U.S. pulling Patriot missiles from Turkey

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, an F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as the U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2015, launched its first airstrikes by Turkey-based F-16 fighter jets against Islamic State targets in Syria. (Krystal Ardrey/U.S. Air Force via AP))

The U.S. military is pulling its Patriot missiles from Turkey this fall, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced Sunday.

The Patriot missiles "will be redeployed to the United States for critical modernization upgrades," according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Turkey.  "This decision follows a U.S. review of global missile defense posture."

"The U.S. and NATO commitments to the defense of Allies - including Turkey - are steadfast," the statement said.

The U.S. military has deployed Patriot missiles along the Turkey-Syria border since 2013 along with a ground force of 300 U.S. Army soldiers to operate them, protecting Turkey from potential Syrian missiles.

The decision to pull the missiles has been "long planned" and is not a response to Turkey's unannounced massive airstrike against a Kurdish separatist group in northern Iraq on July 24, a State Dept. official said. The strike endangered U.S. Special Forces on the ground training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, angering U.S. military officials. The U.S. military was taken completely by surprise by the Turkish airstrike, which involved 26 jets, military sources told Fox News.

Patriot missiles have been upgraded in recent years to shoot down ballistic missiles, in addition to boasting an ability to bring down enemy aircraft. The U.S. military has deployed these missiles along Turkey's border with Syria.

When a Kurdish journalist asked the Army's outgoing top officer, Gen. Raymond Odierno, about the incident over northern Iraq at his final press conference Wednesday, Odierno replied: "We've had conversations about this to make sure it doesn't happen."

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. It is influenced by Marxist ideology and has been responsible for recent attacks in Turkey, killing Turkish police and military personnel. A separate left-wing radical group was responsible for attacking the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul last week.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said in recent days that Turkey has a right to defend itself against the PKK.

A senior military source told Fox News that Turkey is worried about recent gains by Syrian Kurds, some affiliated with the PKK. But the group is seen as an effective ground force against ISIS, helping pinpoint ISIS targets for U.S. warplanes. 

The Turks, however, worry Syrian Kurds will take over most of the 560-mile border it shares with Syria.

Currently, ISIS controls a 68-mile strip along the Turkey-Syria border, but Turkey does not want Kurdish fighters involved in the fight to push out ISIS from this portion of the border because it would enable the Kurds to control a large swath of land stretching from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Right now Syrian Kurds occupy both sides of the contested 68-mile border controlled by ISIS.

Of the 30 million Kurds living in the Middle East, 14 million reside in Turkey. They are one of the world's largest ethnic groups without its own country.

Despite Turkey being listed among the 62-nation anti-ISIS coalition, it has yet to be named as a country striking ISIS in the coalition's daily airstrike report.  

A week ago, after months of negotiations, the U.S. Air Force moved six F-16 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey from their base in Italy and several KC-135 refueling planes. Airstrikes against ISIS in Syria soon followed.    

The decision to allow manned U.S. military aircraft inside Turkey came days after an ISIS suicide bomber killed dozens of Turkish citizens.

Part of Turkey's reluctance to do more against ISIS is because Turkey wants the U.S. military to take on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But that is not U.S. policy.  

"We are not at war with the Assad regime," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said recently.

The animosity between Turkey and Syria goes back decades. In 1939, Turkey annexed its southern most province, Hatay, from Assad family land. Syria has never recognized the move and the two countries have been at odds ever since.

"If needed, we are prepared to return Patriot assets and personnel to Turkey within one week," a defense official told Fox News.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

Stratcom Deploys Bombers Near Baltics

Three B-52s join war games

Three nuclear-capable bombers deployed to Europe this week for large-scale military exercises near Russia, the Strategic Command announced Friday night.

The B-52s from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, are currently operating from a base in Britain and joined maritime naval exercises in the Baltic Sea called Baltops 15, the largest naval exercise by NATO forces in the region this year.

The exercises are being held on and above international waters in the Baltic Sea and in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—the Baltic states—and Poland.

All four nations fear Russia’s military aggression in Crimea and continuing destabilization in eastern Ukraine will be followed by Moscow’s use of military force against them.

The Baltic states last month asked NATO to permanently deploy up to 5,000 troops to the region to deter NATO aggression. Poland also wants a permanent NATO military presence.

Russian generals told U.S. officials in March during a meeting in Germany that Russia would take destabilizing actions against the Baltic states if NATO troops are stationed there.

Russia threatened to conduct a “spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military,” the Times of London reported, quoting a participant at the meeting.

The Russian generals compared the situation in the Baltics to the conditions in Ukraine prior to the annexation of Crimea.

The U.S. bomber deployment to Europe also comes amid a sharp increase in Russian long-range bomber flights in both Europe and North America, including close flights within U.S. and Canadian air defense zones in recent months.

The bombers also will take part in an international U.S. Army Europe-led exercise called Saber Strike. That exercise aims to boost cooperation and war-fighting capabilities of regional allies for future contingency operations.

Baltops 15 will include practicing mine clearing, anti-submarine warfare, and surface-to-air defenses. Other activities include counter-piracy and small boat operations.

For Saber Strike, the bombers will take part in air intercept training for regional air forces, simulated mining operations, inert bomb drops and close air support.

“The deployment demonstrates the United States’ ability to project its flexible, long-range global strike capability and provides opportunities to synchronize strategic activities and capabilities with allies and partners in the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) area of operations during the month of June,” Stratcom said in a statement announcing the deployment.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

OBAMA MAKES TWO MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY GAFFES ON EUROPE TRIP

RE-WRITING HISTORY THE FLY!!!!

President Obama has made two major gaffes so far during his Europe trip. After falsely claimed that Kosovo held a UN-assisted referendum on self-determination, he then wrongly said that Georgia was not being considered for NATO membership.

Speaking on Kosovo yesterday, Obama said : "...Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organised not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbours. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea."

But none of it came close to happening in Kosovo either, as Milos Subotic, the International Relations Officer of the University of Pristina, Kosovo told Breitbart London. 

"During his yesterday speech in Brussels, President Obama showed a lack of knowledge of the political situation in Kosovo. Kosovo never organised any kind of referendum, but the Assembly of Provisional Institutions of self-government of Kosovo made a unilateral declaration of independence on February 17th 2008.

"The declaration of independence has been recognised by approximately one hundred states, however Serbia and many countries have also showed their opposition to declaration of independence, most notably China and Russia. What Kosovo did was not in line with United Nations and that’s confirmed by the fact that Kosovo is not member of UN."

Dr. James Ker-Lindsay, a Senior Research Fellow on the Politics of South East Europe at the London School of Economics took to Twitter to correct the U.S. President before telling Breitbart London: "I think one must assume that this was indeed an error. However, it really does seem to be an incredible mistake to have made. Surely there must have been someone at hand who would have known that there was no UN organised referendum in Kosovo. It really was not that long ago.

"It will certainly play into the hands of those who believe that the United States is now trying to rewrite history to put a better gloss on its own actions.

"It will be interesting to see if a retraction or correction is issued by the White House."

If messing up on Kosovo wasn’t enough, Obama has now also potentially undermined Georgia’s application to join NATO.

Speaking at the press conference after the EU-US summit yesterday the US President wrongly suggested that Georgia "is not currently on a path to NATO membership". In fact the country has been on the path to membership since 2008.

VIA: Breitbart

Continue Reading.....

Last of US Surge Troops Leave Afghanistan

AP

Last of US Surge Troops Leave Afghanistan, Officials Say

U.S. officials say that nearly two years after President Barack Obama ordered 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to tamp down escalating Taliban violence, the last of those surge troops have left the country.

The withdrawal leaves 68,000 American forces in the warzone. It comes as the security transition to Afghan forces is in trouble, threatened by a spike in so-called insider attacks in which Afghan Army and police troops, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have been attacking and killing U.S. and NATO forces.

And it's called into question the core strategy that relies on NATO troops working closely with Afghans, training them to take over the security of their own country so the U.S. and its allies can leave at the end of 2014 as planned.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading...

Setbacks Piling Up in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The end game in Afghanistan is off to a shaky start.

Just as the last U.S. "surge" troops leave the country, trouble is breaking out in ways that go to the core of the strategy for winding down the U.S. and allied combat role and making Afghans responsible for their own security. At stake is the goal of ensuring that Afghanistan not revert to being a terrorist haven.

Nearly two years after President Barack Obama announced that he was sending another 33,000 troops to take on the Taliban, those reinforcements are completing their return to the United States this week. That leaves about 68,000 American troops, along with their NATO allies and Afghan partners, to carry out an ambitious plan to put the Afghans fully in the combat lead as early as next year.

But the setbacks are piling up: a spasm of deadly attacks on U.S. and NATO forces by Afghan soldiers and police, including three attacks in the last three days; an audacious Taliban assault on a coalition air base that killed two Marines and destroyed six fighter jets; and a NATO airstrike that inadvertently killed eight Afghan women and girls.

The Pentagon on Monday identified the two Marines killed at Camp Bastion on Friday as Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible, 40, of Huntingdon, Pa., and Sgt. Bradley W. Atwell, 27, of Kokomo, Ind. Raible was commander of the Harrier squadron that had six of its planes destroyed in the assault.

Tensions over the anti-Islam movie produced in the U.S. that ridicules the Prophet Mohammad also spread to Kabul, where demonstrations turned violent Monday when protesters burned cars and threw rocks at a U.S. military base.

Those events help the Taliban's aim of driving a wedge between the Americans and their Afghan partners. They also show that the Taliban, while weakened, remains a force to be reckoned with, 11 years after the first U.S. troops arrived to drive the Taliban out.

The extra troops began moving into Afghanistan in early 2010, pushing the total U.S. force to a peak of 101,000 by mid-2011.

The U.S. troop surge was supposed to put so much military pressure on the Taliban that its leaders — most of whom are in Pakistan — would feel compelled to come to the peace table. That hasn't happened. Preliminary contacts began, but have been stymied.

Via: Town Hall

Continue Reading...