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From all the accounts I can see from here, The Iraqi Security Forces have made major gains in Ramadi and recaptured key terrain. The city is strategically and symbolically critical: It sits on the Euphrates and a highway linking Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders; further up the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam, which generates power not only for Anbar, but other parts of Iraq.
I wish Ricochet would allow authors to post photos that link to a full-size version, so that we could click on this map and view it in a readable size.
Here’s the link: I included it in the text, but it wasn’t clear, sorry about that.
Two thoughts come to me here:
Claire,
It is interesting that greatest effect the Russians are having is blowing up the oil fields. They’re only more effective at this because we have environmental concerns. (We need serious psychiatric counseling about our environmental obsessions)
Meanwhile, Ash Carter’s suggestion is completely of the essence. The cobras would probably kill most of the ISIS Jihadists from the air. Defanging the IEDs will be a slow but doable process.
Regards,
Jim
Lock up your Archdukes!
Dear God, would you want the President to have that nonsensical conversation with the SecDef and proudly broadcast it around the world?
According to Moscow they are. We’ve now got a Russian-Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis. You think we’re going to get a truthful account of what the Russians are doing out of the Kremlin?
We could surrender/cede/yield more rapidly to Iran, Russia and ISIS simultaneously to draw them further into the vacuum. Another option is to implement an even more shifting, uncertain policy towards the Kurds to make sure Turkey, Iraq, Shia militias and the Kurds attack each other (and us) more vigorously. Lastly, there is still time for Kerry to find ways to draw China and Saudi Arabia into the conflict to maximize the destruction, keep the refugee totals high and insure turmoil in Europe and the Middle East for generations.
That Kerry and Obama both continue to regard themselves as terribly clever and on top of things is almost as enraging as the slaughters their incompetence has bought about.
Until I read the rest of the paragraph I thought for a split second that you were being serious, and I was about to go berserk. (And then I would have taken a deep breath, pulled myself together, remembered the Code of Conduct, and been very polite, but it would have required a walk around the block, first.)
The Saudis are already drawn in, but bogged down in their idiotic war in Yemen. As for China, that’s not inconceivable. As John Cookson points out, that’s exactly what happened in Belgrade.
No I wouldn’t want my President to broadcast any of his conversations around the world. I would like my President to discuss something other than the domestic political ramifications of his foreign policy decisions and to actually consider the nation’s interests instead of his own. Ok, so that’s not what Putin is necessarily doing either and I’m not saying I admire Putin in any way but Obama has zero chance on the same stage with him. If Putin is broadcasting that conversation you can damn sure bet he is doing that because it fits some sort of overall strategy wouldn’t you think?
Honestly I’m sotired of the Obama/Hillary/Kerry team at this point I can’t think straight. At least we are addressing the giant national security challenge of Climate Change though….
I have asked rhetorically how many thousands must die to prove Obama’s lack of leadership is a disaster…..unfortunately it looks like we will actually find out.
Russia has a David Mamet gap.
Tom Cotton explains the US Constitution to the Iranians and creates an international incident. The Iraqi Ambassador explains the US Constitution to the US and all I can think is “well, at least someone in Washington has read the thing.”
Putin’s message here was “Heeey our weapons work. They are not just toy replicas of the American arsenal”.
I am sure they would love to see many other oil fields go out of commission, in order to gain market share. Desperate measures with oil below $40.
Claire,
Well, we should take anything Moscow says with a huge chunk of salt. However, considering that ISIS has been selling oil and using the proceeds to commit genocide, I think our nonsense about the environment is less than exemplary. Luckily, no one actually believes we are that obsessive. They figure we have some Machiavellian plot up our sleeve. Who would assume that the American military was being run by a #%[CoC]*@# from the EPA.
Sorry Claire got to run, I’ve got a tee time to get to. Me, Darth Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Mulligan are going to do 18. You know you are only allowed 14 clubs in the bag. Mulligan carries a driver, a five wood, a five iron, a putter, and 11 different wedges. He gets into a lot of tight spots and tends to stay there for a while. Nobody knows wedges like Mulligan. What a guy.
Regards,
Jim
Just read an article explaining that Obama hasn’t been attacking ISIS controlled oil because of environmental concerns…. Another stern rebuke of terrorism right there!
https://www.aei.org/publication/obama-did-not-hit-isis-oil-because-of-environmental-damage/?utm_source=jolt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jolt12102015&utm_term=Jolt
There is a workaround: go ahead and click on it; it will open into a larger image, just in the current tab. Then go back, via a different tab, and reopen the article.
Eric Hines
I cannot. On the other hand, it’s plainly a manufactured dialog for the West’s–including particularly Poland and the Baltics–consumption. There’s no more reason, otherwise, to take a Kremlin Web site seriously in its details than there is a White House Web site.
Regarding OP, the presence of the IEDs and their complexity is only an excuse to delay. We encountered much the same thing in the approaches to the Rhine and in the immediate areas post-crossings. They did slow us down, but they didn’t create overmuch hesitation; we just blew the things up and moved on. And, the things that really slowed us down by then was having outrun much of our supply lines and the large numbers of green combat loss replacements. The mines themselves didn’t contribute to much hesitation.
Now, let’s review the bidding here: an Iraqi army, especially in the end stages, fought an Iranian army manned in large part by children and old men to a standstill. An Iraqi army manned and equipped by the Russians was easily overrun, twice, by us. An Iraqi army manned and equipped by us evaporated in front of the Daesh. The present Iraqi army doesn’t seem to have shown much stomach even for beginning the struggle for Ramadi until the Shia militias were in place and ready. So: who’s doing the actual fighting now?
Too, we have robots that do a fine job of blowing up IEDs before men and equipment roll over them. Oh, wait–we’re not there.
Should we be there? Not under the current Iraqi political situation, or under this administration. We’d only be spending American treasure and blood for no reason and under no plan or strategy. The threats from the Shia militia–or about them–aren’t relevant to that. Abadi is under Iranian pressure not to invite us in? No, he’s not. Pressure is all in his head. True enough, Iran is making threats, both directly and through their Shia militias, all they are is threats. Be interesting to see Iran back them up.
Urban combat is, in many respects more difficult than open field fighting, but it’s eminently doable. We just need to worry less about collateral damage, and more about killing Daesh. Our administration isn’t capable of that, and the Iraqi administration, better though it is than Malaki’s, is too timid to do that.
It’s been a world war ever since Bush the Younger articulated the Bush Doctrine. The present administration, for all that it’s begun implementing elements of it, is and has been all along, too timid or too oblivious to act on that simple fact.
Eric Hines
Comment of the day. Quintuple like.
Second Battle of Ramadi. We defeated the enemy there about a decade ago, but more killing later is what you get when cutting and running the first time.
That’s exactly right — but it’s also an articulation of a “maybe first use” policy.
I had the same thought: “Wow, they’re exactly right! How’d that happen?”
I don’t know if we have any Ramadi vets on Ricochet. I can hardly bear to imagine how they’re feeling reading this news.
Thanks for these, Claire.
I spent a year there in the post-Awakening peace of 2009-10. Things were remarkably quiet. AQI was around, but either afraid or uninterested in attacking us directly. They mostly focused on attempting to assassinate provincial government officials and bombing strategic infrastructure. We occasionally theorized whether the Iraqi government was tolerating the latter because it inconvenienced the local population and cemented support for Awakening/US-aligned leaders.
How am I feeling about it? A lot of people I was acquainted with six years ago — many of whom I liked and some of whom I respected — are either in harms way or fighting and dying as we speak. But that’s been true since Ramadi fell in May. I go through spurts of trying to keep up with all the reports, but quickly get exhausted. I can only pray: Lord, have mercy.
Oh, and as to why the people of Ramadi are in the situation they’re in, and where the culpability falls for actions that could have prevented it, that I cannot allow myself to consider, lest I be consumed by rage.
As an aside, this is the line that jumped out at me from that darkly hilarious bit of propaganda:
Mr. Putin chose to remind us that those very missiles could carry nukes just a few weeks after the JLENS runaway blimp debacle highlighted the inadequacy of our warning networks against cruise missile attack. I’m guessing that wasn’t an accident.
Not an accident at all.
These words are very similar to those every Iraq vet I’ve spoken to uses: Words to the effect of, “I have to not think about it, because I have to get on with my life.” I keep hearing variants of this.
I don’t even know what to say to you or them. “Thank you for your service” rings more than a bit hollow under the circumstances, and it’s a cliché. I suppose what I want to say is, “Thank you. I feel an aching sense of failure for having let you down. I know it can’t be made right.”