Head of Iran's Quds Force Killed at Baghdad Airport

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Ding ding!
Round 2

Another drone strike north of Baghdad takes out two vehicles, allegedly carrying around 3 top leaders of the PMUs (whose deputy leader was killed with the Iranian General yesterday.
No confirmed reports of the dead yet. The PMU has announced 6 dead, but claims it was a medical convoy. No evidence presented.

UPDATE:
Anonymous Iraqi official reports 5 dead, 3 critical. Says it was PMU leaders.

US official denies it was their drone.

Perhaps it was Santa with a late delivery for a very naughty boy.
Maybe Amazon now do explosives?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/0 ... ssination/

[Slasher]

Yeh Fox got that on my old mob’s Whatsapp Gulf Expat Chat. The few Iranian expats I know there don’t trust Whatsapp even when using a VPN, so they use Telegram.

They’re saying that back home most ordinary locals are quietly cheering the Yanks on. They are pretty desperate and want the present regime to collapse, bury the hatchet with Sandy A, get the oil flowing again, and open up the borders to full tourism and trade.

I asked ‘em do they think their home country could cause further damage in the region by ‘closing’ Hormuz? The answer was a resounding NO as the US 5th Fleet at Bahrein would massecrate any nonsense like that, and the Iran govt is well aware of it.

Finally I asked what action might Tehran take to avenge the QUD kills. They actually don’t know (or won’t say) but a couple said be aware of the soft underbelly of SA (Yemen).

That’s all I have from ‘em to date. Frankly since leaving the Gulf I couldn’t care less about the ME. I only ‘cared’ when I was working there for ass protection purposes.

[boing]

Blasting Suleimani and the bunch from the PMU may be good "public" relations but if the US could have got close enough they would have been better off simply lifting them and putting them on the next aircraft to Guantanamo. Never know what information they could have obtained. Tricky diplomatic problems of course but, Hey Ho, in for a penny in for a pound.


.

[Fliegenmong]

My Iranian neighbours are delightful people, the wifes Sister has been out here for their wedding back in November. Not sure when she is due back in Tehran. Sure she is not looking forward to it!

[Pontius Navigator]

RiS,
Technically to be a sea it has to be connected to a real open sea but I guess if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it counts as a duck. The locals do actually call it Lake Baku in travel brochures but the rest of the World, as PN points out, call it the Caspian.

.

With its great Sea Monster

[Slasher]

My Iranian neighbours are delightful people, the wifes Sister has been out here for their wedding back in November. Not sure when she is due back in Tehran.

Fliegs get the wife’s sister to stay in contact when she’s back in Tehran (if she can). Locals are a more reliable source of what’s going on in a country than any meeja spruke. A horse/mouth thing. I don’t personally know any Iranians who are currently in Irania. Only a handful of expats.

[Boac]

Anyone know how to correctly pronounce 'KWUDS'?

[Rwy in Sight]

Slasher, and Iranian ladies are beautiful.

[Slasher]

Oh sh!t yes RiS. Sh!t yes indeed. Like Stephanies they can haunt your bloody dreams for years after.

[barkingmad]

Buried away in that Daily Torygraph article is a reference to the fact that one David Millipede, then UK Labour Foreign Secretary, prevented the UK SAS from topping this gentleman some in 2007.

If our favourite balaclava salesmen were in such an advantageous position then similar to boing’s suggestion they might have been able to extract him in one piece alive to face the full wrath of The Hague?

Maybe that’s why Millipede went on to head International Rescue as that appears to be what he did for Soleimani?!

Naturally such an exercise might have cost more than the drone strike of 2020 so such consideration must always be weighed up carefully. Though the West probably didn’t have such sophisticated toys in those days.

[Fliegenmong]

I'll see how I go Slash....they are fabulous neighbours but keep very much to themselves (Which kinda makes them fabulous neighbours I suppose!) Seriously they are v well educated and cultured people who also enjoy a tipple and eat the Christmas Ham! .... but we don't live in each others pockets either!.

They've been taking the Sister around to Uki & Murwillumbah and a myriad of other charming little Northern NSW towns, and to the GC Hinterland recently so haven't seen too much of them recently

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

BOAC - I make a point of mispronouncing terror groups. Apparantly what Hamas really hate more than anything else is being called hummus

Update on 2nd strike.
PMU have admitted it wasn't a medical convoy
US repeat it wasn't them
Iraqi State TV say it was
Iraqi military say the strike didn't happen at all
Israeli press not speculating on who it was. Nor is RT.
In fact this appears to be a complete blank - there's no one insisting it must have been the US, or guessing at who it was.
Al Jazeera mentions that the convoy was headed up a road that leads to a non-US coalition base, including British and Italian troops - Both air forces have Reaper drones. Neither have made a statement, or as far as I can tell have been asked for one.
Pro-Hamas Lebanese newspaper says "This is war"

[Fliegenmong]

Apparantly what Hamas really hate more than anything else is being called hummus

...I'm rather fond of Hummus

[Sisemen]

All makes sense now!

[G-CPTN]

There are several inland seas in Germany and Austria.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Capture.JPG (56.88 KiB) Viewed 326 times

General's body paraded through Baghdad's streets..

"Death to America"
"America is the Great Satan"

in a Chevy!!

And you thought the Yanks didn't do irony

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The Times list of 20 Rising Stars to watch in 2020, printed on Thursday, had at #20...General Suleimani!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/risi ... -kwcmc8mzf

[ian16th]

There are several inland seas in Germany and Austria.

Don't the churches have lots of See's?

[Boac]

Still no linguaphobes for 'Kwuds', then? Is it 'Kuds', 'Koods'???

[barkingmad]

boac, I’ll put my money on “could” as the closest simulation of your word of the week.

Same as Sayeed Qutb, (koo-tub) , who’s helped to start the extreme Islamism rot after he’d been kicked out of Egypt for his views and opinions and went to live in the land of The Great Satan.

Disgusted by how people were enjoying life there he returned to Egypt and was subsequently killed, not by a Western origin missile but was executed by his own countrymen for being subversive and a nuisance and allegedly plotting the overthrow of Nasser.

Fascinating story of one man who has helped to bring the world to where it is now, viz Islam v The Rest;

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... 109822568/

From pieces of useless information #94 in a series of 100,000.........