I actually lived though this and still have friends that were part of it, most if them feel bad about it but some still feel justified.

Reuters distancing American involvement, and suggesting reprisal executions would be counterproductive in strategic objective of taking Mosul but forgetting to mention that if performed would be war crimes.

Keep your Sunni side up up.
Keep your Sunni side up
We are all right
but the rest are Shiite
So keep your Sunni side up.

T’other’s

We are talking the Levant here

Shiite militias are backing up police and army soldiers, according to state-run al-Iraqiyah television. Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, arrived two days ago to “review and advise” Iraqi field commanders, the Fars news agency reported on Monday.

And:

There’s been no air cover because…

It's crazy. And remember, there is no Status of Forces Agreement for our troops. There's so much wrong here, and that's just what we can see from the other side of the world.

To put it in context, it's considerably less popular than Al Qaeda has generally been in those countries.

The assault on Tikrit (homeland of Saddam and the Baathists etc) is being led by the head of the Badr militia, who literally fought for Iran during the Iran/Iraq war, who is being 'advised' by the Iranian Quds forces most famous general. And the PM is…

It's going to be great fun for our troops supporting and training an army that won't even tell them when or where it's going to fight. Let alone that we've…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq_vk7Y39hM&app=desktop

The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official.

The U.S.-led…

Maybe so, but it's a long way short of:

despite the bulldust the hacks around here push these guys are immensely popular throughout the Arab speaking nations

I wouldn't call anything with even 5% support "immensely…

Russell, It's James. Of course not really. Fact free and happy.

Really?

The Islamic State group has substantially less support in Arab nations than it does in European countries, including Britain, according to a new report into attitudes…

Unfuckingbelievable. Like they've never heard of the 3 branches of government.

The 'sanitising' of soldier deaths will just end up like Pat Tillman's Afghanistan 'friendly fire' death case in the US...
apparently 'we the people' cannot cope with…

Obviously Recognising that New Zealand is merely a client state may not be a comforting thought for many. It leaves us feeling impotent and ineffectual. This inadequacy might spill over into the way we approach other issues e.g. say our nation faced a…

It’s numbly reassuring to forget that just a few months back we were trying to make head or tail of the Operation Speargun/ Cortex kerfuffle following revelations that a low level NSA analyst had finger enough on the pulse of New Zealand’s Intelligence community processes to…

My reading was much the same.

I didn't read the latter in the same light. It talked about self fulfilling prophesies, poor reasoning and a narrative that puts "the…

Indeed,…

They won't identify Jihad Jerry though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUpVAwiJ18E

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/02/20/3625446/atlantic-left-isis-conversation-bernard-haykel/

“If Muslims start criticizing these texts that ISIS is using, saying that they are no longer relevant or no longer applicable, ISIS would declare them apostate,” Haykel said. “If you start telling ISIS that…

The overall tone/narrative of The Atlantic piece is along the lines of 'The West thinks it's fighting Al-Quaeda 2.0. That is a wrong and dangerous assumption. Here's the real situation and why that assumption is dangerous'.

The overall tone of the NY piece is: 'The Atlantic article…

In which? The Atlantic or the New Yorker?

Thanks for that. But a distinct whiff of Straw Men and what-iffery, imho.

Local.
Also done fiction. Used to be a glam rock singer, according to him, but glam rock was pretty much done before he was born. Total tosser. You can find him on Simon Prast's feed. I think Simon keeps him around for amusement.

Local or overseas-based?

Frankly until 60 odd nations turn to the US of A and say that to them, we will circle the same bulsllshit. . Evidence is everywhere of the mess U.S gets other Countries into, by it's passive aggressive…

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/clash-civilizations-isnt

Don't be a dick is still a thing...

On the contrary. Peacekeeping and policing UN mandates are a far better way to show ourselves to the world.
no military action is without risk.
Indeed but it must be better to do something positive rather than continue the failed…

Hey, let me know when the first kid comes back in a symbolic box.

Yeah. Just like Labour eh? Wanting to look after unsuccessful people instead of the…

Yes, I think they would if it came down to war. Or at the very minimum say publicly "we won't vote for it, we won't vote to fund it, and we have to ask our…

Pedantically it would be much worse

Sure. At the cost of enormous losses on both sides. And there have…

Well..no, just on frigates, even if they sank all 4 of the frigates we had then, that would only be a bit over a thousand people. But I was talking about it becoming protracted, in the fantasy scenario that we take on Fiji. I…

But many conflicts since the US…

Do we have that many ships?

You're kidding, of course. It's a nice conceit that we would be able to intimidate Fiji militarily, but probably a completely false one. Quite aside…

2km off the end of the Suva airport runway and declare a no-fly zone

Threaten commercial air traffic?

To paraphrase Rik: "That's fine talk coming from a pacifist" (well, a nuclear free nation with a newly discovered…

Have you seen what infantry borne missiles do nowadays? None of our "navy" could afford…

Stick an Anzac frigate (or even the Leanders we had then) 2km off the end of the Suva airport runway and declare a no-fly zone. That'd stuff them up and they'd have no effective response.

The Snake Eaters

That was at the time when Fiji was earning significant foreign income from Fijian army mercenaries, who apparently were very highly skilled and hard as nails. They also apparently had quite interesting private "collections" of military hardware.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/23/reported-plan-to-invade-iraq-last-year-rocks-australian-politics/

Yet a story published Friday in the Australian newspaper claimed to show that Abbott had taken his macho behavior into the realm of geopolitical absurdity – by suggesting a unilateral Australian "invasion" of Iraq.

There was a…

Depressing that dropping barrel bombs and gassing your own citizens doesn't make you the worst person in Syria. Ten years ago we were there, it was amazing, the people were lovely, hospitable, diverse …

A VFA?

There’s a breathless hush in Zealandia to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiXNUaSjXRY

Is that why they will go in with diplomatic passports also?

I gather there are a few people troubled by this.

Is also my understanding, based on The Atlantic article I linked to…

It's unlikely that they will now that ISIS has declared the Caliphate*.

See this excellent article which in my opinion is required reading for anyone discussing this topic.

*needless to say, that doesn't mean that dealing with this issue makes…

If I understand correctly, if somebody calls you an apostate then either they're right in which case they have to kill you, or they're wrong, in which case they are considered apostate and you have to kill them.

Given…

Which is also having the interesting side-effect of further…

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/23/8085197/is-isis-losing

Norman's speech would give an indication of the Green Party's position. Of course this may change if they choose a more 'flexible' blue/green co-leader.

There are a few solutions that might work:
– the 19th century approach would be to slaughter all the inhabitants down to the last goat and plant…

Equally for Labour. Would it be more important to them to go into an unpopular and…

Traditionally it has always been thus, and for good reason. The decision to go to war may need to be made quickly and as such the PM needs the power to make that call.

That…

That Max Key, he must be conscription age by now...

Yeah I do. I may have a lot of criticisms of the The Greens but frankly that would be too large a dead rat for them to swallow (many of them are vegetarians after all).…

The bare minimum should be to put it to a vote in the House. Had Sabin not been "put out to graze" there would have, no…

"Hello, is that the 6 pm news? Here's today's murder clip, all ready to go. I think you'll like it, a real video nasty. Saves on paying journos, eh?"

"Ooh, thank you. Keep 'em coming! Remember – reports on…

Do you think…

It would be a huge dilemma for the Greens, if they had policy wins they were delivering, and they had…

Exactly!

Well the 16 Kiwis and the 130 odd (and diminishing or growing dependent on survival)
will have plenty of that as they are behind the imaginary wire. The SAS will be there before we know it under some bullshit banner Key…

I think that ignores the elephant in the room: under MMP, with its most…

http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/02/25/gordon-campbell-are-nz-troops-the-least-of-iss-problems/

If one was a gambling person I would bet against the coalition doing the right thing at the right time, as this entire situation underlines in more ways than one

I am depressed we're sending a force, I…

We MUST do something about the kurds! They're a threat to Kiwi travelers and worse than the…

Which goes some way to explaining the US urgency to get into Mosul.

And yeah it isn't clear that Turkey is entirely a good guy in this chaos either, it seems to very much depend on who ISIS is shooting as to whether Turkey is all that…

Except Key did not give the decision to the house it was a cabinet, and therefore a minority decision. This may be a political blunder, as instead of calling on the…

Armour against ideas?
Haven’t we been here before?
Rinse and repeat…

add: This story seems highly relevant geopolitically, as well.

my take from…

He cites this lengthy piece in the Atlantic Monthly [[http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ | What…

Further to that aside, the Radio Pacific talkback show that Muldoon hosted in his dotage presented him as a suburban lily-fancier, with the issues of the day leavened with calls from fellow lily-heads. In real life Muldoon apparently knew squat about…

Isn't it yet another legacy of the ill-conceived Sykes-Picot Agreement?

Yep, I've always thought that accountants are better weapons against ISIS than soldiers. But potential trading partners might be at stake.

* Middle East Friendship Chart
* The Middle East, explained in one (sort of terrifying) chart

Cutting off the supply of funding and weapons would hurt the big nations far too much. Unthinkable.

But there are ordinary people who's lives have been disrupted and destroyed – peace in Iraq and Syria largely depends on their welbeing becoming everyone's primary goal, not…

The question then is "is this one of those times?"

For me, as for most people it is pretty clear that peace is needed in Syria and…

John Key forgot to add “and ponies for everyone”.

It was ISIL's throwing of gay people off…

If the real reason for going into Iraq (again), as with the 2003 invasion, isn't to genuinely make the…

Unless we're just training them on marching and how to pack their bags, of course.

If we're going to put our troops in harm's way we…