Thursday, August 14, 2014
Just like that famous ad for potato chips
The one that says you can't eat just one. Seems that same compulsion applies to bombing missions in Iraq.
President Obama on Thursday claimed victory in the effort to rescue Yazidi refugees from a mountaintop in Iraq, but said that airstrikes in that country would continue in order to protect Americans and offer assistance to other Iraqis threatened by Sunni militants.Who knew that airstrikes were so tasty we couldn't resist having more.
Speaking to reporters during his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Obama declared the siege of Mount Sinjar over, crediting American drops of food and airstrikes.
“I could not be prouder of the men and women of our military who carried out this humanitarian mission almost flawlessly,” the president said.
Mr. Obama did not address the quickly shifting assessments of the situation on the mountain. For more than a week, American officials had described a grim situation involving thousands of refugees who would not be easily moved to safety.
That changed suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, when a small team of American special forces personnel landed on the mountain and found that many of the refugees had already left.
Mr. Obama acknowledged that initial determinations by the United States government had been that “many thousands” of Iraqi Yazidis were on the mountaintop. But he said that Wednesday’s assessment had found that “thousands of people had been evacuating safely each and every night.”
Still, he said the situation remained “dire” for many Iraqis who are threatened by Sunni militants in the northern part of the country, and he said American airstrikes would continue indefinitely.
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