Mosul battle stalls as Iraqis take time out to flee
AW1Ed sends us a link to the news that the sounds of shot fired in anger has stalled the Iraqi as hey prepare to take back Mosul from ISIS. According to Fox News;
The Iraqi army, which was heavily criticized for abandoning posts – and weapons – as ISIS moved in on Mosul in June of 2014, had begun taking small villages on the outskirts after Baghdad announced the campaign March 24. But the liberation effort, which was to include Shia and Sunni militias, Kurds, Christians and Yazidis with U.S.-led coalition support, was quickly paused when the opposition struck back.
“The Iraqi Army commenced an assault on ISIS strongholds around Mosul, but when ISIS fired back, the Iraqi Army ran away and the assaults ended,” a western, Iraq-based security and defense specialist told FoxNews.com of last week’s failed offensive. “So now they are regrouping and rethinking their next options.”
Let’s go back a year to when Marty Dempsey was still the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. When he was asked by journalists if they had a plan to defend Mosul from an ISIS onslaught;
“Well, no, there were not,” Dempsey replies in the interview with Frontline’s Martin Smith when asked if there were any contingency plans inside the Pentagon for how to respond if Mosul were to fall to terrorists from the Islamic State (or ISIL, as the group is sometimes called.)
“So, look, there were several things that surprised us about ISIL,” Dempsey adds. “The degree to which they were able to form their own coalition, both inside of Syria — and inside of northwestern Iraq; the military capability that they exhibited — the collapse of the Iraq Security Forces. Yeah, in those initial days, there were a few surprises.”
So, that was a year ago, and they’re still getting the same level of proficiency from the Iraqi Army. In September, CENTCOM’s analysts were complaining that they were being forced to present a rosier picture of the war against ISIS for the public’s consumption. I wonder how they’ll spin this one.
Category: Politics
So, can anyone here tel me how many millions we have invested in “training and supervising” Iraqi forces? If so, as i have said before, you can give a man the best training in the world and but the best weapons in his hands. One small caveat to victory though. You cannot teach, train or instill courage in a people who have none. they want American money and American blood to defend them, not their own. So let us depart Iraq and Syria and leave a message, “Live as you will inside your borders. Kill each other over the color of prayer clothes, bad breath or what have you. But…export on bit of your murdering terrorism beyond your borders or to Americans anywhere in the world and we will level this place and leave nothing alive worth having. No threats, just a simple promise. So go now and live as you please. the choice is up to you”. Rather like Klaatu said to the earthlings as he departed.
Apologies, anger and typing for spelling don’t mix. “Type, and do not be angry”.
Klaatu’s speech as an American to Islamist terrorists. “We are leaving soon, and you need to listen to us as we speak bluntly. The world grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly beyond your borders. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and chose those to enforce them. We, of the other responsible nations, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all freedom loving nations and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the military force that supports it. For our force, we have created an arsenal along with its oversight of all nations like yours. It’s function is to oversee the nations with satellites and drones like the ones looking at you now and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over threats such as you. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence beyond your borders, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we will live in peace, without the worries of your terrorist, murdering lifestyles, secure in the knowledge that we are free from your internal aggression and war. Free to pursue more… profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it will work. We came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own nation, in peace or terror, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this nation of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us in the twenty first century and live in peace, or pursue your present seventh century course and face obliteration. We shall be watching for your… Read more »
Gort! Klaatu barada nikto. Adunda!
Word
“Klaatu, Barada, Nnn…nickel…necktie…shit, it was something that starts with N!”
“Didst thou speak the words exactly?”
“Uh, yeah, pretty much!”
I personally think our enemies have more in common with the deadites.
TOW! There was an APB out for you. I was only a day away from contracting to get your mug on a milk carton. And you just nonchalantly waltz in w/o so much as “Hello.” Cripes. I thought that you gave TAH up for Lent but when that ended, you were were FTA. Well, it’s good you are back.
Sorry, Air Cav. Got the new baby plus some family stuff (mostly good, but very time-consuming) going on. I gotta say that while I missed you guys, it was wonderful to get a break from Larsie-boi’s chickenshit.
Welcome back to the fold Whitey. 2/17 was apoplectic! Seriously! Glad you are back!
Or better yet, the words of General Mattis a few years back:
“I come in peace, I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes, if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
There isn’t any current information. Last from GAO appears to be 25.5 Billion$ Of course my internet fu is pretty weak since I started having seizures about 11 years ago. Here’s the gao.gov link I found. http://www.gao.gov/modules/ereport/handler.php?1=1&path=/ereport/GAO-12-342SP/data_center_savings/International_affairs/50._Iraq_Security_Funding
Over 25 billion!!! And still they will toss their weapons and run like a raped ape as soon as the first incoming whistles by them. Now that…is a bad return on investment in my book. Again, you can’t buy courage and give it to someone.
Yeah, you only guaranteed get virgins for killing infidels. Only 50/50 for killing fellow muslims. It really depends on which version of the religion of peace turns out to be correct…..
‘Yeah, in those initial days, there were a few surprises.’
Oh, let me: a year ago was two f***king years AFTER ISIS/Daesh began their unabated rampage of mass murder, mayhem, and land acquisition. It was in the news media. There were pictures, videos, reports from the field, reports funneled out from people trapped in ISIS-held towns/cities.
Now if we knew about these things and we could see what was going on, would someone please let me know when people like Dumpster Dempsey will get their heads out of the sand — EVER????
Dumpster should be careful where he sits. He might fall off and break. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put him together again. Oh, wait, he’s already fallen and the cracks get wider every day.
One slight quibble: the fall of Mosul was June 2014, and Demsey’s comments were May 2015 – so it’s two years ago from today, a year ago from his comments. But your point still stands – two years ago was still a year after we knew what they were like in Syria, and six months after we knew the threat they posed having taken Ramadi.
Just another example of how there really isn’t an Iraqi nation…and there never really was an Iraqi nation. Three separate tribal groups loyal to tribe first and everything else a distant second.
A construct of the Brits after WW1, it’s been waiting to fall back into the three separate pieces it was under the Ottomans.
We removed the only stabilizing force in the country and we seem surprised that someone worse decided to fill the vacuum. This was stupid plan from day one without appropriate planning for 50-70 years of occupation to reconstruct Iraq into something perhaps cohesive. It was never sold that way to Congress, and it became an albatross within a couple of years of invasion. We fucked this up so badly it’s hard to believe there was ever an original plan that made sense.
After the first Gulf War we saw the lack of intestinal fortitude inherent in most of the Iraqi Army…what made anyone think that a decade later the entire country would be filled with hard core nationalists determined to carve out a nation of liberty and unity?
Now it’s a morass of death and destruction with only a few equally uncomfortable options. We could ignore it and let it go further down the shithole…we could keep trying to piecemeal a solution because that seems to be working out so well…or we could go in with a massive invasion force and destroy everything and almost everyone in front of us….but hey this administration is very good with foreign policy so I am sure they have a great plan to resolve it all before November.
Or we could just blow up the dam near Mosul and the other one, on the Euphrates River which supplies Baghdad, and let Nature take over. Now, there’s a thought, VOV.
We should never have let them hang Saddam.
Saddam was scum, but he damn sure kept the factions in line. He was taken out of the picture and nobody in DC had the foresight to figure it would create a power vacuum. WTF were they thinking? Or not thinking?
You have it almost exactly right- although don’t forget that the French were involved and th US was too clueless to realize what was happening…
Also, it is not so much a lack of courage on the part of the Iraqi army as a lack of an actual nation that they are willing to fight and die for.
Mosul is a Sunni town, and the mostly Shia army could really give a rats as that the Sunni residents are suffering under the rule of the Sunni extremists they invited in to kill Shia. On top of that, they have no assurance that the incompetent and corrupt government will pay them, much less supply them and take care of their family while there gone (or in the event of their death).
Unless a unifying leader emerges, the Arab world will have a WW1/2 type event with all the death and destruction that comes with it. WW1 in the West destroyed Old Europe, and it only Took one more World War and a few genocides in Eastern Europe to make it stick.
Perhaps the Iraqi army needs a corporate sponsor like Nike running shoes.
Be glad to trade you some Iraqi rifles…. never been fired, dropped only once….
At least the French ones have undergone regular PMCS……
Wondering how long it will take Washington to realize Baghdad is a complete waste of time, money, and oxygen?
I looked at some figures from the Iraq/Iran war (1980-88)and it’s hard for me to look at Iraq now and conclude that they have produced a generation of cowards since that war. I don’t believe they are cowardly. My belief is that most don’t give a shit and have no interest in fighting and others see their “enemy” as no enemy at all. Perhaps an anonymous survey of the officer corps and senior enlisted is in order. I’m serious. All signs point not to cowardice but to apathy, at best, and empathy for the Dark Forces, at worst.
Bingo. Shia in Iraq have no interest in liberating Sunni Iraqis who hate them from Sunni Foreigners that hate them more. They are perfectly willing to become Wetern Persia.
Never mind the fact that repairs to the failing Mosul Dam aren’t happening until the area stabilizes either and it’s expected to blow within a few weeks to a few months