Yazidis on Mt Sinjar 'don't need rescuing': how very convenient

Cameron's foreign policy is an 'omnishambles' while Obama looks increasingly parochial and isolationist

Yazidi refugees
(Image credit: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

Whatever the true mission of the US special forces team sent to Mount Sinjar this week, they sure came back with a convenient answer for their Commander-in-Chief at the White House.

Right on cue for the primetime TV news outlets, the Pentagon was able to announce that the special forces' night and day on the bare mountain in northwest Iraq had revealed "far fewer" Yazidis taking refuge there than expected and that they were in "much better condition" than had been reported hitherto.

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is a writer on Western defence issues and Italian current affairs. He has worked for the Corriere della Sera in Milan, covered the Falklands invasion for BBC Radio, and worked as defence correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. His books include The Inner Sea: the Mediterranean and its People.