Iraq War 3

There will be about 1700 “coalition forces” in Iraq shortly. 1000 American special forces are already there. 600 Australians and 69 Canadians. The Kurds are being armed and Turkey is allowing the use of airbases for the air campaign. There are also US veterans who work with the private military contractors who are in the area (paid for by Iraq and others). CIA and other operatives are in the area.

Australia’s elite special forces troops in Iraq will be gathering intelligence and targeting militants, either through ground operations or by directing air strikes, according to a senior defense force insider familiar with the SAS role. The claim runs counter to the impression being given by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who continued to say on Wednesday that Australian forces would be “military advisers” to Iraqi and Peshmerga fighters and would “not themselves normally engage in actual combat”.

Australia has a large anti-terrorism anti-ISIS raid right now that involves 800 policemen.

There are various cases made that the US should ignore ISIS in the middle east and not get back into Iraq and go in to Syria. Leave it Turkey and others in the region.

Just looking at US politics shows why the US and other nations involvement is going to keep ramping up.
Obama has midterms coming up and needs to look less weak.
He needs to out coalition build George Bush 1 and George Bush 2.
Iraq still has oil.
The Republicans (other than Rand Paul and some others) are pushing to regain what was won from Iraq War 2.

Nextbigfuture has made the case that after 13 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq that there is the reasonable expectation that this will continue for many more years.