The Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the White House refuse to admit we are in combat in Iraq against Islamic State with boots on the ground. This video demonstrates otherwise. It is shameful that an exact truth cannot be spoken and it dishonors our service personnel in Iraq, to say the least.
Delta Forces with Kurdish forces rescue Islamic State hostages:
A video first posted Saturday by Rudaw, a Kurdish news site, purportedly shows footage of the joint U.S.-Kurdish raid that freed about 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in northern Iraq early Thursday morning.
The raid, led by Kurdish Peshmerga special forces and supported by elite U.S. Delta Force soldiers, resulted in the death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, who was shot while moving to help pinned-down Kurdish forces. Wheeler was the first American killed in combat in Iraq since the last war there ended in 2011.
[First American soldier is killed in combat in Iraq since 2011 troop exit]
The video, filmed by a camera on what appears to be a Kurdish soldier’s helmet, appears to show Delta operators and Kurdish forces operating side by side, wearing similar uniforms and equipment. The entirety of the footage appears to be shot from inside the compound and in one scene an Islamic State flag is pictured clearly on the wall.
Evident from the four-minute clip is the the professionalism of the joint force as they move methodically through the compound, searching hostages and moving them, most likely, to the waiting helicopters for extraction. The searches, while seeming redundant, are more than likely to ensure that the enemy hasn’t infiltrated the prisoner population with a suicide vest or other weapon. Also noticeable is the lack of suppressors on a lot of the weapons. Usually a staple of night raids, the lack of ‘silencers’ on the weapons points to what type of fight the Kurds and Americans might have expected on the ground — one that wouldn’t call for discretion.
The only other significant portion of the video shows the commandos moving a number of hostages to safety across what appears to be a “danger area,” usually defined as an exposed piece of terrain that acts as a focal point for enemy fire. The footage shows Kurdish and U.S. forces laying down covering fire while the prisoners move to safety — some are visibly bloodied. As the soldiers and prisoners move, parts of the structure are clearly burning outside, most likely from the concentrated airstrikes that were conducted at the beginning of the raid. According to U.S. officials, after the commandos and hostages departed from the area, an additional set of airstrikes destroyed the compound.
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More from WashingtonPost: American and Kurdish commandos raided an Islamic State prison in Iraq on Thursday, freeing about 70 captives believed to be facing “mass execution” and leaving one U.S. soldier dead, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
It was the first time a member of the U.S. military had been killed in a combat situation in Iraq since President Obama pulled out all U.S. troops in 2011.
In a pre-dawn operation, soldiers from the Army’s Delta Force, supporting a team of elite Kurdish soldiers, descended on a militant compound in the town of Hawijah, where officials believed that dozens of Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga were being held captive
