Iraq Video DiaryDay 1
What #39;s it like when you travel to restricted nations for VOM? That question is one of the most common as our staff meets people at VOM conferences and other public settings. Our hope is that...
By: VoiceOfTheMartyrsUSA
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Iraq Video DiaryDay 1 - Video
FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, file photo, Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, Jr., Director of Operations J3, speaks about the operations in Syria during a news conference at the Pentagon. According to current and former U.S. officials, the Pentagon is grappling with significant intelligence gaps as it bombs Iraq and Syria, and it is operating under less restrictive targeting rules than those President Barack Obama imposed on the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)(The Associated Press)
WASHINGTON The Pentagon is grappling with significant intelligence gaps as it bombs Iraq and Syria, and it is operating under less restrictive targeting rules than those President Barack Obama imposed on the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The U.S. military says its airstrikes have been discriminating and effective in disrupting an al-Qaida cell called the Khorasan Group and in halting the momentum of Islamic State militants. But independent analysts say the Islamic State group remains on the offensive in areas of Iraq and Syria, where it still controls large sections. And according to witnesses, U.S. airstrikes have at times hit empty buildings that were long ago vacated by Islamic State fighters.
Human rights groups also say coalition airstrikes in both countries have killed as many as two dozen civilians. U.S. officials say they can't rule out civilian deaths but haven't confirmed any.
"We do take extreme caution and care in the conduct of these missions," Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, told reporters Tuesday. "But there's risk in any military operation. There's a special kind of risk when you do air operations."
Military officials acknowledge that they are relying mainly on satellites, drones and surveillance flights to pinpoint targets, assess the damage afterward and determine whether civilians were killed.
That stands in sharp contrast to the networks of bases, spies and ground-based technology the U.S. had in place during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials say.
As a result, "it's much harder for us to be able to know for sure what it is we're hitting, what it is we're killing and what it is collateral damage," said Tom Lynch, a retired colonel and former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is now a fellow at the National Defense University.
In Iraq, the U.S. is relying for ground reports on the Iraqi military and intelligence services, whose insights into Islamic State-controlled territory are limited.
In Syria, the U.S. is not coordinating the strikes with the main moderate opposition group, the Free Syrian Army, even though it has backed that group with weapons and training, said Andrew Tabler, who follows the conflict for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
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Airstrikes in Iraq, Syria launched amid intelligence gaps, less restrictive targeting
A Kurdish peshmerga soldier who was wounded Sept. 30 in fierce battles in nearby Nineveh province with Islamic State group militants is brought to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Dahuk, Iraq. Hadi Mizban/The Associated Press hide caption
A Kurdish peshmerga soldier who was wounded Sept. 30 in fierce battles in nearby Nineveh province with Islamic State group militants is brought to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Dahuk, Iraq.
Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq captured a border crossing with Syria on Tuesday, expelling Islamic State militants in heavy fighting that ground down to vicious house-to-house combat and close-quarters sniping.
In neighboring Syria, Kurdish militiamen were on the defensive as the extremists pressed ahead with a relentless assault on a town near the Turkish border. The attack on Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, has driven more than 160,000 people across the frontier in the past few days.
Kurdish fighters man a weapon mounted on a pickup truck as they take position behind cement blocks Aug. 29 in the Iraqi city of Rabia on the Iraqi-Syrian border, where clashes with Islamic State militants were taking place. A month later on Sept. 30, Kurdish forces finally were able to retake the city. Reuters /Landov hide caption
Kurdish fighters man a weapon mounted on a pickup truck as they take position behind cement blocks Aug. 29 in the Iraqi city of Rabia on the Iraqi-Syrian border, where clashes with Islamic State militants were taking place. A month later on Sept. 30, Kurdish forces finally were able to retake the city.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, were doing the bulk of the fighting on the ground as a U.S.-led coalition carried out an aerial assault against the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria. Britain joined the air campaign Tuesday, carrying out its first strikes against the extremists in Iraq though it does not plan to expand into Syria.
On Tuesday, Kurdish fighters in Iraq said they saw some of the heaviest fighting yet. Peshmerga spokesman Halgurd Hekmat told The Associated Press the Kurds seized the border crossing of Rabia, which the extremists captured in their blitz across Iraq over the summer.
Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said the Kurds had retaken the border post. He said Syrian Kurdish militiamen, who control the Syrian side of the frontier, had helped in the fight.
Kurds wounded in the fighting were brought to a makeshift clinic in the town of Salhiyah, where dusty and exhausted, they described savage battles, with militants sniping at them from inside homes and from the windows of a hospital in Rabia.
Read more here:
Kurds Retake Syria-Iraq Border Crossing As U.K. Begins Bombing
University of Colorado Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, right, hands Ako M. Wahbi, of the Zheen Archive Center, a disk containing digital copies of captured Iraqi Secret Police files. (Mark Leffingwell, Daily Camera)
BOULDER A Kurdish delegation in Colorado retrieving cached documents detailing Iraqi persecution say Kurdish fighters can provide the increasingly sought ground force to defeat the Islamic State because this will help Kurds gain independence and be "the next Israel."
But battle-hardened Kurdish forces, credited with gains in Syria, need better weapons like night vision, artillery, anti-tank, delegation members said Tuesday.
And U.S. officials must realize that trying to keep semi-autonomous Kurdish Iraq as part of a united Iraq ultimately "will fail," said Woshiar Rasul, an adviser to the governor in Kurds' main city Sulaymaniyah.
Kurdish leaders since the 1970s have accepted limited autonomy but even within Iraq's latest coalition government "there is no full trust," Rasul said.
"We've acted exactly according to what the United States requested. We've remained in Iraq," he said. Yet, for nine months, Iraqi officials in Baghdad haven't even paid salaries of Kurdish participants in the government, Rasul said.
The U.S. government's insistence on a unified Iraq is understandable, said Ako Wahbi, owner of a contracting firm and leader of Kurdish efforts to build up history archives for museums.
"You came to the Middle East. You spent a lot of money and lives of your young soldiers. And the outcome is not what you tried to do," Wahbi said.
But even if Kurds stay temporarily as part of Iraq "there will be another conflict," he said, adding that Iraq's Sunni and Shia factions "hate each other more than they hate the Kurds."
A robust role repelling Islamic State militants "can give a good advantage for our future," Wahbi said. "Our only dream, up until now, is a Kurdistan independent state."
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Iraq Kurds collect history at CU, want 'new Israel' Kurdistan
Children in Iraq: Noor #39;s story
"Every night I dream of being back at my school, with my teacher teaching me, my parents returned to me." Meet Noor, living with her sister at Beharka camp, Iraq, after fleeing her hometown...
By: UNICEFUK
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Children in Iraq: Noor's story - Video