"The Battle for Baghdad" by Patrick Cockburn

"‘The army is still dissolving,’ Dhia’a al-Assadi said a month after the disaster at Mosul. ‘It is dysfunctional and so is the police force.’ A brief counteroffensive towards Tikrit to boost Maliki’s political fortunes had petered out. Sistani’s fatwa had produced many volunteers, and officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard are trying to build up a military force parallel to the army, drawing on their experiences in Syria. The government has asked the Americans for drone and air strikes on Isis’s convoys of trucks: the trucks are packed with fighters skilled at waging guerrilla war, suddenly attacking and withdrawing, since experienced fighters are never used to hold captured territory. Isis describes the strategy as ‘moving like a serpent through rocky ground’. Not that they are short of recruits: Safa Hussein told me studies showed that where Isis takes over an area it can recruit five or ten times the number of its original force, so if it starts out with a hundred men it will soon field five hundred or a thousand. These wouldn’t be experienced fighters, and some would simply want to protect their families, but with its large new recruiting grounds Isis is rapidly expanding its forces. A hope in Baghdad is that Isis is simply the fanatical edge of a more moderate Sunni revolt. This comforting argument holds that one day tribal and other leaders, having used their extremist allies to defeat the Baghdad government, will turn on them as they did in 2006-7. On the other hand, the world’s cemeteries are full of people who thought they could use extremists for their own ends and then dispose of them. Isis has taken measures against betrayal, insisting that other armed groups in Mosul lay down their arms and pledge allegiance to its new caliphate, the Islamic State. It isn’t going to implode."  Patrick Cockburn

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It's all over folks.  The Potemkin country that the neocons created in Iraq has come apart.   Someone wrote on SST today that he has just realized that the process working itself out now is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.  That formulation implies a post Wesphalia sense of statehood in these ME peoples and their politically primitive and religously inspired states that just does not exist and never has except in a nascent condition in pre-2003 Iraq.   General officers of the US armed forces played a despicable role in deceiving themselves and everyone else by distorting reporting on Iraqi training and by punishing those who tried to tell the truth.  They should be shunned and punished.  pl

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n14/patrick-cockburn/battle-for-baghdad

Comments

[CTuttle]

Iraq Assessment Team Reports Arrive in Pentagon

... “It will be a matter of some time here as we work our way through what … the teams had found before moving forward to any specific decisions about follow-on military assistance to the Iraqi security forces,” Kirby told reporters.

There is a palpable sense of urgency in the Pentagon about what is happening in Iraq, Kirby said, but it will take time to review the reports and make recommendations. “It is more important to get this issue right than it is to get it quick,” he added. Senior leaders in the Pentagon – including Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – will take the time to digest the reports before making recommendations about how to move forward, the admiral said. {...}

The joint operations centers in Baghdad and Irbil are up and running, and the U.S. personnel there are coordinating and communicating with Iraqi forces. A big part of the mission of the joint operations center is to process the information learned from Iraqi staff elements and the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights the United States flies over the country.

“Now that the initial work of the assessment teams is complete, that work will be studied and reviewed by senior leaders, … and from that some recommendations will flow – recommendations for the secretary to consider,” Kirby said, adding that

Hagel will take those recommendations to President Barack Obama.

“We are in a process right now that may or may not lead to follow-on specific military advisor missions,” the admiral said, noting that the assessment teams could form the core of an advisory team should the president so decide.

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=122662

[The beaver]

Colonel

Don't know whether you saw this piece about el-Sisi:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/06/us-egypt-sisi-kurds-idUSKBN0FB0UY20140706

He said this" "I had warned the United States and Europe from providing any aid to them and told them they will come out of Syria to target Iraq then Jordan then Saudi Arabia."

Then he posited that the referendum for the Kurds' independence will break up Iraq.

Is he for real? US and Europe providing aid to ISIS?

The other side of the coin: Israel aiding Jordan against ISIS?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/israel-might-act-to-safeguard-jordan/

"With the Islamic State (formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIS) knocking at the doorsteps of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the Iraqi army withdrawing its troops from the only border crossing between Iraq and Jordan, Israel is beginning to feel the heat generated by the successful campaigns of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. Jordan has hitherto served as a crucial buffer shielding Israel from a spillover of mayhem created by the Sunni-Muslim extremist terrorist group, whose leader has proclaimed the new caliphate."

[JM Gavin]

Concur on the dishonor and betrayal by GO/FOs on the training and capabilities of the Iraqis.

They are doing the same today on Afghanistan. They will not be shunned. They will get filthy rich and die as fat old men in mansions.

DOL,

JM Gavin

[oofda]

Col Lang wrote: "General officers of the US armed forces played a despicable role in deceiving themselves and everyone else by distorting reporting on Iraqi training and by punishing those who tried to tell the truth. They should be shunned and punished."

This should be understood; Admiral Byng did better and was shot at dawn. Don't expect or want that for those U.S. general officers who were at fault-- but we should shun them. and totally ignore their bleatings.

[alba etie]

All
The Republican primary for 2016 has been engaged . Sen Paul is taking Gov Rick Perry to school on the current Iraqi clusterf--ck. We all need to listen very carefully to what is being said about our interventionist foreign policy .
Sen Paul to me is looking better & better for the nominee.

[Poul]

The ISIS is also busy consolidating their position in Syria.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/07/14/uk-syria-crisis-east-idUKKBN0FJ1I020140714

[bth]

Col. I really doubt the Iraqi government needs US drones at this point. The Iranians have a good variety and they have been using them to effect against Kurds within Iran, against Syrian rebels and now against IS in Iraq. The fact is some cheap drones, especially with a designator in coordination with artillery or old soviet aircraft with bomb or missile racks can do a lot of damage without a lot of risk. If they don't care too much destroying a neighborhood or about pinpoint accuracy then the practicality of this approach skyrockets and is more than offset by large bombs or artillery barrages.

Also they are used at sea. We spend billions on stealth littoral ships that can be seen from fishing boats and cheap drones.

Watch for Japanese/Chinese drone wars over the Pacific in the near future.

[zanzibar]

Pat

You were way ahead of the curve on this. I recall you noting the skewing of intelligence to justify the invasion in an interview while I was visiting Australia mid-2003. I also recall listening to Tony Blair during that trip certain that Iraqi WMD would be uncovered. I found SST some time later. Only a few voices in the wilderness forecast the ultimate breakup of Iraq. All we had were gung-ho Team USA jingoist bullshit and fantasist fears of WMD attacks by Iraq, paraded as gospel truth. There is no other way to state it - this has been a monumental fuckup by the grand poohbahs in DC and both parties. Of course supported by the majority of our fellow citizens.

I have been in the minority of opinion ever since becoming an adult. I did not agree with our military interventions from Korea to Iraq. My simple reasoning was that none posed an existential threat. Additionally I could not find a plausible national interest relative to the cost. Similarly, I have not agreed with the continual growth in the scale and scope of our government. As my grandpa always noted increased government interventions would inevitably lead to less liberty, more corruption and "cartels" of the cronies. And not enhance the well being of the average citizen or our national competitiveness.

But...here we are! IMO, a six decade trajectory cannot be changed. It can only exhaust itself.

[JM Gavin]

"There is no other way to state it - this has been a monumental fuckup by the grand poohbahs in DC and both parties."

Certain folks got filthy rich in the process, though.

[Charles I]

What of the lack of battle fitness or unit reliability discussed in the July 14 open thread, never mind the political red lines on a new government. Parliament rose a couple days ago with no new government I read somewhere.

What is will w/o capacity?

Shoulda been hellfiring all those victory parades before the purges executions and consolidation occurred if Malaki & Iraq are a vital interest.

Mebbe they'll get to gaza too.

[Charles I]

richer still, there's no end of campaigns on the new horizon, shameless pros ever in demand, however self-promoted.

[Charles I]

but when it does, what will the well armed armed bankrupt State be? Multinat corporations, now new and improved with Religion, running the consumerist surveillance societies from the Cloud will require that concentration of military potential unless they develop or subborn their own.

Government could go away tomorrow. The infrastructure of power remains, the age old levers waiting to be grasped by clever active men capable of driving us hoi polloi like instinct drives the proverbial lemmings, of which both there seems an inexhaustible supply.

War corporatism instead of [state]war communism, with religion to boot, be like a Michael Moorcock/Gary Shteyngart novel set in an an oil rich North Korea of the future, on continental scales.