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G26ster wrote:Whether they be DOD civilian personnel, civilian contractors, or indigenous people that work for us, or just plain civilians. It's matters not who pays them, whether they get paid as a direct gov't employee, or paid by the contractor with funds paid by the gov't, etc. All of them are free to leave at any time, and all are there of their own free will. I cannot imagine being sent on a mission to rescue contractors, and asking who is paying them or are they worth it. That, to me, is ridiculous. They are all part of our national effort. As a former military helicopter pilot, the thought would never cross my mind.

Here's another example of putting our military in harms way all the time to save civilians who aren't even contractors. Our medivac and combat rescue teams are deployed all the time to save indigenous people seriously injured and evac them to either civilian or military hospitals, and the vast majority of them are not even contractors. These flight and medic crews put their life at risk everyday in a combat zone doing this.

The Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land, said Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday.
“The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,” Celik told Rudaw in an interview to be published soon…
In case Iraq gets partitioned, said Celik, “the Kurds, like any other nation, will have the right to decide their fate.”

Mostly comprised of Sunnis, ISIS surprised few when it vowed to destroy sites revered by the rival Shia sect. The two main blocs of Islam have been at odds for nearly 1,400 years because of a dispute over who was Prophet Muhammad's successor. The destruction of at least 10 ancient Shia shrines in Iraq has enraged the Shia government in Baghdad, as well as the Iranian regime, also Shia.

But an unverified threat to Mecca itself, the holy city in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia where Muslims believe they must make one pilgrimage during their lifetimes, was unprecedented. Allegedly tweeted by a member of the extremist group on a since-suspended account, the threat took aim at the most sacred beacon of the Muslim faith.

RoyGBiv wrote:Not having a good grasp of the history or the geopolitical ramifications (not sure anyone can make any good predictions on the geopolitical side), the only side I can root for here is peace. It all seems so horribly, tragically, avoidable.