{"id":180809,"date":"2016-12-25T21:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T02:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/25\/same-as-it-ever-was\/"},"modified":"2016-12-25T21:49:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T02:49:00","slug":"same-as-it-ever-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/25\/same-as-it-ever-was\/","title":{"rendered":"Same as It Ever Was\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/nIOrPbL.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/nIOrPbL.gif\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"200\" \/><\/a>It appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-idUSKBN14C1RW\">ground troops are back in combat in Iraq<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">U.S. forces assisting Iraqi troops to retake Mosul from Islamic State are embedding more extensively, a senior commander said on Friday, a move that could accelerate a two month-old campaign which has slackened after quick initial advances.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">More than 5,000 American service members are currently deployed in Iraq as part of an international coalition that is advising local forces in a bid to recapture the third of the country the jihadists seized in 2014 when Iraq&#8217;s army and police dropped their weapons and fled.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Coalition advisors were initially concentrated at a high-level headquarters in Baghdad but have fanned out over the past two years to multiple locations to stay near advancing troops.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as Iraqi forces controlling around a quarter of Mosul &#8211; Islamic State&#8217;s last major stronghold in Iraq &#8211; proceed deeper into the northern city and encounter fierce counter-attacks that render progress slow and punishing, U.S. troops are stepping up their involvement.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have always had opportunities to work side-by-side, but we have never been embedded to this degree,&#8221; he<\/span> [U.S. Army Colonel Brett G. Sylvia, commander of Task Force Strike] <span style=\"color: blue;\">said. &#8220;That was always a smaller niche mission. Well, this is our mission now and it is big and we are embedded inside their formations.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Obama said that he would get us out of Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Not so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that ground troops are back in combat in Iraq: U.S. forces assisting Iraqi troops to retake Mosul from Islamic State are embedding more extensively, a senior commander said on Friday, a move that could accelerate a two month-old campaign which has slackened after quick initial advances. More than 5,000 American service members are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[759,841,768,850,831],"class_list":["post-180809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-barack-obama","tag-civil-war","tag-fail","tag-iraq","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}