Iraqi forces are in action:
Thousands of civilians have fled Falluja since last week after the Iraqi military intensified shelling in a new bid to crush a five-month old Sunni uprising, killing scores of people in what residents describe as massive indiscriminate bombardment.
The mortars, artillery and what residents call "barrel bombs" rained for at least seven days on Falluja - a city that was the nemesis of U.S. troops a decade ago and is now the main battle ground in a war pitting the Shi'ite-led government against rebellious Sunni tribal chiefs and an al Qaeda offshoot.
Barrel bombs. Like Assad uses to slaughter civilians. That's nice. But what the Hell? Assad gets away with it. Why can't Maliki?
Iraq denies that they are doing this. We aren't there so it is hard to say whether this is enemy propaganda, simply wrong, an isolated incident, an attempt by Iraq to speed up our delivery of precision weapons or convince us to send our drone operators, or a new Iraqi tactic we'll see more of.
Whether the charge is true or not, this is the kind of thing that can happen when we prematurely leave a country without access to specialized support like precision firepower.
We're discovering the war on terror is still on, like in Yemen, Mali, and Nigeria--and even see it in Syria.
But somehow Iraq is not a front in that war.
Really? The gang's all here, you know.
