Kurdish pleas for weapons may finally be heard (link corrected)
Last edited Sat Aug 9, 2014, 10:41 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: AP-Excite
By KEN DILANIAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, Kurdish officials have beseeched the Obama administration to let them buy U.S. weapons. And for just as long, the administration has rebuffed the Kurds, America's closest allies in Iraq.
U.S. officials insisted they could only sell arms to the government in Baghdad, even after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki broke a written promise to deliver some of them to the Kurds, whose peaceful, semi-autonomous northern region had been the lone success story to come out of the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Now, the administration is confronting the consequences of that policy. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which some American officials have dubbed "a terrorist army," overpowered lightly armed Kurdish units in a blitzkrieg that has threatened the Kurdish region and the American personnel stationed there.
In June, the Pentagon dispatched 300 military advisers to Iraq. Dozens of them are operating out of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, which is now under threat from the Islamic State.
FULL story at link.
CORRECTS CAPTION TO REFLECT THAT THE SOURCE OF THE AIRSTRIKE MENTIONED IS UNKNOWN Kurdish Peshmerga fighters stand guard during airstrikes targeting Islamic State militants near the Khazer checkpoint outside of the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, Friday, Aug. 8, 2014. The Iraqi Air Force has been carrying out strikes against the militants, and for the first time on Friday, U.S. war planes also directly targeted the group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140809/us-united-states-kurds-0d10b1ea15.html
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