Posted on 02/08/2017 10:26:41 AM PST by elhombrelibre
It took about a week for around 1500 ISIS to capture Mosul as I recall.
Surround them. Don’t let anything in or anyone out...I give them less than a week before they become cannibals killing and eating their own.
I seriously doubt the did the same bloody slog thru Fallujah as the Marines did in 2004. The U.S. military called it "some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968." I question the Iraqi statistics.
By no means am I playing down the courage and effectiveness of the Marines - just pointing out that the Iraqis do have courage. They are not as rigorously selected, not as well trained, not as well led and not as well supported - but give them their due for facing high losses and fighting on.
Give me a break. I was in Saudi Arabia during the entire Gulf War and flew up to Kuwait a few days after it was over. The Iraqis ran or surrendered when confronted with US power. There were cases where groups of them surrendered to reporters. The Arabs whether they are the Iraqis or Egyptians are not noted for their courage under fire or being tough fighters in war.
A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees. He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not because they had not been moved for months.
This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year, left behind U.S.-supplied military equipment, prompting the U.S. to destroy them in subsequent airstrikes against ISIS forces.
In Mosul, the Iraqis are leaving the bodies of the dead ISIS to rot and be eaten by wild dogs. There are plenty of them in Iraq, and they will be getting fat. I’m sure this will impact morale of ISIS.
These comparisons are not really reasonably the same. The level of national effort is totally different, and really so is the risk.
You may doubt what the Iraqi Army did in Fallujah last year, but it is historical fact that can easily be verified. You can watch videos on youtube.
A lot of the “soldiers” who rushed to surrender in the Gulf War were “drafted” only weeks earlier, and rushed directly to the front, where they were left with little to no support. Most had no love for the Ba’athist dictatorship, and wanted nothing more than to be free of it. They were there to shape the attack, to cause the Americans to mass - just raw cannon fodder. Regular Army were held back a couple of layers in the defense, and Republican Guards were further to the rear.
When the Maliki (Shi’ite) regime later excluded Sunnis from most Government jobs or Government spending, ISIS was viewed by many Sunnis as the opportunity to be free of increasingly oppressive Shi’ite rule (Maliki charged the Sunni Vice President with crimes carrying the death penalty, the day after the American forces withdrew, causing him to flee the country, and Sunnis to conclude that any pretense of inclusion was over). The Sunni officers of units in Mosul were largely working in coordination with ISIS in causing a rapid collapse of the Iraqi Army there, deliberately turning over its armament to the perceived Sunni liberators.
ISIS’ senior military strategist was a former Air Force Intelligence Colonel, who was wired into the whole covert network that the Ba’athist regime had established, to ensure their return to power, if they were ever deposed (remember the Fedayeen Saddam, and all the buried caches of ammo and money). In Iraq, unlike elsewhere, the great bulk of the ISIS fighters were local natives.
Also, let’s not forget that the Iraqis fought the biggest war of the 1980s, against Iran, with over a million killed.
It is a mistake to stereotype Iraqis as weak and cowardly. Quite the contrary, they come from a brutally violent society, more akin in terms of violence experienced to that of urban gangs in America, than it is to middle class America, or neighboring Saudi Arabia. Even within Iraq there are significant differences among Arabs and Kurds, rich and poor, urban and rural - but overall, they have grown up with much greater levels of violence and brutality than the American experience.
Torture (real maiming torture) is still common. You are unlikely to be arrested, without being beaten. Ba’athist schools and media enthusiastically indoctrinated the public in militaristic ideology. Most adult Iraqi men are combat veterans. The percentage of the adult male population that has killed another human is roughly (probably more than) a hundred times higher than in the USA.
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