ISIS: Who needs ground troops?

[KingOrfeo]

Yes, let's slay the messenger.

You mean the author. Different thing.

 

[JackLuis]

ISIS spelled backwards is Sisi! Guess who wants boots on the ground?

Egypt president says need growing for joint Arab force

SO who's a good little Sisi now?

AN all Arab Front against ISIS sounds good to me, but if the Turks roll in to Syria to chase out ISIS,and Assad, oops, then we shall see to fruition of true Muslim fraternity!

Keep our Boys at home, it's the Arabs mess.

 

[KingOrfeo]

War fever: 62% of American registered voters support sending ground troops to fight ISIS.

 

[KingOrfeo]

AN all Arab Front against ISIS sounds good to me, but if the Turks . . .

Well, they wouldn't be part of it, would they? They're not Arabs.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Update: 28,000 refugees have fled Tikrit as Iraqi troops attack; ISIS has torched the oil wells outside the city.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The Shiite Iraqi attack is being lead by Shiite Iranian generals, if the town and it's Sunni population is taken, expect some brutal repression of those civilians.

That would be different from the status quo how?

Shi'a repressing the Sunni has been causing problems in Iraq pretty much since we set up the Shi'a led government.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Update: 28,000 refugees have fled Tikrit as Iraqi troops attack; ISIS has torched the oil wells outside the city.

Sweet...fuck Tikrit specifically too (along with several other choice towns)....they point blank told me they wanted us gone so they could bask in the glory of sharia law without interference of infidels like us and to either build more mosques for them or GTFO but they were going to be NO schools or water purification systems built by the white devil...mosques only!

Back then I was a true believer in "doing the right thing" so it irked me that they would rather have ANOTHER mosque than clean water for their parasite/disease ridden fuck trophies.

Today? You know what? Enjoy mother fuckers.....I hope ISIS savages the fucking shit out of that town like a 500A.D. barbarian raiding party all hopped up on khat. They can also chug all of Americas roadside/rest stop/truck stop AIDS condoms just because fuck them.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Except now the Iranians are in charge.

Good, because:

The White House and human rights organisations have also warned against the danger of sectarian reprisals by the Shia militia in the predominantly Sunni area.

Militia leaders have vowed to seek revenge for the massacre of hundreds of soldiers, most of them Shia, at Camp Speicher near Tikrit in June.

The Iranians, OTOH, have no particular personal grudge against Iraqi Sunnis, or at any rate no fresh grudge -- the last war between Iraq and Iran ended in 1988.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

What a foolish statement, grudges between Shia and Sunni go back to the 7th Century.

Yes, but they've always managed to live together peacefully at times when those grudges were not inflamed. They managed it under Hussein.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

In historical context, a blink of the eye.

In historical context, most of the history of Islam. Actual religious conflict between Sunni and Shi'a has been rare. Granted, peace between them has usually depended on an authoritarian government, like Hussein's or the Ottoman Empire's.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Well, as it happens, we need the Iranians. Think of it as allying with Stalin against Hitler.

In the four days since Iranian troops joined 30,000 Iraqi forces to try to wrest Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit back from Islamic State control, American officials have said the United States is not coordinating with Iran, one of its fiercest global foes, in the fight against a common enemy.

That may be technically true. But American war planners have been closely monitoring Iran’s parallel war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, through a range of channels, including conversations on radio frequencies that each side knows the other is monitoring. And the two militaries frequently seek to avoid conflict in their activities by using Iraqi command centers as an intermediary.

As a result, many national security experts say, Iran’s involvement is helping the Iraqis hold the line against Islamic State advances until American military advisers are finished training Iraq’s underperforming armed forces.

“The only way in which the Obama administration can credibly stick with its strategy is by implicitly assuming that the Iranians will carry most of the weight and win the battles on the ground,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former special adviser to Mr. Obama who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too — the U.S. strategy in Iraq has been successful so far largely because of Iran.”

It was Iran that organized Iraq’s Shiite militias last August to break a weeklong Islamic State siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter. American bombs provided support from warplanes.

Administration officials were careful to note at the time that the United States was working in Amerli with its allies — namely Iraqi Army units and Kurdish security forces. A senior administration official said that “any coordinating with the Shiite militias was not done by us; it would have been done by the I.S.F.,” a reference to the Iraqi security forces.

 

[JackLuis]

Iranian role in fighting IS in Iraq: Where will it lead?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran's growing influence in Iraq is setting off alarm bells, and nowhere is the problem starker than in the high-stakes battle for Tikrit. It marks a crucial fight in the bigger war to expel the Islamic State group from Iraq, and yet Iran and the Shiite militias it empowers — not the U.S. — are leading the charge.

This is both a political and military dilemma for the Obama administration, which is under heavy criticism for negotiating with Iran over limits on its nuclear program. Iran, meanwhile, is asserting itself in a divided Iraq like never before.

The battle for Tikrit raises the question: Who is really running this war? Iraq? The U.S.? Iran?

Pissed off Persians are participating.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Iraqi forces have taken parts of Tikrit.

They've also taken al-Alam, a strategic town to the north of Tikrit.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Wiki page on the "Second Battle of Tikrit."

 

[KingOrfeo]

Iraqi forces have almost but still not quite taken all of Tikrit.

I guess, as the Germans learned in Stalingrad, it is very difficult to take a city if the defenders are willing to make a house-to-house ratfight of it.

Which means Mosul will be an even tougher nut to crack.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The Kurds accuse ISIS of using chemical weapons.

 

[KingOrfeo]

After three weeks of fighting, Tikrit still has not fallen. Now, finally, the U.S. is providing airstrikes.

Hope there's something left of the city when all this is over.

 

[BotanyBoy]

After three weeks of fighting, Tikrit still has not fallen. Now, finally, the U.S. is providing airstrikes.

Hope there's something left of the city when all this is over.

Why? Have you ever been to Tikrit? It's a total shit hole....

 

[KingOrfeo]

Why? Have you ever been to Tikrit? It's a total shit hole....

No doubt, but to some folks it's home.

 

[BotanyBoy]

No doubt, but to some folks it's home.

Well if they can't figure out war=time to pick up a rifle or GTFO then fuck em' natural selection will run it's course.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Well if they can't figure out war=time to pick up a rifle or GTFO then fuck em' natural selection will run it's course.

Most of the people of Tikrit did GTFO before the attack started. I'm just wondering what will be left for them to go home to.