Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
a strange number as green berets generally operate in small teams.
Recent attacks in Iraq
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
12, according to the us special operations command http://www. ... soc. .... mil/ ... UNS/Releases/2013/ ... August/130813-01/130813-01.htm
ska invita
back on the other side
War Nerd has written about Isis
" But we’re still talking about a conventional military force smaller than a division. That’s a real but very limited amount of combat power. What this means is that, no matter how many scare headlines you read, ISIS will never take Baghdad, let alone Shia cities to the south like Karbala. It won’t be able to dent the Kurds’ territory to the north, either. All it can do—all it has been doing, by moving into Sunni cities like Mosul and Tikrit—is to complete the partition of Iraq begun by our dear ex-president Bush in 2003.
By crushing Saddam’s Sunni-led Iraq, the Americans made partition inevitable. In fact, Iraq has been partitioned ever since the invasion; it’s just been partitioned badly, into two parts instead of the natural three: the Kurdish north, and the remainder occupied by a weak sectarian Shia force going by the name of “The Iraqi Army.” The center of the country, the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” had no share in this partition and was under the inept, weak rule of the Shia army."
lots more:
http://pando.com/2014/06/16/the-war...-know-about-too-extreme-for-al-qaeda-i-s-i-s/
Any thoughts?
" But we’re still talking about a conventional military force smaller than a division. That’s a real but very limited amount of combat power. What this means is that, no matter how many scare headlines you read, ISIS will never take Baghdad, let alone Shia cities to the south like Karbala. It won’t be able to dent the Kurds’ territory to the north, either. All it can do—all it has been doing, by moving into Sunni cities like Mosul and Tikrit—is to complete the partition of Iraq begun by our dear ex-president Bush in 2003.
By crushing Saddam’s Sunni-led Iraq, the Americans made partition inevitable. In fact, Iraq has been partitioned ever since the invasion; it’s just been partitioned badly, into two parts instead of the natural three: the Kurdish north, and the remainder occupied by a weak sectarian Shia force going by the name of “The Iraqi Army.” The center of the country, the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” had no share in this partition and was under the inept, weak rule of the Shia army."
lots more:
http://pando.com/2014/06/16/the-war...-know-about-too-extreme-for-al-qaeda-i-s-i-s/
Any thoughts?
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Pretty brutal lot.
It makes me think the possible executions of recent days were probably true.
They said "advisers"?
Where?
And if so, was this a deliberately sarcastic Vietnam reference by the DoD?
The spawn of Osama - with 16000 on the ground activists and a rumoured 2 billion in looted treasure they could cause a lot of mayhem. Here's hoping behind all this brutalist Allah Akhbar mutterings they are more like the Chris Morris's Four Lions with British Intelligence all over any of those that come back to the UK.
Caliphate my arse..
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
you make it sound like he has much of a choice. from what i can see Obama wasn't going to win any popularity contests among the Sunni population anyway, so he's not lost much...
if he doesn't support the IG, however much he dislikes them and thinks they've sown the seeds of their own destruction, then the US instantly loses what political influence it has in the region. US influence being based on its willingness and ability to either support governments or destroy them, when that willingness goes away so does US clout - and the clout will fall to the next power, or powers, who do have the willingness and ability.
Saudi's, Qataries, Iranians...
Obama is doing the minimum he thinks he can get away with, even the F/A-18's doing reece flights is a 'please fuck off so we don't have to bomb you' message, he doesn't need to do reece flights, the Iraqi's will have done that - he could have sent the F/A-18's tooled-up-to-fuck to hit ISIS logistic hubs and main supply roots without doing 'show of force' stuff, but he's done them anyway.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
Seems reasonable. It is also perhaps the case that having so much of their combat strength out in the open and fighting at the front line does make ISIS very vulnerable, given what the Yanks are still capable of doing.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Judging by the US rhetoric of the last day or so, the main way they will try to soften this blow to their standing with various Sunni people, is to openly mention how sectarian and shit the Iraqi government is.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes, if the US chooses to, they can do to ISIS what they cannot for do to them in Syria. Shower them with massive death from above, their special weapon of power that turns many a tide.
DairyQueen
Well-Known Member
It just looks like they have a lot of support from the Sunni Arabs. Excluding some parts the insurgency which rely solely on foreign volunteers, the movement looks similar to the types of groups that participated in the 2007 anti-US insurgency and "Awakening" movement.
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
more war crimes by the maliki regime
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
"The press conference, chaired by the President of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq, Struan Stevenson, strongly condemned the human rights violations in Iraq, the executions and massacre of Iranian refugees in Camps Ashraf and Liberty, and stressed that the main cause of these problems has been the monopoly of power in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's hands in the past 8 years and the unprecedented infiltration of Iraq by Iran and its terrorist Qods Force."
"The participants strongly criticized the support of Western governments, particularly the United States, for Maliki and called for an end to arms shipments to the Maliki government, coming from the US and Russia, which help him
to suppress the popular uprising"
"the crisis of Iraq can only be resolved by an urgent change of leadership and the ousting of Maliki, combined with the complete eviction of the Iranian regime from Iraq"
http://uruknet.info/?p=m107732&hd=&size=1&l=e
"The participants strongly criticized the support of Western governments, particularly the United States, for Maliki and called for an end to arms shipments to the Maliki government, coming from the US and Russia, which help him
to suppress the popular uprising"
"the crisis of Iraq can only be resolved by an urgent change of leadership and the ousting of Maliki, combined with the complete eviction of the Iranian regime from Iraq"
http://uruknet.info/?p=m107732&hd=&size=1&l=e
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
Despite all of Obama's criticism of the al-Maliki regime over it's mistreatment of non-Shias & the pledge that the US force won't take sides, it will be taking sides. The Sunnis could rally around ISIS even more. It's a risky move & could backfire. This will have to be done very carefully. And they'll have to use extreme caution to avoid Sunni civilian casualties.
They have to go out in the open to take new territory but not to hold the cities & towns they've already taken. It'll take a while to get these 300 advisers in place & functioning so I'd expect a real push by ISIS to grab more territory before the cavalry arrives.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
from what i've been reading, big lumps of this Sunni insurgency are some of the groups that took part in the 'Sunni Awakening' - one of many reasons the US is so reluctant to get involved. Maliki stiffing them after they got rid of AQ in Iraq (the forerunner/previous name of ISIS) is what has driven them into open rebelion.
Maliki unlikely to trouble Obama's Christmas card list...
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The awakening movement was the turning of various Sunni tribes/militias/groups/people against the direct predecessor of ISIS, funded by the US and coming with promises of state jobs for the Sons of Iraq - i.e the actual fighters who cleared AQ in Iraq out. Although it did contain many previously anti-US groups. When the US passed the responsibility onto the new shia-dominated state they backtracked, didn't provide the jobs, stole the funding etc and engaged in sectarian rhetoric and actions - thus funding the wider sunni support for what many see as an actual peoples uprising that islamists form only a small part of (important point this). Which is what i suggested last week that we may see some attempts to replay this. Thus far, nothing overt of that type beyond a few sunnis being seen in public with Maliki.
I think the other suggestion i made that the sunni militias and their leaders are using ISIS to pressure Maliki in order to reassert some similar agreement and their local power is still looking likely.
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
special forces foreign internal defense manual (2007; pdf) www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/fm3-05.202(07).pdf
Thanks, found that at 1am...
Ah, yes, I forgot another unhappy precedent: the sole occurrence of "advisers" in that document is in its bibliography:
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
you can read that here http:/ ... /www.d ... vidshub. ... net/publication ... /issues/8230
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
no, just take the dots outParts of URL redacted?
newharper
Manxome Tove
I remember a Private Eye cartoon that had villagers looking up at riders on a hilltop saying.
" Oh no, it's Attila the Hun and his military advisers"
Time for the CIA to dust off their special projects - devil dolls..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html?hpid=z7
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html?hpid=z7
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