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Officials have confirmed that the U.S. military, despite vowing not to use depleted uranium weapons on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, fired thousands of rounds of the such munitions during two high-profile raids on oil trucks in Islamic State-controlled Syria in late 2015.

The air assaults mark the first confirmed use of this armament since the 2003 Iraq invasion, when it was used hundreds of thousands of times, setting off outrage among local communities, which alleged that its toxic material caused cancer and birth defects.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques told Airwars and Foreign Policy that 5,265 armor-piercing 30 mm rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were shot from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft on Nov. 16 and Nov. 22, 2015, destroying about 250 vehicles in the country's eastern desert.

Earlier in the campaign, both coalition and U.S. officials said the ammunition had not and would not be used in anti-Islamic State operations. In March 2015, coalition spokesman John Moore said, "U.S. and coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve."

Later that month, a Pentagon representative told War is Boring that A-10s deployed in the region would not have access to armor-piercing ammunition containing DU because the Islamic State didn't possess the tanks it is designed to penetrate.

It remains unclear if the November 2015 strikes occurred near populated areas. In 2003, hundreds of thousands of rounds were shot in densely settled areas during the American invasion, leading to deep resentment and fear among Iraqi civilians and anger at the highest levels of government in Baghdad. In 2014, in a U.N. report on DU, the Iraqi government expressed "its deep concern over the harmful effects" of the material. DU weapons, it said, "constitute a danger to human beings and the environment" and urged the United Nations to conduct in-depth studies on their effects.

Such studies of DU have not yet been completed, and scientists and doctors say as a result there is still very limited credible "direct epidemiological evidence" connecting DU to negative health effects.

The potential popular blowback from using DU, however, is very real. While the United States insists it has the right to use the weapon, experts call the decision to use the weapon in such quantities against targets it wasn't designed for - such as tanks - peculiar at best.

The U.S. raids were part of "Tidal Wave II" - an operation aimed at crippling infrastructure that the Islamic State relied on to sell millions of dollars' worth of oil. The Pentagon said the Nov. 16 attacks happened in the early morning near Al-Bukamal, a city in the governorate of Deir Ezzor near the border with Iraq, and destroyed 116 tanker trucks. Though the coalition said that the strikes occurred entirely in Syrian territory, both sides of the frontier were completely under the control of the militant group at the time.

Any firing of DU in Iraqi territory would have far greater political repercussions, given the anger over its previous use there. The Nov. 16 video below shows tankers hit first by larger ordnances, before others are engulfed in sparks and ripped apart by fire from 30 mm cannons.

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Official: US military used depleted uranium for first time since 2003 Iraq invasion - Chicago Tribune

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Feb. 14, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterdays strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber and fighter aircraft, as well as rocket artillery, conducted 18 strikes consisting of 21 engagements in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an oil pump jack.

-- Near Raqqa, 15 strikes engaged nine ISIS tactical units; destroyed 13 fighting positions, a tactical vehicle and an ISIS headquarters; damaged three supply routes and a bridge; and suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, two strikes destroyed nine oil tanker trucks and two oil pump jacks and damaged on oil wellhead.

Strikes in Iraq

Fighter and rotary aircraft, as well as artillery, conducted eight strikes consisting of 27 engagements in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Mosul, three strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units; destroyed four watercraft, three front-end loaders and a mortar system; damaged nine supply routes; and suppressed eight ISIS mortar teams.

-- Near Rawah, three strikes damaged three supply routes.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIS fighting position.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a front-end loader.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIS to use.

Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIS terrorist group and the threat it poses to Iraq, Syria, the region and the wider international community. The destruction of targets in Syria and Iraq further limits ISIS' ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Originally posted here:
Inherent Resolve Strikes Target ISIS in Syria, Iraq - Department of Defense

Media Matters for America (blog)

NBC News Appoints An Iraq War Cheerleader As Its New President Media Matters for America (blog) As NBC News faces growing questions about moving to the right, the network's chairman, Andrew Lack, announced that Noah Oppenheim, a Today show producer who was an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War and has a lengthy history with conservative ... and more »

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NBC News Appoints An Iraq War Cheerleader As Its New President - Media Matters for America (blog)

Iraqs government is ambitious and it wants to make the most of the countrys oil and gas reserves. Plans for an expansion of the countrys refinery network have been circulating for years, but the war with IS has put these on hold. Whats worse is that the prospects for these plans are gloomy unless it gets a significant amount of external help.

Before the war with IS engulfed OPECs second-largest exporter, plans were to add five new refineries to the network over a period of 20 years, starting in 2008. At the time, the refining capacity of Iraq stood around 886,000 bpd.

Since then, the only progress made has been the start of construction of the Karbala refinery, as one expert, the former chief of the Energy Study Secretarial of OPEC, notes in an industry analysis.

In it, Saadallah al Fathi quotes information from an unnamed industry insider who had told media that Iraqs government is planning the construction of not five but twelve to thirteen new refineries with combined installed capacity of between 1.425 and 1.530 million bpd. All this is supposed to happen in the next four years, no less.

Al Fathi is right to be suspicious of this information. He is also suspicious of the unnamed sources statement that Iran will be helping Iraq prop up its downstream industry, but these suspicions are not so well grounded: Irans current rulers are allies of the government of Haider al-Abadi, and it makes sense to suggest that the neighbors have realized that if they work together they may reap more benefits than if they try to compete.

The suspicion surrounding the timeline for the construction of these twelve or more refineries, however, is sound. Iraq is still fighting IS the army has not yet retaken Mosul. Progress with that mission has been slow, but it is being made and we will probably see the terrorist group ousted from its last big stronghold in Iraq later this year.

This, however, will not solve Iraqs security problems: the consensus in army circles seems to be that a prolonged presence of U.S. forces will be needed to help the Iraqi army maintain peace between various religious groups and deal with the very likely resurgence of IS.

This situation is by no means conducive to business. Investors are bound to be wary when they make decisions about throwing money at new refineries. And without external investors, Iraqs refinery expansion plan is doomed.

Related:Is $60 Oil Within Reach?

The countrys coffers have been drained from the war with IS and the oil price crash. Iraq cant even make the most of the price improvement because it has to cut its production as per the agreement struck with the other members of OPEC as a way of propping up prices. It cant wriggle out of the agreement because traders and analysts are watching it like hawks: Iraq is considered the most likely OPEC member to cheat on its compliance with the agreement precisely because it needs more oil revenues desperately.

Last month, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi reassured the market that Iraq will stick to its undertaking in the production cut agreement, adding that it plans to tender five new refineries on an investment basis, and expand existing ones, most of them damaged during the war with IS. Saadallah al Fathi is skeptical the investment basis has been advertised before but has failed to attract meaningful investor interest.

While skepticism may be in order when it comes to war-torn Iraq, it is still the country with the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world, and that changes things. It all seems to hinge on the success in rooting out IS from Iraq and on the success of the output cut deal, which has so far been limited.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Iraq Plans For Enormous Boost To Refining Capacity - Yahoo Finance

Anoud (her pen name) arrived in the United States in late December 2016. She was engaged to be married to an American citizen, so entered the US on a fiance visa.

Catch our podcast: The World in Words

Each week on The World in Words, Patrick Cox and Nina Porzucki tell stories about languages and the people who speak them.

Within a month, Donald Trump was president, and days after that he issued his seven-country immigration and refugee ban. One of the countries was Iraq, Anoud's place of birth.

"It feels very strange," says the writer. Almost as strange as her dystopian story "Kahramana," which imagines Iraq in the year 2103 as a country split into zones. One, the Islamic Empire of Wadi Hashish,is run by a bumbling, extremist narcissist with hints of both Islamic State and Donald Trump. Another zone, Baghdadistan, is overseen by NATO. All sides, including humanitarian groups,playfast and loose with the facts. Would-berefugee Kahramana, whose name recalls the slave girl in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," is no saint herself.

Anoud writes in English, though she spends much of her time thinking in Arabic. Her bilingualism stems from a childhood spent in England and Ireland as well as Iraq.

I knew I had to visit Anoud in her New York home for The World in Words podcast. There, she told me of her upbringing at one stage she believed she was Irish and her blossoming as a storyteller, first in Arabic, then in English. She also told me ofresearch she did for Western news organizations about extremist groups, predominantly ISIS. Her conclusions are chilling.

"Whenyou listen to the Trump administration and the people who support Trump, some of them are specifically picking on the rhetoric that says, 'Ban Muslims, ban immigrants, all Arabs are crazy,'" she says. "It is the exact same way of thinking of someone who supports ISIS, [who]says, 'All Americans are bad; you can't speak English, you can't be a Westerner or you're an infidel.'"

Dark it may sound, but in her fiction,Anoud transforms observations like these into vivid satirical episodes, always with a sting in the tail.

1:40 What the name Anoud means.

2:20 Coming to America.

4:50 "Take me back home, I'm Irish!"

5:20 A gift from a teacher.

7:40 Falling in love with Baghdad.

9:32 "Write in English! Talk to them!"

10:00 Arabic vs English.

12:08 An excerpt from "Kahramana."

15:40 "You're Iraqi, how cute!"

16:50 "I'm obsessed with ISIS."

17:30 ISIS and some Trump supporters: a shared intolerance.

19:50 "In Arabic, the adjectives automatically creep in."

20:30 Check out Anoud's story in"Iraq + 100," stories by Iraqi writers who imagine Iraq 100 years after the 2003 US invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein.

You can follow The World in Words stories onFacebookor subscribe to the podcast oniTunes.

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2017 feels almost as strange as this writer's dystopian vision of Iraq in 2103 - PRI