WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde into the Persian Gulf as concern grows over a militant group’s advancement toward Iraq’s capital.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby says the Mesa Verde has already moved into the Gulf, joining the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and other U.S. naval ships.
Kirby says the ships’ presence will give President Barack Obama “additional options to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq.”
The Pentagon says the Mesa Verde carries Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that can be used for crisis response.
The State Department is reinforcing security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and evacuating some personnel. The militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, has taken over several cities in northern Iraq.
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Who gets the strikes? What of the Iraqis who see ISIS as liberators? Do they get the strikes? Maliki let this all happen. Does he get the strikes?
Why is America so addicted to threatening and killing Iraqis?
they’re gonna need a bigger boat when time comes for the evacuations… hell, at least a couple of thousand of americans. just imagine how many iraqis are going to be charging thru the green zone. if you thought the helicopter evacuation from saigon was dramatic, this one is going to be beyond anything anticipated. it’s going to get considerably messier…
Just to note: The ship is not amphibious. It only operates on water. But it supports amphibious operations. (Yes, I know that there is limited space for headlines, but there was enough space to say "amphibious operations ship).
W’s one n’ done, the gift that keeps on giving.
When an STA shoulder fired rocket takes out an Osprey, then what?
W’s technological forward listening base (The US Embassy) surely absorbed like a cum towel, the billions in US tax dollars and then some, that the Pentagon, Neocons, CIA and who know who else wanted.
Of course, not unlike in Afghanistan, where we built bases and power stations that will be scrapped-stripped by the locals when we exit, this behemoth, has the footprint and potential of an albatross on a clipper ship.
One which can be seen from space.
Finally, a use for our bunker buster arsenal.
What utter tripe. Wrong on every level I might add.
Iraq was going to Balkanize eventually from the moment we overthrew the Ba’athist regime. And Bush signed the SOFA which not only dictated that not only all our troops had to be out by 2011 but all Iraqi detainees be transferred to Iraqi custody as well.
That said, are you suggesting that President Obama should have broken the signed agreement and forced or troops to stay in Iraq these past five years in a war that should never have been launched when the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government didn’t want us there, which also would not have prevented the current unwinding of Iraq, a fictional country created out of whole cloth when the French and British arbitrarily drew lines on a map in 1922?
The amount of pig-ignorance and dissembling in your short comment is pretty impressive though. Well done.