US Military to Initiate Operations in Syria
By James Cogan
Global Research
August 26, 2014
The Obama administration has ordered the start of US military operations inside Syria, in addition to ongoing air strikes and renewed troop deployments in Iraq. Officials from US Central Command in the Middle East informed theWall Street Journal late Monday that “the Pentagon is preparing to conduct reconnaissance flights over Syria.” The surveillance missions would be aimed at gathering the necessary information to carry out air strikes and possible ground assaults.
The pretext for military operations into Syria is to curb the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni-based Islamist force that has captured much of eastern Syria during the country’s three-year civil war and which this year seized large areas of western and northern Iraq. The US began air attacks on ISIS in Iraq earlier this month, claiming they would be limited to preventing the massacre of thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority. The air campaign soon escalated into providing air support to Kurdish offensives to retake Mosul Dam and pushing ISIS fighters back from positions they held within 30 kilometres of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
Last week, General Martin Dempsey, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out the justification for extending the air war into Syria, telling a press conference: “Can they [ISIS] be defeated without addressing that part of the organisation that resides in Syria? The answer is no.” The murder of American journalist James Foley, who was being held prisoner in Syria by ISIS, has been seized upon throughout the American political and media establishment to call for attacks to begin.
The corporate media has also extensively reported the weekend capture by ISIS forces of the last Syrian Army base in eastern Syria, the Taqba air base in the largely ISIS-held province of Raqqa. After heavy fighting last week, Syrian troops abandoned their defence of the facility on Sunday after suffering several hundred casualties. Some soldiers captured by the Islamists were reportedly beheaded. ISIS forces in Syria have been able to deploy armoured vehicles, artillery and other weapons captured from US-equipped Iraqi government units.
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