In WWII there was a saying: Loose Lips Sink Ships!!! Do we need to publicize that there are 400 U.S. Marines and other service members at the base, that there are 800 Iraqis training with U.S. and other coalition military advisers at the base, or that the U.S. has installed counter-mortar radar at the base. Why do we keep giving ISIS information that could possibly help them murder people.
Keep in mind that ISIS is made up of former members of Saddam Hussein's military. They include experienced soldiers who will use any information published by the news media to their advantage.-- WSJ Commentor, Tom Winter - ISIS Attacks Iraqi Base Used by U.S. Trainers. (WSJ)
What befuddles me is there's so much importance focused on a group of 25 who descended upon a town to terrorize it. Why is it we need to spend billions if not trillions of dollars responding to a threat similar to a 19th century old west gang. I know they're barbarous, but don't you think the fact we have such instantaneous information is being used by a military industrial complex, eager to keep profits churning, and keep us in constant fear when all we're really facing is a mid-east version of the Dalton Gang. We have 400 Marines on the base, why are we so spooked over 25 knuckleheads? Wake up America, we're being led into another war by the same machine that took us into the first two Iraqi wars. When will we learn?
There is a downside to so much information in the hands of our corporate entitled...-- WSJ commentor, John Nelson - ISIS Attacks Iraqi Base Used by U.S. Trainers.(WSJ)
Media suppression and disavowal so the bad guys don't discover what's obvious to anybody who takes an interest vs. priming the pump of the war machine. I see.
Whatever the reason for the quiet -- as simple to explain, perhaps, as the idea that after the past fifteen years, nobody wants to know -- clashes with ISIS and America's reengagement in a badly weakened and still more ethnically and religiously splintered Iraq is primarily significant for the lack of serious attention (visual or otherwise).
According to Military.com (with some exclusive video -- because they are the media too), the Iraqis protecting the base and the 400 "U.S. force protection" troops fought off the ISIS attackers on their own. That is, if you don't count this:
The significance of the photography of the Anbar Province Burger King on the self-samed, but formerly US controlled military base that America operated back in 2007? Yes, irony long ago became a primary device for visually addressing the country we broke. At the same time, it suggests, the confidence of the Pentagon to the contrary, that this outlet could always be revived.
Now, back to the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards and, oh yeah, March Madness.
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(photo: Charles J Hanley/AP. caption: A Burger King in al-Asad air base, 100 miles west of Baghdad, March 4, 2006.)