Amos: Mount Sinjar Could’ve Been Largest Evacuation Ever for Marines

Lack of Trapped Yazidis Foiled Massive Marines Operation

by Jason Ditz, 

In an interview with USA Today, Marines Commandant Gen. James Amos revealed details of the massive military operation to rescue Yazidis from Mount Sinjar, in western Iraq.

“It would have been thelargest evacuation that I can think of,” said Amos, who said the plan was going to be to pick up every single Yazidi off the mountain and “could have been very dangerous.”

Amos’ comments are the first major public statement on the Mount Sinjar operation, which is particularly noteworthy because the operation never actually happened.

The “40,000 Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar” was the initial pretext for the US military operation against ISIS in Iraq, and the Marines operation was supposed to be first big ground operation of the campaign.

Instead, when US troops got to Mount Sinjar, they discovered that there never were 40,000 Yazidis trapped there, and that the few refugees who went up there were staying with the Yazidis who already lived there, and were already rescued by the PKK before the operation could even begin.

Gen. Amos was then bragging up the scope and dangerousness of an operation that not only never happened, but was also never needed.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/10/07/amos-mount-sinjar-couldve-been-largest-evacuation-ever-for-marines/