This is not: Another turning point as US troops stream into Iraq
But I have been told for months we were on a roll....
"New Kurdish offensive targets Islamic State group" by Vivian Salama and Deb Riechmann, Associated Press November 20, 2014
BAGHDAD — Kurdish forces, backed by US-led airstrikes, launched a new offensive Wednesday targeting the Islamic State group in areas of Iraq that the extremists had captured this past summer.
The operation came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said details have not been finalized for a deal that would have his country train rebels to battle the militants in Syria, where Islamic State also holds territory.
Oh, SILLI Turkey.
A US-led coalition is targeting the group from the sky in Iraq and Syria, supporting Western-backed Syrian rebels, Kurdish fighters, and the Iraqi military on the ground. The strikes have helped halt the extremists’ move to take the Syrian city of Kobani near the Turkish border and have enabled Iraqi forces to make key advances.
The US Central Command said that the United States and allied nations have conducted 24 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq since Monday, a majority near the city of Kirkuk. In Syria this week, the coalition has carried out six airstrikes against the Islamic State and one against the Khorasan group, which Washington says is a special cell that is plotting attacks against Western interests. Most of the strikes targeting Islamic State in Syria took place near Kobani, according to the statement.
Did that imminent threat that enabled all this dissolve rather quickly!
On Tuesday, the Kurds captured six militant-controlled buildings in Kobani and confiscated a large amount of weapons and ammunition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In Iraq, the new offensive by Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, targeted areas in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces, said Jaber Yawer, a spokesman. The Islamic State extremists had seized the territory in an August offensive that saw them capture one-third of Iraq.
And the narrative, three months later, is still the same.
In Diyala, the peshmerga worked with Iraqi security forces to retake the towns of Saadiya and Jalula, Yawer said. In Kirkuk, Kurdish forces backed by coalition airstrikes launched attacks to retake territory near the town of Kharbaroot.
The offensive began as a suicide car bomber struck in the heart of Erbil, killing at least five people, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the midday attack in the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, though authorities suspected the militants also known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Authorities also suspected ISIS in three Baghdad bombings that killed at least 10 people and wounded almost 30.
Who would want to divide and conquer Iraq, huh?
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"US adds air power, but Islamic State presents elusive target" by Eric Schmitt, New York Times November 27, 2014
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. — The United States is shifting more attack and surveillance aircraft from Afghanistan to the air war against the Islamic State, deepening US involvement in the conflict and raising new challenges.
A dozen A-10 ground-attack planes have moved from Afghanistan to Kuwait, where they are set to start flying missions supporting Iraqi ground troops as early as this week, military officials said. About half a dozen missile-firing Reaper drones will also be redeployed from Afghanistan in the next two months.
Perhaps nowhere outside the Middle East do the additional surveillance and strike aircraft have a more direct impact than at this Air Force base in central South Carolina, which has become a leading symbol of the military’s ability to carry out global operations from afar.
But while planners will have more power to use against the Islamic State, they face an enemy that is a hybrid between a conventional army and a terrorist network and has been difficult to target.
Now the excuses start.
“When we target a nation-state, we’ve typically been looking at their capability for decades and have extensive target sets,” said Major Sonny Alberdeston, the targeting chief here. “But these guys are moving around. They can be in one place, and then a week later, they’re gone.”
I'm holding true to my earlier statements.
Just as the Pentagon flies its wartime fleet of Predator and Reaper drones from bases in Nevada and elsewhere across the United States, this rear headquarters of the Central Command’s air forces carries out the bulk of the work to analyze and select targets that allied warplanes strike in Syria and Iraq.
Soon the drone pilots will be eligible for medals.
These targets are fixed sites such as military headquarters and communications centers, oil refineries, training camps, troop barracks, and weapons depots — in short, everything the Islamic State needs to sustain its fight.
More than 7,000 miles away at this command’s main headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, another group of analysts and targeting specialists focuses on targets of opportunity, such as a convoy of militants.
An additional 130 planners are on their way to Kuwait to bolster the air-war planning of a command there that will become the main headquarters of the anti-Islamic State military effort in the region.
Related: SILLI Drones
Really is nothing silly about them at all.
The top priority of the planners has been these pop-up targets, even though only about one out of every four missions sent to attack them has dropped its bombs. The rest of the missions have returned to the base, failing to find a target they were permitted to hit under the rules of engagement.
Yeah, such care is giving to reducing places to rubble and killing people.
Of the 450 strikes in Syria through last week, about 25 percent were planned, military officials said. Of the 540 strikes in Iraq through the same period, only 5 percent were deliberate.
Critics complain that the air campaign is flagging against an adaptive enemy.
“We need to have more targeting capability than they have right now,” said Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
Here in South Carolina, officials express some frustration at the pace of approving deliberate targets for strikes, a process that ultimately ends up on the desk of General Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the Central Command.
Obama has a lot of things on his kill lists these days.
One of the main objectives for the scores of analysts and planners at the air base is to squeeze the Islamic State’s financial lifeline by attacking its ability to produce and sell oil.
Who would be buying that oil and why are they not under sanction?
A prime concern is minimizing civilian casualties.
We are told that all the time, and it is simply not true. Otherwise, all the lies and distortions leading us to wars would be unnecessary.
This concern is pronounced in western Iraq. Commanders fear such casualties could alienate Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants.
They always do. People don't care what cause it was that "mistakenly" killed its loved ones.
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Related: Iraqi forces, Islamic State vie for control in Ramadi
Victory!
"Iraqi-led forces recapture two towns from Islamic State group; Car bomb kills 9, wounds 20 at Baghdad market" by Sameer N. Yacoub, Associated Press November 25, 2014
BAGHDAD — Iraqi troops backed by Shi’ite militiamen and Kurdish security forces recaptured two eastern towns from Islamic State group militants after fierce clashes, officials said Monday.
Police in Diyala province said Iraqi forces entered the towns of Saadiya and Jalula late Sunday after heavy fighting with the Sunni extremist group, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria.
The fighting continued Monday, with some pockets of resistance outside the two towns, police officials said, adding that teams were defusing roadside bombs. Some families that fled the area have started to return, they said.
Diyala saw heavy fighting between Sunni and Shi’ite militants at the height of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007. It also has a sizable Kurdish population.
Islamic State militants seized Jalula and Saadiya in August after a stunning blitz across northern and western Iraq.
That's the narrative, and its all crap.
In a separate development Monday, a car bomb near a crowded Baghdad marketplace in the mainly Sunni Shaab neighborhood killed nine people and wounded 20, police said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility. Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures.
The hallmark of a western intelligence agency false flag.
Baghdad has endured near-daily bombings for months, most of which have targeted Shi’ite areas and have been blamed on the Islamic State and other Sunni extremists.
But the war is over. My propaganda pre$$ has told me so!
Monday night, a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint at the country’s border crossing with Jordan, killing three soldiers, officials at the border crossing said. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief journalists.
Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, also met with General Lloyd Austin, the head of US Central Command, according to a statement issued by Abadi’s office.
US Central Command also said coalition aircraft carried out 15 airstrikes in Iraq and nine in Syria over the past four days targeting the Islamic State.
Also Monday, Muslim clerics meeting in Iran vowed to counter extremists like the Islamic State through mosques and Islamic teaching centers.
We don't need their help!
The announcement Monday came at the end of a two-day conference of Sunni and Shi’ite clerics in Iran’s holy city of Qom.
What?
Their pledge also comes after a request made by the United States for Middle Eastern countries to counter the slick propaganda of the Islamic State.
Then tell the CIA and affiliates to stop producing it.
Shi’ite-majority Iran has been helping battle the Islamic State in Iraq while a US-led coalition has been bombing it from the air.
The Islamic State views Shi’ites as apostates deserving of death and has massacred hundreds of captured Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, as well as Sunni rivals.
Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said Monday that militants linked to the Islamic State were behind a surprise attack this month that killed seven people in Saudi Arabia’s eastern region.
Related: Gunmen kill 3 Saudi guards along border with Iraq
Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency that an investigation found that a 77-person terrorist cell helped with financing, planning, and carrying out the Nov. 3 attack. He said some members of the cell had been in touch with Islamic State militants and received orders from abroad.
Really?
Thirteen people were wounded in the attack, which saw gunmen shoot the victims with pistols and machine guns inside a commemoration hall as worshipers marked a major Shi’ite day of remembrance known as Ashoura.
Not long after, an audio recording emerged of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly calling on his supporters to launch attacks inside Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is part of the US-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Al Qaeda breakaway group in Iraq and Syria.
PFFFFFT!
The Interior Ministry spokesman said the gunmen killed a man and stole his car to use in the attack, which took place in the village of al-Dalwah in Saudi’s eastern al-Ahsa region. Saudi Arabia’s eastern region is a major oil-producing area and where many of country’s minority Shi’ites reside.
Turki said security forces killed three suspects, two of them Saudi and the third a Qatari.
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Yeah, about that oil:
"Iraq, Kurds agree to share oil revenues; Accord bolsters struggle against Islamic State" by Tim Arango, New York Times December 03, 2014
BAGHDAD — In a far-reaching deal that helps reunite Iraq in the face of a bitter war with Islamic extremists, the central government agreed Tuesday to a long-term pact with the autonomous Kurdish region to share the country’s oil wealth and military resources.
The deal settles a long dispute between Baghdad and Irbil, the Kurdish capital in the north, over oil revenues and budget payments. It is also likely to halt a drive — at least in the short term — by the Kurds for an independent state, which appeared imminent this past summer after a violent territory grab by the Islamic State.
As the jihadists marched toward Baghdad in June, routing Iraqi army forces, the Kurds took full control of Kirkuk and its rich oil fields. They also intensified efforts to market Kurdish oil independently, arguing that the government had withheld payments to Kurdistan that were badly needed to keep up the fight against the Islamic State in the army’s absence.
Now, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government has agreed to pay the salaries of Kurdish security forces, known as the peshmerga, and also will allow the flow of weapons from the United States to the Kurds, with the government in Baghdad as intermediary.
Another reason Maliki had to be removed.
“Now the priority really is to confront ISIS,” said Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s finance minister, referring to the Islamic State in an interview Tuesday after emerging from the Cabinet meeting to finalize the deal after several days of talks.
In reaching a deal, Abadi, who has been prime minister for less than three months, has further distanced his government from a legacy of bitter sectarian and ethnic division under his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. As prime minister, Maliki alienated the Kurds and enraged Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority with his confrontational personality and policies that were seen as both exclusive and abusive.
“The new team, under Abadi, is a cooperative team, a positive team,” said Zebari, a Kurdish politician who was also Iraq’s foreign minister in the Maliki government.
With relations with Kurds now nominally mended, Abadi’s Shi’ite-led government faces a tougher task, but a critical one, in reaching an accommodation with the Sunni Arab minority. Relations had grown so hostile in recent years that many Iraqi Sunnis welcomed Islamic State jihadists as their defenders against the government and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias allied with it.
This propaganda is no longer slick, it's just silly.
Reconciling Sunnis with the central government is widely seen as an essential step to retaking land from the Islamic State. Abadi has backed a plan — supported by the Americans — to set up local National Guard forces that would fight alongside the Iraqi army. But that plan has stalled.
The oil deal, which put a final imprimatur on a temporary pact that was agreed to three weeks ago, also represented a significant victory for the United States, which has made a priority of pushing the Kurds and the central government to settle their differences.
We are winning all over the place, and yet things keep getting worse. WTF?
US officials had expressed fear that if the two parties did not reach an arrangement, the country would break up.
That's what they ultimately want when you look at PNAC papers and the like.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry, who was attending a NATO conference in Brussels along with Abadi, praised the agreement.
“This has been a long time in coming, and it is a very significant step forward,” Kerry said.
The deal also appeared to be a blow to Turkey, which had positioned itself as the savior of the Kurds by reaching deals — during the impasse of the Maliki years — in which the Kurds exported their oil and gas unilaterally through Turkey.
Seriously? Turkey the savior of Kurds? Must be why they have killed so many.
And how much of that was ISIS oil anyway?
Those pacts were considered illegal by Baghdad and the United States, and in recent months tankers filled with Kurdish oil loaded at a Turkish port were sailing the seas aimlessly, unable to dock anywhere because potential buyers worried about lawsuits.
Well, it looks like Russia is helping out there.
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"Iraqi officials want to speed up effort to reclaim Mosul" by Eric Schmitt, New York Times December 09, 2014
MANAMA, Bahrain — Allied warplanes and Iraqi ground troops are increasingly isolating Islamic State militants in the captured city of Mosul, prompting Iraqi officials to push for a winter offensive to wrest control of the area months ahead of the previous schedule — and over US warnings.
The ground campaign to retake Iraq’s second-largest city is probably still many weeks away, US officials said.
Yeah, US troops need to be moved into the region (and they are streaming back).
Its timing will depend on the pace of training for additional Iraqi ground troops to retake the city and for a holding force afterward, as well as sorting out a brewing dispute between officials in Baghdad and Washington over whether Iraq is ready to carry out such a complex urban battle.
The United States and its coalition partners have carried out more than 660 airstrikes in Iraq, making it more difficult for the Islamic State to mass forces or to travel in convoys.
This was over two months ago.
These attacks, including air raids in the past few days, and Iraqi ground operations in the north and west have made it more difficult for the Islamic State to resupply and reinforce its fighters in Mosul, which the Islamic State seized in June when it swept in from Syria and made its headquarters in Iraq.
How are they being resupplied anyway?
Army Lieutenant General James Terry, the top commander of the US campaign to defeat the Islamic State, said Monday that the group is now ‘‘on defense,’’ and far less able to conduct the kind of ground maneuvers that enabled it to capture large chunks of Iraq, the Associated Press reported.
Terry said his first priority is to develop more fully an international military coalition against the group. Coalition countries plan to commit roughly 1,500 military trainers to the effort, he said. Much of the Iraq army collapsed or proved ineffective in the face of the Islamic State’s onslaught last summer.
Very interesting.
At least several hundred fighters are in and around Mosul, according to a US intelligence official.
Even if Iraqi forces successfully oust the Islamic State from their territory, the strategy would do nothing to deal with the militant group’s safe haven inside Syria.
Then the coalition will have to go there next (plans are in the works).
A successful campaign to counter the Islamic State in Iraq might actually exacerbate the situation across the border if militants from Mosul and elsewhere return to Syria, where the Obama administration’s plan to train and equip moderate rebels is lagging.
Hell, that's why they fled Syria and into Iraq (just in time to get rid of Maliki).
Any military campaign to retake Mosul in early 2015 would also push closer a decision by President Obama on whether scores of US military advisers should leave the relative safety of the command posts in Iraq, where they work now, to join Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the front lines of a challenging urban fight.
Don't call them combat troops.
It is also unclear under what circumstances the White House might allow US advisers to accompany Iraqi units onto the battlefield or to call in airstrikes, as General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated might be necessary.
It's incremental escalation all the way along.
And you wonder why I oppose these damn things from the start?
Relatively small numbers of US Special Forces worked alongside allied Afghan militia units in 2001 to successfully rout the Taliban, and Al Qaeda leaders living there, in the early months of that war.
Actually, they are back doing that again.
Just keep it quiet, will ya?
“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by US forces but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey told a House hearing last month.
US and Iraqi officials had previously confirmed that planning was underway for a broad military campaign to dislodge the Islamic State from Iraq to begin in the spring.
It's been pushed up.
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As the Kurds push in they are encountering heavy resistance in what has to be a surprise.
"Iraqi drive to retake Mosul is expected in April or May" by Michael R. Gordon, New York Times February 20, 2015
One of their lead war promoters and general scum.
WASHINGTON — The assault to retake Mosul, Iraq, from the Islamic State will require 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi and Kurdish troops and is expected to begin in April or May, an official from US Central Command told reporters Thursday.
The briefing, held on the final day of the White House counterterrorism conference, was intended to rebut criticism that the Islamic State had the upper hand and that Iraqi efforts to evict the militants from Mosul were lagging.
It is unusual for US officials to discuss the details and timing of a military operation before it occurs. But the official said his intent was to describe the Iraqis’ “level of commitment” in regaining control of Mosul, which he said was held by as many as 2,000 fighters from the Islamic State.
That's all holding all that ground and terrorizing people? Pfffft!
“There are a lot of pieces that have to come together, and we want to make sure the conditions are right,” the official said. “But this is their plan. They are bought into it. They are moving forward.”
It will be in a place and time of our choosing, remember that?
Still, the official, who could not be identified under the command’s protocol for briefing reporters, cautioned that the timetable for the offensive to retake Mosul could change if more time was needed to prepare the Iraqi forces.
He emphasized that the Obama administration had yet to decide if US advisers would be needed to call in airstrikes or to mentor Iraqi forces during the battle for Mosul.
The official, providing new details about the Iraqi effort, said that the main Iraqi attack force would consist of five brigades, each of which would number about 2,000 troops.
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How about the rest of Iraq:
"Iraq removes 24 officials to refocus efforts; US reportedly looks at wider air war in Syria" by Sameer N. Yacoub and Vivian Salama, Associated Press December 02, 2014
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said Monday that he had removed 24 officials from the Interior Ministry as part of efforts to restructure the country’s security apparatus and weed out those who failed to confront the crisis caused by the Islamic State’s onslaught.
He got rid of the people the U.S. did not like.
Abadi’s announcement came as the Sunni extremist group attacked a police checkpoint near Iraq’s border with Syria, killing at least 15 Iraqi police officers in an assault that underscored the depth of the country’s turmoil.
In Syria, the US Central Command said American warplanes struck a target associated with the Khorasan group, which Washington says is a special cell within the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front that is plotting attacks against Western interests.
Yup, whatever, uh-huh, 'kay.
Central Command said the attack took place near Aleppo and was among 27 airstrikes since Friday that mainly targeted Islamic State militants in Kobani and Raqqa in northern Syria.
The strike on the Khorasan group marked the fifth time the United States has targeted Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syria branch, as part of its broader campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The attacks came amid a report that the Obama administration is considering opening a new front in the air war in Syria that would seek to create a zone for US-backed rebel forces to move in along the country’s border with Turkey.
It's the no-fly zone we were told wasn't happening!
According to the Washington Post, the plan calls for US aircraft flying from Turkey’s Incirlik air base to target positions the militants hold along the border north of Aleppo, eastward toward Kobani.
So Turkey did give up the air base after all.
Turkish special forces would move into the area to assist targeting and help Syrian opposition fighters consolidate their hold on the territory.
In other words, it is an INVASION of SYRIA!
President Obama has not yet approved the proposal, which was developed over the past several weeks during extensive meetings between US and Turkish diplomatic and military officials, the Post reported.
Abadi’s decision to send two dozen Interior Ministry officials into retirement is part of his efforts to ‘‘restructure the security forces and make them more effective in the face of terrorism,’’ according to statements on his official Twitter and Facebook pages.
Abadi, who became prime minister in September, has already retired a number of senior military officials in a push to reform the force. Monday’s statements did not identify the individuals.
The June fall of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, was a turning point in the war against the jihadi group that calls itself the Islamic State.
How many of those have we seen the last 14 years, huh? Around every corner there seems to be more war!
The US-trained Iraqi military, harassed for months by small-scale attacks, buckled when militants advanced on the city. Commanders disappeared, pleas for more ammunition went unanswered, and in some cases, soldiers stripped off their uniforms and ran from the fight.
So how much American taxpayers dollars were wasted? How many billions?
Since then, US-led coalition airstrikes have served to reinforce Iraqi and Kurdish security forces as they battle the Sunni militants, but major victories have been sparse.
WHAT?!!??
Many have blamed the army’s poor performance on Abadi’s predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, saying he replaced top officers with inexperienced or incompetent political allies in order to monopolize power.
That is real convenient now that he's gone!
From 2010 until his resignation in August, Maliki also held both the interior and defense portfolios, in part because lawmakers could not agree on nominees for them.
Once Abadi was sworn in and his government approved, it took six weeks to fill the critical posts of interior and defense ministers.
Monday’s deadly attack on the checkpoint near the Syrian border took place in the town of al-Walid, according to a senior army official. In addition to the 15 officers killed, the official said, at least five officers were wounded.
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Also see: Iraq: Suicide attack kills 24 people near Baghdad
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombings, but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State, which captured large swaths of western and northern Iraq in a summer blitz.
"Islamic State group militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, officials said Saturday, killing the two pilots on board and raising fresh concerns about the extremists’ ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition airstrikes. The attack occurred Friday in the Shi’ite holy city of Samarra (AP)."
Related: Flydubai jet hit by gunfire as it lands in Baghdad
That's why any US official public relations photo ops need to be kept secret -- 11 years after Saddam was deposed.
Can you say failure, folks?
Of course, maybe it was meant to fail per PNAC break-up plans for the region.
"A series of bombings, mainly targeting Shi’ite areas, killed at least 13 people in Baghdad on Saturday. Police said one bomb exploded near a restaurant in the southeastern district of Zafaraniyah, killing four people. Later, a bomb killed three civilians in western Baghdad (AP)."
"Iraqi officials say 18 people have been killed in a series of bombings targeting busy markets in and around the capital today. Police officials said the deadliest of the attacks occurred in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City. A motorcycle bomb exploded near a line of cell phone shops, killing nine people and wounding 25 others."
Time to get off the phone.
"Clashes with IS in Iraq kill 23 troops, allied fighters" Associated Press January 07, 2015
BAGHDAD — A suicide blast targeting Iraqi security forces and subsequent clashes with Islamic State extremists on Tuesday killed at least 23 troops and progovernment Sunni fighters in the country’s embattled western province of Anbar, officials said.
The day’s heavy toll for the Iraqi forces came as they struggle in battles against the Islamic State and try to claw back territory lost to the extremists during the militants’ blitz last year. Iraq’s prime minister vowed Tuesday to dislodge the militants from all areas under their control.
Gee, a month earlier I was told ISIS was on the defensive, blah, blah.
Police officials said a suicide bomber first struck a gathering of progovernment Sunni fighters near the town of al-Baghdadi, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, in the morning hours.
Soon after, militants attacked nearby army and police positions, setting off hours-long clashes. Police and hospital officials said 23 were killed and 28 were wounded in all on the government side. They did not give the death toll on the militants’ side, saying only that the attackers ‘‘sustained some casualties.’’
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pledged that Iraq’s forces would retake all areas that fell to militants.
‘‘We will emerge as victorious and the day our lands are liberated is nearing,’’ Abadi told a group of newly graduated army officers, speaking at the Military Academy as Iraq marked Army Day. ‘‘Our goal . . . is that peace and prosperity prevail in Iraq and end this dark period in Iraqi history.’’
A parade was also staged to mark the day, with jet fighters, helicopters, and transport planes flying overhead.
No concern about insurgents or anything.
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Look who is here to help, Iraqis.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Battle to retake Iraqi city looms as test of Obama’s Islamic State strategyy Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, New York Times February 22, 2015
WASHINGTON — US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon are struggling to determine how difficult it will be to retake Mosul, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq, as planning intensifies for a battle that is becoming a major test of the Obama administration’s strategy to stop the spread of the terrorist group in the Middle East.
Uh-huh. So once again the intelligence agencies don't know shit, but whatever. This is NYT and Gordon work, so we know it is good agenda-pushing propaganda.
The assessment will be pivotal in driving important policy and military decisions that President Obama will need to make in the coming weeks, including whether the Pentagon will need to deploy teams of US ground forces to call in allied airstrikes and advise Iraqi troops on the battlefield on the challenges of urban warfare.
There are over 3,000 there already. Just don't call 'em combat troops!
Yeah, I woke up with some anger toward the endless stream of war lies today, yeah.
Reclaiming Mosul, which has a population of more than 1 million people and is Iraq’s second-largest city, will require 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi and Kurdish forces to clear it block by block, with many of the streets and buildings likely rigged with explosives, US officials said. The battle is planned for as early as April.
From what I posted above that's not true and another deception. They are trying to hustle it along.
The city is being held by 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State militants, according to US military estimates. It sits astride one of the major infiltration routes that the Islamic State has used to ferry troops and supplies into northern Iraq from Syria.
Okay, two interesting notes there:
1) the numbers are not adding up and they are simply validating my view that this is all staged and scripted production to wage war in recalcitrant and energy rich regions. 2,000 guys (if its even that many ghosts) can not hold down a population of 1 million unless that population has been mesmerized and brainwashed (like the Amerikan people). We are also told ISIS now stretches from the tip of Africa to Indonesia, covering the entire Southern Hemisphere giving the U.S. government carte blanche to overthrow or invade any nation or government it does not like.
2) How are troops and supplies constantly being ferried in with all the drones and air sorties, unless.... AmneriKa is arming ISIS as the alternative media have shown time and again. Once again we are dealing with an AmeriKan-created enemy and fiction to advance some war agenda, and honestly, it's gotten real f***ing old.
US intelligence agencies say they do not yet know whether Islamic State fighters will dig in and defend Mosul to the death or whether, fearing encirclement, most Islamic State fighters will slip out of the city for other Iraqi towns or cross the border into Syria, leaving behind a smaller force and booby-trapping buildings with bombs to tie down and bloody thousands of Iraqi troops.
I can guarantee they will have slipped out of the city, blah, blah, blah.
Readers, this really is rank rot prop!
The plan to retake Mosul, which the Islamic State has controlled since June, faces an array of challenges. The strategy is to draw on five of the most experienced Iraqi army brigades, about 10,000 troops in all, put them through several weeks of special training and then use them in conjunction with Kurdish peshmerga units and other forces to mount the main assault.
But both US and Iraqi commanders have raised doubts about the readiness of Iraq’s ground forces, which have struggled to recapture smaller towns that pose far less of a challenge than Mosul.
How much money is the U.S. government wasting here?
Since US air power will be critical to helping Iraqi and Kurdish forces advance, the main question Obama will have to answer is whether teams of US joint terminal attack controllers need to be on the ground so airstrikes can be delivered precisely.
Oh, right, "our" airstrikes are precise and only kill bad people.
(Blog editor's note: I put quotations around the "our" because -- like torture -- I neither approved or condoned any of this. In fact, I've been arguing against it for so long I'm fucking sick of it. For the record, I condemn the goddamn war criminal administrations of Obummer and Bush these last 15 f***ing years)
In preparation for the assault on Mosul, the United States and its allies are trying to weaken the Islamic State by cutting its supply lines. Kurdish forces, backed by US-led air power, have positioned themselves near an important crossroads 25 miles west of Mosul.
Why hasn't this been done a long time ago, like six months.... oh, right. It is the US and its allies keeping ISIS alive.
In addition, US officials took the unusual step Thursday of announcing the timing of the battle and the number of Iraqi and Kurdish forces to be deployed.
It's propaganda. No surprise here.
Openly discussing future military operations is normally off-limits to avoid aiding the enemy, but US officials said it was done this time to try to weaken the resolve of the Islamic State fighters and to spur Mosul’s residents to rise up against the Islamic State occupiers.
Oh, look, now ISIS is an OCCUPIER, according to the Jew York Times!
Looks like the US will just have to REOCCUPY the PLACE, huh?
Remember back when Bush I encouraged Iraqis to rise up and then allowed them to be slaughtered?
I'm sure Iraqis remember; strange to see Obummer has failed to learn from history.
That strategy angered Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, sent a blistering letter to Obama on Friday. “Never in our memory can we recall an instance in which our military has knowingly briefed our own war plans to our enemies,” McCain and Graham wrote.
I got some anger of my own, but I'm going to take it out on the basketball floor this morning.
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