably has more to do with his rejection of the narrative that but for Russia he would not be president.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not tell Clinton to put a private server in her basement in Chappaqua. Putin did not tell Clinton to delete 30,000 emails while arguing that they were not work related. He did not tell her to destroy evidence that was under subpoena. He did not tell her to falsely assert that she never sent or received classified information, or to falsely claim that she never sent or received information that was stamped classified.

Putin did not tell the DNC to ridicule the name of a black woman or to condescendingly suggest that the way to get Hispanic votes was through "brand loyalty" and "stories" because, after all, "Hispanics are the most responsive to 'story telling.' Brands need to 'speak with us.'" Nor did Putin get Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta to agree that the Iran deal is "the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler."

But the "Trump doesn't respect the intel community" argument raises another issue. Why doesn't Obama get the same criticism for rejecting his national security and intelligence team's advice on Iraq?

As a candidate, Obama called the Iraq War "dumb." He vowed to withdraw the troops and reposition them in Afghanistan -- the good war. As President, this is exactly what he did.

But he did so against the unanimous advice of the major national security voices in his administration.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged him to keep a stay-behind force. So did his secretary of Defense, the head of the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States ambassador to Iraq and his national security adviser.

Army Gen. Ray Odierno, former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said shorty after his retirement that had there been a stabilizing force in Iraq, ISIS could've been dealt with: "I go back to the work we did in 2007 (through) 2010, and we got into a place that was really good. Violence was low, the economy was growing, politics looked like it was heading in the right direction. ... We thought we had it going exactly in the right direction, but now we watch it fall apart. It's frustrating that it's falling apart. ... I think, maybe, if we had stayed a little bit more engaged, I think maybe it might have prevented it."

Think about it. Obama, with barely two years of experience in the Senate, and no foreign-policy experience, rejected the unanimous advice of his mission security team. He pulled completely out of Iraq, a decision that aided and abetted the rise of ISIS.

Trump gets hammered for ignoring the unanimous opinion of the intelligence community; Obama makes one of the most consequential decisions by completely ignoring their advice. And, as usual, Obama gets a pass.

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Trump 'Disrespects' the Intel Community? What About Obama's Iraq Bug-Out? - Townhall