NYT: Battle to Retake Iraqi City Looms as Test of Obama’s ISIS Strategy
So, the New York Times wants to test Obama’s strategy against ISIS with that full disclosure of the plan announced to reporters last week by the pentagon.
According to the article, the new Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, says he didn’t know anything about the sand-table discussion that the pentagon had with the media, but, ya know, for some reason, I’m finding that hard to believe;
American officials took the unusual step on Thursday of announcing the timing of the battle and the number of Iraqi and Kurdish forces to be deployed. Openly discussing future military operations is normally off-limits to avoid aiding the enemy, but American 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 occupiers and help the Iraqi ground forces.
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A defense official said Friday that the White House and Ashton B. Carter, the new defense secretary, “had no advance knowledge” of the briefing.
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American officials said it was possible that announcing the battle for Mosul ahead of time could prompt many of the Islamic State fighters to slip away and make the retaking of the city less of a fight….
Yeah, that hasn’t worked so well in the past, for either the Syrian government forces or for the Kurds at Kobani. These are people who think that blowing themselves up into a fine mist is a victory. They’ll gladly pour back into Mosul on the chance they might get to kill more Iraqis before they bite the big one.
But, then this is the administration that sees the world the way they want it to be, rather than the way it is.
Category: Terror War
The ineptitude of this entire administration is beyond description…
I mean, how fucking far down the ladder of stupidity can anyone or any bureaucrat go???
It is just incredible how low they all have gone…
“… how fucking far down the ladder of stupidity can anyone or any bureaucrat go???”
Apparently, the lower limit is considerably farther down than any reasonable being would guess.
The Glorious Leader wants that political holy grail: the Short Victorious War. Bush 41 had one in Kuwait, Reagan had one in Grenada, McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt kind of had one against the Spanish (actual fighting didn’t take long), and other presidents have had them in other previously-unknown hotspots. They’re the best publicity a head-of-state can dream of, and they’re over before anybody in the voting public notices how nasty war generally is. But when they go wrong, they go REALLY a wrong, as demonstrated by the Clinton administration’s unfortunate little intervention in and around Mogadishu in ’93 (according to Mark Bowden, that was much less Slick Willy’s doing than that of his staff, including Hildebeast). The Glorious Leader knows that even a lot of the MSM is abandoning him, and he wants to look good. He wants a Short Victorious War. And because he’s an idiot with delusions of genius, surrounded by equally idiotic sycophants in his administration and no-balls IGM-ing political weasels among the joint chiefs, he thinks that this will be his Short Victorious War. He doesn’t seem to realize that the opportunity for that blew away with the Iraqi desert wind a year ago. He thinks that he can run a war by continuing to be a “community organizer.” He refuses to acknowledge any actual facts about our enemies, our allies, or the situation on the ground. And none of the brown-nosing snakes with stars on their shoulders at the Five-Sided Asylum on the Patomac will try to change that. They are not leaders. They are too concerned about their six-figure post-retirement careers to care about the principles of Duty, Honor, Country (this country would be better off with MacArthur on his very worst day as CJCS than the current crop). If more US servicemen lose their lives, he won’t care. He was raised and schooled by people who regarded the veterans of Vietnam with contempt. His press secretary might have the presence of mind to have Barry’s signature digitally stamped on boilerplate letters to the families of the fallen. If he thinks there’s mileage to… Read more »
“It is just incredible how low they all have gone…”
These numbnuts will hit rock bottom and keep right on digging…..
If Obama wants a short, victorious war, then he needs to let the military fight in such a way that the war is short and we’re victorious. In other words, he needs to give the order to win and then get the hell out of the way.
For this administration of losers and morons , this would go about as well as Barbarosa did for the Germans.
No surprise here. There is absolutely nothing that bodaprez can’t fuck up. He can’t fix anything, but anything that works just fine is broken the very second he touches it.
I’m no longer gobsmacked by anything that comes out of the Oval Office.
“A defense official said Friday that the White House and Ashton B. Carter, the new defense secretary, “had no advance knowledge” of the briefing.” F’in LIARS. This came FROM the White House for release! Obama doesn’t want his Muslim brothers killed and so forewarned them. Traitorous coward he is!
“Obama doesn’t want his Muslim brothers killed and so forewarned them.”
That’s an absolutely ridiculous thing to say. First off, the President isn’t a Muslim. Even if he was an actual Muslim, ISIS would consider him an apostate, not an ally or a brother.
Secondly, if Obama is so concerned with saving Muslim lives then the best way to do that is by killing members of ISIS who are victimizing other Muslims on a massive scale.
This isn’t treason. It’s just garden variety Obama incompetence.
‘garden variety obama incompetence’ – absolutely.
Am I the only person who thinks that the ISers might actually have wet dreams over whatever bodaprez is going to babble about?
I do not subscribe to the incompetence theory as it is applied to the knucklehead in the White House. I see that he was re-elected and has gotten every major piece of legislation that he wanted. I see his appointments to the Supreme Court. I see his thumbing his nose at the separation of powers and prevailing, though one issue is not certain. I see him declaring federal law unconstitutional and refusing to enforce law. That’s not incompetence: that’s a plan bearing fruit. Could it be that his incompetence is reserved only for foreign-policy issues? Sure, it’s possible, but I doubt it.
Damn 2/17, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that feels that way and sees his game for what it really is and that is to “Fundamentally change this country”. He could give a hairy rats ass less about foreign policy, one only has to look at Lurch and the rest of the incompetents at State. The only foreign policy game he cares about is giving away the store to Iran so he can have some semblance of a “legacy”. All I ever needed to know about him from the beginning was the fact of how he was raised and who his mentors and friends were. That and the fact he is a disciple of Alinsky, Cloward and Piven and Frank Marshal Davis. Just a silver tongued devil that fed the ignorant masses what they wanted to hear and then laugh at them behind closed doors.
Pretty much. I lean more toward the deliberate plan theory vs the incompetent boob theory. It’s just too consistent to be accidental.
IMO, the incompetent boobery lies at the feet of all the morons who re-elected him.
Another challenge will come if the city is retaken. While Mosul is overwhelmingly Sunni, the Iraqi attacking force is likely to be overwhelming Shiite, which may create friction with the local population. The Sunni Arab population could be alienated if their neighborhoods were held by Shiite-dominated units or pesh merga forces.
They can’t even figure out who they hate more ISIS or their Shiite/Kurd liberators.
VoV: Based upon my past experiences as an advisor to the Iraqi Army (’05-’06)I’ve always suspected that their collapse in the face of ISIS was not solely due to incompetence (though that was a large part of it). I firmly believe that the overwhelmingly Shia Army simply was not willing to fight/die for Sunni regions of Iraq. If ISIS made a move on say, Karbala, I think we’d see a much more agressive (if not profficient) effort by the Iraqi Army.
Should have kept the offensive a complete secret. Then perform a decisive annihilation of ISIS. That is how you demoralize an enemy and weaken their resolve to succeed. That is how wars are won.
P.S.: also perform a simultaneous DDoS attack on all their comms and watch them loose the information battle as well.