Posted on 06/30/2014 5:40:49 PM PDT by kristinn
IRBIL, Iraq — The attack in Mosul wasn’t particularly surprising, according to Wameed, an Iraqi soldier who’d been assigned to the city’s main highway that night. It began June 9 with suicide bombers in cars and machine gun fire directed at checkpoints leading to the main thoroughfares of Iraq’s second largest city.
“Daash,” he said, using the derogatory Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, “and before that al Qaida had always had a strong presence in Mosul and attacked checkpoints, or set bombs to hit patrols. They’d done these sorts of operations many times before, and we’d seen them do them in Samarra a month before and even in Abu Ghraib and Taji,” cities closer to Baghdad,
“Our commanders told us to stay in place and fight them off, that they were just trying for the prison or to make a big noise for the press,” he said.
The next day, however, the attacks continued, and Wameed and his fellow soldiers knew the commanders’ assessment had been wrong.
“All checkpoints were being attacked from all sides, and not just from Daash,” he said. “Then our commanders turned off their mobile phones. We knew this was big. . . . There were just 20 of us on the highway. What could we do alone? We ran.”
In the following days as much as half the Iraqi army drew the same conclusion and effectively disbanded; by some accounts less than half of the army remains combat effective. Despite its 10 to 1 numerical advantage, the army fled. Wameed, who asked not to be identified further for fear of prosecution, found refuge in the autonomous Kurdish zone, where he was interviewed recently outside Irbil.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
Don’t tell me that they used Kickstarter.
It appears that ISIS was a long time in forming.
Terrific article. Finally some facts!
Thanks for posting.
If odumbo had been awake at one of his briefings, he might even have caught that back then, assuming his minions had done their homework, obviously none of them were awake.
Maybe it was their tee off time. Sounds like our commander in thief.
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