Add another $415 million to our tab in the Middle East. We now stand just under $5 trillion total spent on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. Anyone ready to close out?
The pentagon decided on Monday to provide $415 million in aid for Kurdish fighters, called peshmerga, who they hope will play a key role in taking back the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, Iraq.
On a brief visit to Baghdad, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter also said that additional AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and another Lockheed Martin M142High Mobility Artillery Rocket System would be sent to Iraq to "accelerate" the campaign.
In an interview with CBS' Charlie Rose, Obama said that the deployment of more U.S. advisers and additional weapons systems were part of the overall plan to back local forces in the fight against ISIS.
Last month, Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin was killed and eight other Marines were wounded by ISIS rocket fire that hit a fire base for 155mm howitzers set up by Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit near Makhmour.
We continue to send U.S. service members and hard earned tax dollars to a land thousands of miles away with nothing to show for it. Less than ten days ago it was reported that the so-called Kurdish forces had halted an offensive into Mosul, dropped their weaponry, and retreated to safe ground after receiving fire from an ISIS stronghold on the outskirts of the city.
"The Iraqi Army commenced an assault on ISIS strongholds around Mosul, but when ISIS fired back, the Iraqi Army ran away and the assaults ended," a western, Iraq-based security and defense specialist told FoxNews.com of last week's failed offensive. "So now they are regrouping and rethinking their next options."
The reason for retreat? The Iraqi forces were unfamiliar with the territory.
"These [Iraqi army] forces aren't from that area necessarily, so they're learning the area," U.S. Army Maj. Jon-Paul Depreo told reporters in Baghdad.
So is this what we tell the family of Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin from California? Your son died because the Iraqi forces we have paid billions of your tax dollars to cannot take Mosul because they are unfamiliar with the area?
How much longer will it take for the U.S. government to realize that these tactics in the Middle East are fundamentally wrong?