Posted on 08/05/2014 11:44:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The headlines out of the Middle East leave the reader with the unmistakable impression that Islamic State militants are on the advance.
A combined assault on a variety of positions in Lebanon by ISIS fighters resulted in the fall of a series of border posts and a small city to the Sunni militant group. The fighting in Lebanon worsened on Monday. “It’s another front for ISIS and another sign containment of the Syria crisis has failed, a Middle East analyst told The New York Times.
Reports indicate that ISIS has also expanded the front in Iraq’s north and has begun to successfully engage Kurdish defense forces. Conflicting dispatches indicated on Monday that the fundamentalist army may have taken control of Iraq’s largest dam, a strategic asset which Islamic State propagandists have indicated they intend to use as leverage over the Iraqi government.
Several months after an American citizen who had joined Islamic State militants executed a suicide attack on a Syrian military outpost, a new video has surfaced which reportedly features yet another American professing his loyalty to the group. He is just one of “dozens” of Americans fighting with Islamic fundamentalist militants in the Middle East, a threat which has United States security officials nervous.
Inside Iraq, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards are engaged in the fight alongside Iraqi defense forces with the aim of pushing back ISIS fighters. Tehran is picking up the slack left by exceedingly cautious Western governments.
And the Iraqi government’s hold on Baghdad grows more tenuous by the day. As fears of an all-out assault on the Iraqi capital have begun to dissipate, ISIS’s new strategy appears to center on executing insurgent attacks inside and around the city – areas which they are able to access via a complex network of Saddam Hussein-era tunnels.
“For several weeks, the Sunni insurgents have been moving fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq through secret desert tunnels to the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad,” Newsweek reported on Monday.
Capturing Baghdad would be difficult: the capital is home to thousands of elite forces as well as a vast number of Shi’ite militia fighters. But seizing towns on the southern perimeter would let the Islamic State step up suicide and car bomb attacks in the capital and perhaps restart the urban warfare of 2006-07 when Sunni and Shi’ite militia battled street by street.
Via Elizabeth Scalia, the global economic community is bracing itself for the fall of Baghdad. The economist and consultant Andrew McKillop, writing for Oil Voice, began to examine a nightmare oil shock scenario which would rival the 1973-74 OPEC embargo that would be brought about “when ISIS takes Baghdad.”
ISIS now has two powerful bargaining chips in Iraq. Its frankly apocalyptic general theory of forcing its Grand Caliphate into being would be served by the total destruction of Baghdad if the city and el-Maliki’s government do not submit. In no way avoiding the Apocalypse but welcoming it, the effects on Iraq’s oil production and oil exports can be imagined. Comparable insurgency, civil riot and rebellion and destruction of government is under way in both Syria and Libya. The extreme fundamentalist Sunni ISIS movement makes no secret of ‘the prize’ being the overthrow of albeit-Sunni ruling families, called ‘impious and heretical’ in the GCC countries.
America’s foreign policy establishment appears perplexed by the world’s lethargy in addressing the grave threat posed by ISIS.
Kind of crazy how little the world has done about ISIS.
— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) August 3, 2014
ISIS looks to be the strongest, most well funded terrorist organization in history. With, for now at least, little stopping them.
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 5, 2014
The will in the West to address the crisis in the Middle East simply does not exist, and the press has moved on from covering the ISIS threat. Only a massive oil shock — or worse — would refocus the West’s attention, and by then it would be far too late to do much of anything about it.
It’s going to happen. Both Iraq and the Kurds have been begging us to help them, but I’m afraid they’re out of luck with the Muslim in the WH.
They’ll be bowling in every alley with HEADS.
Actually I like to call him “The covert Islamic enemy agent in the White house” or as one Freeper pointed out to me “The blatant Islamic enemy agent in the White house. There is nothing covert about him.” True true.
This is a travesty. And what is George Bush doing during all this? Oil painting? He loves the troops, supports the Vets, and now all they fought for there is going to the dogs.
When I think of all those brave Americans that gave their lives fighting in the Middle-East against Islamo-fascism.....
When it turns out they were only fighting for another band of Islamo-Fascists.
Would You take up arms, or send your child there again?
It’s not our fight anymore. Let them swarm towards Iran ans we will see how that works. Having Iran loose a million soldiers would not break my heart.
We should have done it right the first time. If the US were prepared to really address Islamic terrorism, heck, I’d volunteer to go.
Bush backed off because of the Dems.
Just out of curiosity, what does George Bush have to do with this, other than provide an opportunity for the Bash Bush crowd to take another shot?
GW Bush has been out of office for 6 years now. This is Obama's watch and the problem is his creation. If Obama needs prodding to act and to do the right thing, that job belongs to Congress, the Media and the Citizenry.
correcto.. elections have consequences.
I don't see how Iran would lose a fraction of that number. The heavy forces that Saddam one put in the field against Khomeini don't exist. ISIS isn't so much an army as they are a militia.
All three of which appear to be out to lunch at this point in our history.
Great post; great thread. BTTT!
Fuel-Air Rockets Arrive In Iraq
Jul 31, 2014 by Bill Sweetman in Ares
Social media images show that Iraq has acquired a new weapon in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — the Russian-built TOS-1A multiple launch rocket system. It was reported last year that Russia was supplying such weapons and they appear to have been delivered in recent weeks.
First deployed by Russia against Islamic mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but kept secret until the 1990s, the TOS-1A is unique. Based on a T-72 tank chassis, it carries 24 unguided 220-millimeter rockets with a range of 6 km. Each rocket can carry a 100 kg fuel-air-explosive (thermobaric) warhead and all 24 rockets can be salvoed in 12 seconds, placing 2.4 tonnes of FAE downrange.
The system’s short range, size and lack of guidance make it ineffective in manuever warfare, and FAE is not particularly useful against deployed and widely spread targets. Its original target was most likely Afghan rebels in caves and makeshift bunkers. It was a principal weapon in the battle of Grozny in 1999-2000. Today, it would be used against fortifications and in urban warfare and would be an ideal weapon if one’s military goal was to destroy forces in city tunnels and bunkers — and as long as the devastating injuries that it causes were of no consequence.
FAE has no significant fragmentation effects. A precursor charge disperses the explosive — which may be liquid or slurry — into a cloud that then ignites: the weapon is powerful for its weight because the warhead weight is all fuel, with atmospheric air as the oxidizer. The warhead produces a powerful blast wave with a peak pressure of almost 30 times atmospheric pressure and temperatures as high as 3000 deg. C. The effects propagate through any bunker that is not hermetically sealed.
A U.S. Army report notes that body armor provides little protection against heat and overpressure. Outside the immediate blast zone, where victims are killed instantly, the blast wave is likely to cause internal injuries, particularly in fluid/body interfaces such as the lungs and gut, that cannot be easily diagnosed or stabilized by combat medical personnel.
“Just out of curiosity, what does George Bush have to do with this,”
Absolutely nothing, he was trying to create allies there. I don’t think ISIS-controlled oil wells were in his plan.
This is why he should be hopping mad.
“If Obama needs prodding to act and to do the right thing, that job belongs to Congress, the Media and the Citizenry.”
And W should be using the bully pulpit to prod Congress, the Media and the Citizenry.
Enter Vlad…
Your move, Barry.
Chess/checkers BUMP!
I think that is being too kind. More like a drug and/or alcohol induced stupor. Even that seems inadaquate.
I was just listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast epic on Ghengis Khan. (His podcasts are must listening for every history buff). The Mongols utterly wiped out Bagdhad. he postulatesit was not until 50 years ago that they recovered. History repeating itself. If you are going to be in the middle of those two rivers, you really should build defenses and know how to fight.
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