All NATO Nations race to Mali as Islamists are now a regional threat

*EU approves military mission to Mali: EUROPEAN Union foreign ministers formally approved the launch of a 500-strong EU military mission to train the Malian army, which has already begun work on the ground. 

*German government will send 330 troops for Mali support


*65 Islamic rebels, 13 Chad troops killed in Mali: The statement said the clashes were in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains of northeastern Mali. Chad has deployed some 1,800 troops in Mali as part of the French-led military intervention begun in January to wrest control of northern Mali from the Islamic radicals linked to al-Qaida.
The Islamic rebels retreated to mountainous hideouts near Mali's northern border with Algeria, after being expelled at the end of January by French and Malian forces from the major towns in northern Mali.

 *US sends troops to Niger for drone missions: "We're basing drones there to help the French, and this deployment is the security element," the officer said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the operation publicly. French forces have been battling to push Islamic militants out of northern Mali in recent weeks in an effort to oust insurgents who seized local control after the civilian government collapsed last year.

*Predator drones are already flying over Mali to assist French troops, who intervened in January and have driven back militants and Tuareg rebels, who had taken over three major cities and were threatening Mali's capital, Bamako. The drones flying from Niger will be unarmed surveillance aircraft tracking suspected militants operating in the remote parts of northern Mali.

 

* Mali’s neighbours are still at risk of a spill-over from the crisis, at least around the border areas, which remain porous, argued Gilles Yabi of International Crisis Group. “AQIM would withdraw towards the north using networks it has built in Libya when trafficking. It could go as far as south of Tunisia where there has recently been a huge weapons influx,” Guichaoua told IRIN. “MUJAO, which has a more cosmopolitan composition, with fighters from Niger, Nigeria, Moor people from Mauritania, [and] Saharawi people, would rather withdraw to Niger or Mauritania. Nevertheless MUJAO is less structured and could factionalize in accordance with the origins of its members.” The Moor and Saharawi are inhabitants of Africa’s westernmost region around Morocco, western Algeria and Mauritania and have African and Arab ancestry. 

*DAKAR, Senegal - Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of ...

I know our so called leaders are fond of saying we will fight the extremists wherever they are that means the world is the front in the so called war on terror. We are not winning this so called war on terror it has not even really begun.

Our so called leaders and war mongering Republicans are fond of saying that we did nothing to deserve the attack on 9/11 but on the contrary we did everything to deserve it. This has been a long time coming. 1400 years of dissension has come to a head and it will not be quelled easily as you see.

There is an easy answer to this and that is too fight and continue to fight, there is no easy way out though. We have no other choice as this will not be quelled by diplomacy. We must see this through to the end. Years ago I said like it or not, this will turn into a war against Islam. We will be forced to isolate them in their own lands for our own safety. 

It is an unpopular thought but we will not have a choice. Once on their own they will turn on themselves as they already are because they cannot tolerate any version of Islam other than their own.

Syria is erupting and Iraqi's are killing each other as we know and it will engulf the entire middle east Bush knew this would happen and ignored all good advice and intelligence to the contrary, as he had to in order to stay the course and prosecute his idea of new order. Reagan is credited with ending the cold war but he set in motion many of the problems of today. 

Bush finished the job by belittling every country in the word and attacking Iraq unsettling the middle east. Obama is doing his damnedest to make things right but he is not getting cooperation and I do not think he will have the time.

Anyway by virtue of Bush's superiority complex and destabilization of the already unstable middle east which we also contributed to by injecting Israel into the mix and again resetting boundaries as we saw fit, again ignoring traditional boundaries and dislikes.

Bush liked to say we must defeat the so called insurgents in Iraq or they will follow us home. Now we are hearing from Al Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere that they are coming soon.They will follow us home period.

I would like to see this resolved with Diplomacy but no way. We have messed over Islam all around the world now they want retribution all around the world. They want to turn the clock back but that is impossible. You can not turn time back. 

We have hit the stage in man and the planets life cycle called the mature stage where we must be taking care of them but we are not.  Life's cycle, The final stages! This is the much talked about moment of our time.

A nation, a people, must either accept your position be happy with what you have today or you see the alternative. What a hell of a future is all I can say!

James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com