Posted on 06/17/2014 9:22:57 AM PDT by mojito
The lightning advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham and its allies from Mosul to the outskirts of Samarra, as well as its capture of several towns in eastern Diyala, all over the course of several days, appears to be part of a greater strategy to surround the capital of Baghdad before laying siege to it. This plan, to take over the "belt" region outside of Baghdad and cut off the capital, appears to be the same strategy used by the ISIS' predecessor back in 2006.
The 2006 plan, which was drawn up by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the forerunner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS....
Zarqawi's plan was to seize control of the outer provinces and Baghdad's belts, or key areas surrounding the capital. The ISI would then use its bases in the belts to control access to Baghdad and funnel money, weapons, car bombs, and fighters into the city.
[....]
The ISIS and its allies are in a position today that closely resembles the ISI's position prior to the US surge back in early 2007. More than 130,000 US troops, partnered with the Sunni Awakening formations and Iraqi security forces numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were required to clear Anbar, Salahaddin, Diyala, Ninewa, Baghdad, and the "triangle of death." The concurrent operations took more than a year, and were supported by the US Air Force, US Army aviation brigades, and US special operations raids that targeted the ISI's command and control, training camps, and bases, as well as its IED and suicide bomb factories.
Today, the Iraqis have no US forces on the ground to support them, US air power is absent, the Awakening is scattered and in disarray....
(Excerpt) Read more at longwarjournal.org ...
Reports of skirmishing today near Baqaba would seem to confirm the ISIS battle plan as outlined in this report.
Worth reading the whole thing.
Two words: Tactical Nukes.
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Levant => Eastern Mediterranean counties Iraq (Babylon) and the Levant. The Assyrian Empire is the same as the The Assyrians were the first terrorists, The Anti-Christ is "the Assyrian" Last night on the John Batchelor show,
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach Levant
Roggio said: ISIS will morph into ISIL.
from Turkey to Egypt. This includes Israel
It is the re-creation of the Ancient Assyrian Empire.
Eastern half of the Roman Empire.
three to five millennia ago.
( Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel ) .
I’m fairly confident they won’t take Baghdad. The Shiite soldiers may have cut and run from predominantly sunni areas, but I doubt they will flee so easily from Shiite areas, especially when they have numbers on their side...
Or FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) delivered by the largest airlifter available.
I’m surprised they haven’t been divided into small bite sized chunks by now. In any case, they’re not going to maintain this for long if attacked from outside the circle.
This strategy suggests they’re more interested in massacre than in political control.
The Shiite holy sites in Iraq are like Mecca to them. There is no way that the Iranian regime or the Shiite Ayatollahs of Iraq will allow puritanical Sunnis to overrun and defile them without an all out effort to protect them.
The Shiite religion is fixated on a struggle with the Sunnis, which they believe will end in a final catacylsmic battle, ushering in the end times and the return of the Mahdi. They have bookshelves full of prophecy on the final struggle, and the Iranian regime has spent a fortune on centers for scholarship on the return of the Mahdi.
The Supreme Leader in Iran has just recently stated that this is it.
A million were killed in the Iran/Iraq war. I’d bet that they are willing to go at least that far to protect Karbala.
The Saudis may really end up needing some of those Pakistani nukes.
Baghdad is roughly 50-50 Sunni and Shia, so the Shi’ites may just run to their main Shi’ite territory, further south.
BBC red banner: Maliki fires senior officers.
They will have to set up roadblocks, that is why drones with hellfire missiles were invented. If ISIS sits still they are toast.
The Assyrians were bad a$$. They made their living attacking folks.
Ping
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