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Comments on Sanders

Anyone who makes comments about Sanders that are anti-Semitic will be banned.  pl

"... the attempt to retake Ramadi looks like yet another disaster in waiting." BI

 "... the attempt to retake Ramadi looks like yet another disaster in waiting.

As former US Army intelligence officer Michael Pregent explained to Business Insider, taking back Ramadi is beyond the capabilities of a diminished Iraqi army and its partners, which include Iranian-backed Shia militia groups like Kataib Hezbollah and the Badr Group.
Read more:  http://www.businessinsider.com/the-campaign-to-retake-ramadi-from-isis-is-an-impending-disaster-2015-5#ixzz3boxY1DaJ

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"... Ameri rose to become leader of the Badr Organisation, the leading militia in Hashed al-Sha’abi, after years in exile from Saddam Hussein-era Iraq, which he spent in Iran. He, along with the Badr, fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and he remains close to Tehran and in particular Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite force the Al-Quds Brigade, whom he referred to as “Brother Qassem”.

General Soleimani is a bogeyman to America, for his creation of the militias that fought the American and British presence in Iraq after the invasion of 2003, at a cost of hundreds of lives.

But many Shia Iraqis have come to see him and Iran as a more reliable weapon against Isil than the western coalition."  The Telegraph 

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11642337/Americans-cannot-save-Ramadi-from-Isil-Iraqs-strongman-militia-leader-says.html

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"The Iraqi army, which the US has tried to build up into a viable fighting force, fled when faced with dozens of car bombs in the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Arming Sunni tribes to fight the Sunni extremists in the Islamic State terror group (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) would likely be America's best option. But, as Aaron David Miller noted in The Wall Street Journal, this could undermine Iraq's central, Shia-dominated government and make Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi look weak to his Shia constituency.

Consequently, Baghdad has not agreed to arm Sunni tribes.

On the other hand, Shia militias backed by Iran have so far proven to be the most effective fighting force against ISIS, but many fear that they are pursuing a sectarian agenda and committing atrocities against Sunni civilians in the areas they liberate from ISIS.

Read more:  http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-is-embracing-a-dark-reality-in-iraq-2015-5#ixzz3bp7URjOg

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Hadi al-Ameri is his name.  He is the boss of the Hashed Sha'bi (popular mobilizations militias).  This translates as Shi'a militias of an extreme variety.  He is a Badr Brigade terrorist or ex-terrorist.  He served with the Badr Brigade against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.  His only serious interest in life is the consolidation of Shia rule in what was Iraq.   He is interviewed regularly on 24/7 news.  He makes his contempt for the United States clear.  He is now engaged in running the actual Iraqi war effort.  He makes it clear that he does not take  specific instructions from Abadi, the prime minister.  He laughs at the idea that he is going to expend his available resources trying to re-take Sunni Arab population centers in Anbar.  He makes it clear that the inhabitants of these places are not really his people.  He is intent on consolidating the defenses of Baghdad and Karbala.  He is particularly interested in what he calls the "Dajla (Tigris) Arm."  I believe that he means the east-west highway and canal that extends from just north of Saqqlawiya to a junction with the north-south highway from Baghdad to Samarra and Mosul.  This is an obvious high speed approach into the Baghdad area from IS controlled western Anbar.  Evidently he understands a good bit about terrain analysis.  I suppose his friends in the Quds force may have taught him that.   "And which staff college did Cochise attend?"  Lt Col Owen Thursday in "Fort Apache."  pl

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 2 300 Humvees gone missing in Mosul and other surprizing news from Iraq

By Patrick Bahzad   

 

 

 

 

      

 Let's keep this short and sharp !

First of all, the good news is, we know now where about 3 billion US taxpayers' money has gone. In a TV interview he gave on Sunday to Iraqiya TV, Prime-Minister Haider al-Abadi stated that his security forces had lost 2 300 Humvees in the conquest of Mosul by the "Islamic State" in June 2014.

And while the PM has been rather elusive about the other equipment, weaponry and ammunition that was lost in the assault on the Northern Iraqi city, it doesn't take lots of imagination to figure out that ISIS' arsenals must have been replenished in the same way as their vehicles fleet.

Since the fall of Mosul, the US had agreed to a new sales contract for an additional batch of around 1 000 Humvees, part of which has been destroyed, or captured again, by ISIS in the fall of Ramadi, in mid-May. Not surprisingly, it is the Shia Militias (the so-called " Popular Mobilisation Units") that seem to be more and more in the driving seat, as has been forecast time and again on SST.

The current leader of the main Shia militia, Hadi al-Amiri, who's also Transportation Minister, seems to be the man in charge. In an interview he gave on the very same day Prime-Minister Abadi talked to the Iraqiya TV network, Amiri derisively qualified any statement about a soon to start counter-offensive in Ramadi as "laughable".

In the internal power-struggle between the pro-Western Abadi and the Iranian backed Amiri, it looks like the one calling the shots is not the Prime-Minister of Iraq. What seems to be at stake here is not just the strategy that is going to prevail in the fight against ISIS, but also the influence the two not so shadowy players behind their Iraqi proxies are going to have. The US had relied so far on the official Iraqi Army, supported by coalition air-power, and had advocated for tuning down the role of the Shia sectarian groups, in an effort to prevent any further antagonizing the Sunnis North and West of Baghdad.

However, according to Amiri - a long time personal friend of Iranian al-Quds leader, Qassem Soleimani - the military strategy against ISIS is now going to be based on a more gradual approach, aimed it isolating pockets of ISIS territory from each other, in order to disrupt their operational and territorial continuity, and prevent any risk of major ISIS' action against Baghdad. Only when these two priority goals are reached, could there be any discussion about retaking Ramadi and Anbar.

Not mincing his words, Amiri went as far as saying that the prime minister had already agreed to his alternate strategy “We send the key points of the operation to the prime minister, and he approved them”, Amiri said. “The prime minister is a civilian. It is not his job to lay our plans”.

Couldn't be any clearer, could it ?

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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/May-31/299962-iraq-lost-2300-humvees-in-mosul-pm.ashx

http://www.ibtimes.com/iraq-militia-leader-hadi-al-ameri-says-direct-attack-liberate-ramadi-ill-advised-1945646