Posted on 11/14/2014 8:01:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There’s good news and bad news, everyone.
The good news is that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey is confident that all of the vast Iraqi territory lost to the Islamic State can be recovered. The bad news is that he thinks it will take no fewer than 80,000 “competent” soldiers to do it.
Iraq will need about 80,000 effective military troops to retake the terrain it lost to Islamic State militants and restore its border with Syria, the top U.S. general said on Thursday.
“We’re going to need about 80,000 competent Iraqi security forces to recapture territory lost, and eventually the city of Mosul, to restore the border,” Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, told a congressional hearing.
Dempsey said the request for more U.S. forces in Iraq would create centers to help train the additional troops needed.
If that sounds like an impossible task for the Iraqi Army, which famously supplied ISIS with much of their equipment when many Iraqi Security Forces retreated from engagements with the Islamist insurgency, Dempsey seems to agree.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Dempsey conceded he is considering recommending sending American combat troops, not advisors, to accompany Iraqi forces in their efforts to dislodge ISIS soldiers from the Iraqi territory they currently control.
Retaking the critical city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, and re-establishing the border between Iraq and Syria that Isis has erased “will be fairly complex terrain” for the Iraqi security forces that the US is once again supporting.
“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by US forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey said.
Dempsey added, however, that he does not envision a troop presence in Iraq of a size similar to the massive influx of American forces into that country during the Iraq War. “I just don’t foresee a circumstance when it would be in our interest to take this fight on ourselves with a large military contingent,” Dempsey said.
There is a lot of wiggle room between the present 2,800 U.S. combat advisors presently in Iraq and the 150,000 soldiers that occupied that country from 2003 to 2011. And Dempsey needs every inch of the wiggle room he has provided himself.
If retaking key areas like al-Anbar and Nineveh Provinces proves too difficult for the Iraqi forces, Dempsey conceded that he “will have to adjust my recommendations.”
…So, mostly bad news.
Good luck with that.
A big chunk of those will join ISIS, some will take their weapons and head for home and the rest will flee.
Attack from three sides and then bomb the crap out of them when they escape to the fourth.
Let them keep it and drop a few tactical nukes.
Perhaps Iraq should start training their troops to be competent.
RE: Perhaps Iraq should start training their troops to be competent.
The problem with post-Saddam Iraq is they are not really a unified country. Loyalties are very volatile and can change at a moment’s notice.
So, who is the USA training anyway? Many will be FUTURE ISIS MEMBERS.
We HAD Mosul!
Tell Obama to suit up and make him go there and get back what he lost!
Lead by example, you in the front Dempsey!
What I’d LIKE to see is the US working only with the Kurds in the retaking of Mosul. The arab Iraqis aren’t to be trusted. Kurds have exponentially more courage than any other group in the region.
What these Obama brown- noser Gens and Adms do not comprehend is that our US SPECOPS types have spent 13 long years drinking tea with the Muslims and they know they have been fighting each other for a thousand years.
I endorse your plan. Obviously we can’t rely on Iraqi, Turk, or “good Syrian rebel” troops to block ISIS on any sides. Competent forces = US ground troops.
Gen Dempsey’s goal: “re-take Mosul”. This solves nothing and merely relocates the ISIS plague, so we can fight them again after they rape and murder elsewhere.
Correct goal: Destroy the enemy, period. Dead enemy does not threaten Mosul or elsewhere. If ISIS collects a new jihadi army, destroy it.
While I was in Iraq (2008) I talked to one of the “experts” who was there as a member of a “Human Resources Team.” She had a PhD in Middle East studies and I asked her what she thought would happen to Iraq after we left. She painted a rosy picture of a unified Iraq and gave numerous reasons for such.
I told her that I thought it would all fall apart when we left due to internal rivalries and outside influence (Iran). She swore up an down that if Iran were to meddle in Iraqi affairs it would unite the Iraqi people. She has a PhD (Middle Eastern studies) and I have an A.S. (General Studies).
I wonder who was right?
Everybody that matters knows it but will not allow it permeate to the MSM.
The action is Mosul is border adjustment for the new Kurdish state.
I’m not open to that.
I am open to ‘providing’ Mosul with a couple of nuclear weapons, though.
That would only take about three generations.
NO! We have give far too much blood and treasure to that hellhole. Let all of the moHAMheads kill each other.
give = given
And when did we begin training Iraqi troops? Ten years ago? Only 8 years ago?
How long does it take, to train an arab to stand and fight?
dempsey is an ass-kissing, screw the troops, CYA POS. and i’m being polite.
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