Posted on 06/04/2015 11:52:20 AM PDT by RC one
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reported Sunday that 2,300 American Humvees were captured by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Just a day later, media reports emerged that some of those very armored vehicles had been used in a suicide bombing.
According to Agence France-Presse, al-Abadi admitted the loss in an interview on state TV. “In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons,” he said. “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone.”
The Humvees were lost when ISIS forces overran Mosul last year, forcing Iraqi soldiers to abandon tons of equipment during their retreat from the city. Angelo Young, writing for International Business Times, calculated the cost of the lost Humvees at $1 billion.
“The theft of a fleet of American-made military vehicles underscores the difficulty of ensuring that U.S. military aid doesn’t wind up in the hands of the enemy it’s aimed at defeating,” Young wrote on Monday.
On Monday, the day after al-Abadi admitted to the massive loss of Humvees, ISIS used some of those Humvees to kill Iraqi security forces. According to a CNN report, two Humvees were used to block the entrance to a Iraqi security forces base near Samarra, before a tank loaded with explosives detonated inside the compound, killing at least 34 and wounding dozens. Later reports increased the death toll to at least 42.
Despite the repeated losses of U.S. equipment to ISIS forces, the United States continues to supply Iraq with more weapons and vehicles. According to the AFP wire story, “Last year, the US State Department approved a possible sale to Iraq of 1,000 Humvees with increased armour, machine-guns, grenade launchers, other gear and support, which was estimated to cost $579 million.”
Just put the finishing touches on a custom bench a friend of mine and I have been working on. We're going to free up some brass this weekend to see how it turned out!
A gift from whom?
Stupid, or highly intelligent? I suspect the latter. He knows EXACTLY what he is doing.
Obama. He was out of phones.
Just a few days ago Rand Paul raised this very issue of US equipment falling into the hands of ISIS and the neocons vilified him for it:
This has become a complete propaganda war to demoralize everyone opposing these jerks. If we had REAL leadership, that person would let loose the dogs of war with the U.S. Marines on them and then we would find out how tough they are.
It ain’t theft if they’re abandoned. That just makes the cowardice of the Iraqi troops that much more appalling.
This is a military fiasco. Blame is irrelevant. I was never in favor of invading Iraq in the first place because I knew it would lead to a stronger nuclear powered Iran. Once we determined to go in and fight, however, I set that aside. Then Obama got elected on the promise to end the war and he did and these are the consequences of that. So, as I see it, we made two mistakes: we never should have gone in and we never should have left. So there’s a lot of blame to go around.
Why?
Can't we find somebody to bear the cost?
He is not highly intelligent. He is not even moderately intelligent. He went to Harvard on a special affirmative action program. He didn't get there because he's intelligent, he got there because he's Black, and he wasn't expected to do anything other than make the school look diverse. He was going to get a passing grade just by showing up. If his grades were any good, we would have had people shoving them in our faces by now, but the facts are his grades were terrible because he's an idiot.
You are doing the nation a disservice by propagandizing the claim that he is intelligent. No, he's a stupid f***ing jackass that got to where he was by being lucky enough to find the right people to carry him on to power. (Read up on Bill Ayers, the guy more responsible for Obama's career than anyone else.)
His personal finances were an utter mess before he got elected to the Illinois Senate. He couldn't even write his own books. The man is an utter incompetent failure, the obviousness of which is kept from the public by his Praetorian guard media.
If you look at his personal history, you quickly realize he's stupid. Just blatantly bone headed incapable of learning stupid.
That looks like a lot of mechanized warfare equipment. It is reported that they likely obtained an, as of yet, undisclosed number of stinger MANPADS too. Not hearing much about that.
apparently, it isn’t his responsibility to keep American weapons out of the hands of American enemies.
By the time we’ve exhausted all of our half measures, that may be the only option left.
It seems strange too that they would flee on foot with a working vehicle nearby.
P.S. Maybe they shed their uniforms in order to hide in the civilian population. It wouldn’t be the first time.
160 172 27 290 --- $649 million
Great catch. 74,000 machine guns. that’s A LOT of machine guns. That would be sufficient to give every other active duty soldier in the German military a machine gun. It would be enough to issue every active duty soldier in the Canadian military a machine gun and have enough left over to issue every active duty soldier in the Latvian military a machine gun. Those are NATO allies. And, as near as I can tell, ISIS ain’t a NATO ally. ISIS wants to kill Americans.
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