Mission for Tenth Mountain

I dare say we have a real mission for the 10th Mountain Division and the British Air Assault Brigade in northern Iraq. With a very strong assist from special forces who will be embedded within Kurdish units, of course. Not just a protective force for the Kurds or a political blanket to smother Kurdish independence as the price for Turkish assistance, the force has a real role and real point of leverage for gaining the cooperation of the Kurds—destroying Ansar al Islam, the 600+ Islamists who have set up their own little corner of Taliban heaven on earth near the Iranian border inside Kurdish Iraq. I’ve heard some say we should bomb them even now, but that makes little sense. We can’t destroy them from the air, and if we disperse them now by trying, they can adapt and still harm us when we invade. If they stay happy, contented, and concentrated until we invade Iraq, we can kill and disrupt them to provide maximum effect just when we need the Islamists suppressed and on the run the most.

They are most certainly a target in the war on terror and a potential terror threat to our invasion force in the Iraq campaign and occupation. I am confident they have a big target on their base.