Operation Featherweight: Month 2, Week 4, Day 5.

Over the past 24-48 hours the US has once again declined to provide information about any air operations it has undertaken in either Iraq or Syria. It has though had plenty to say about Ebola following the first ever diagnosis of someone with the disease within the US on Tuesday (30/9/14).

When this latest Ebola outbreak began in West Africa the US - almost as a reflex - started using it as a metaphor for discussions about HIV/AIDS. However I always thought that it was more likely to be a naturally occurring metaphor for the type of extreme Islamic terrorism shown by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which seems to have become increasingly fashionable of late.

The Ebola virus is named after the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where it was first discovered. The DRC became rather famous in 2013 when the United Nations were authorised to carry out offensive operations - including air-strikes - against militants who had been destabilising the country. This was the first and to date the only time that the UN has been authorised to do such a thing. The DRC is also right next door to the Central African Republic (CAR) where French troops are currently deployed to quell religious and ethnic violence that followed a coup by mainly Muslim rebels that overthrew a mainly Christian government.

Nigeria which has been affected by this outbreak is of course also dealing with the Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram who seem to be a by-product of the Islamist insurgency in Mali that had spilled over from the western overthrow of the Libyan government and was only brought to an end by French military intervention. The nations at the centre of the outbreak - Sierra Leone and Liberia - are also highly relevant because it was the conviction in 2012 of Liberian President Charles Taylor for crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone's civil war that set the precedent that national leaders who provide any form of practical support for insurgent groups can be held criminally liable for the actions of those insurgent groups. That precedent stands to this day.

It seems that eventually US President Barack Obama started to agree with me and on September 15th (15/9/14) sent three times the number of US troops that he had sent to tackle ISIL in Iraq and Syria to tackle Ebola in West Africa. This was a particularly strange decision because to tackle Ebola West African nations need doctors and nurses - not soldiers. They also need lots of very cheap protective equipment to prevent infection such as rubber gloves, chlorine bleach and face masks - essentially what I use to clean the bathroom. The main reason why Ebola is spreading so widely in West Africa is because they have a culture of ritually washing the dead before burial. In this process bodily fluids such as sweat which contain the virus get on people's hands and from there into their eyes, noses and mouths infecting them with the virus. This is a process that I once rather flippantly described as; "Licking the dead."

So the most effective weapon in the fight against is Ebola is education to stop people getting infected by washing bodies. This of course would be helped by more effective corpse removal teams who can always do with more manpower and more vehicles.

Due to the similarities between ISIL and Ebola - particularly in the US' response to both - I can't help but feel the reason why the US got it's first Ebola case on Tuesday is because the US arranged for a Liberian man who was known to be in close (sexual) contact with an Ebola victim to get on a plane to the USA. The man is obviously rewarded with far better medical care then he would receive in Liberia while the US is rewarded by getting a big story that will push ISIL off the domestic news agenda while at the same time forcing people to look for clues about the US' operations in Iraq and Syria.

To further confuse anyone who dares to question Obama's infamous "global leadership" the US Ebola case has taken place in Texas. The Governor of Texas is Rick Perry who is considered to be one of the front runners for the 2016 Republican Party Presidential election. Perry has also been causing the Democrat Party a lot of problems ahead of the 2014 Congressional mid-term elections because Texas has been ground zero for the impacts of Obama's quest to reform immigration policy. Since Obama has been claiming that he's going to grant every illegal immigrant US citizenship/voting rights Texas has been flooded by illegal immigrants from across South America. Obama himself has been forced to admit that this constitutes a humanitarian crisis not least because of all the exotic diseases the illegal immigrants are bringing with them.

The US Ebola case is primarily an immigration story and while you can argue that it is violence that is pushing the illegal immigrants out of South America it could well be the promise of better healthcare that is pulling them into the US.

Due to this dramatic and not in any way helpful shift in the US' means of communication I can't tell you what -if any - air-strikes the US has carried out in either Iraq or Syria. I can though tell you that the Turkish Parliament has today voted to allow for military action in both Iraq in Syria. Specifically they've voted to further extend an authorisation that was passed in 2007 to allow for "Operation Sun" during which Turkey carried out 789 aerial and ground attacks against Iraq's Kurds which killed at least 264. In 2012 that authorisation was expanded to allow Turkey to attack Kurds in Syria as well.

There is still no news as to whether Turkey will allow the coalition to use Incirlik airbase to launch air-strikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

19:30 on 2/10/14 (UK date)