Posted on 06/09/2015 8:37:58 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
In a major shift of strategy in Iraq, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province and send 400 American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi and repel the Islamic State.
Although a final decision by the White House has yet to be announced, the plan follows months of behind-the-scenes debate about how prominently plans to retake another Iraqi city, Mosul, which fell to the Islamic State last year.
Pending approval by the White House, plans are being made to use Al Taqqadum, an Iraqi base near the town of Habbaniyah, as another training hub for the American-led coalition.
The Islamic State’s capture of Ramadi last month also punctured the administration’s narrative that the militant group was on the defensive. Suddenly, it appeared that the terrorist group, not the American-led coalition, was on the march.
General Dempsey alluded to the plan to expand the American military footprint in Iraq during a visit to Israel on Tuesday, saying that he had asked war commanders to look into expanding the number of training sites for Iraqi forces. Speaking to a small group of reporters, General Dempsey said a decision had not been made on whether that would make additional American troops necessary.
“T.B.D. — to be determined,” General Dempsey said. A Defense Department official said afterward that a decision to increase American troops in Iraq would most likely require only a “modest” number of additional trainers. The United States now has about 3,000 trainers and advisers in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Barack Obama only has 19 months to make sure his new Islamic Caliphate is up and running.
This is not what we want. We have been there and done that. How many $trillions do you want to waste on these worthless people. Get out and stay out. Shut down our borders before more die here!! There is no treat to our country unless we let these bastards in to kill our children.
Inundate them with letters of protest. Kill them with # tags. Threaten them with sanctions. And when all that fails ... surrender.
Yep.
Meanwhile ...in ISIS workshops around Al Taqqadum, work proceeds in converting captured Humvees and other armored vehicles into large suicide bombs for an eventual assault on the base.
Here is a photo of the perimeter fence at Al Taqqadum from 2005. It took an entire battalion of National Guard just to patrol the over 26 mile perimeter. There are over 20 hardened bunkers and runways long enough for heavy lift. We were mortared constantly.
Al Taq hardened hangar.
Reestablishing a base with 400 American military trainers there does not sound like a “plan” to deal with the JV Squad. It sounds like a plan to coddle the media and wobbly democrat voters.
Al Taq is just a huge force protection problem. The Iraqi’s would have to do it and they could never be trusted to secure the perimeter, much less the ECP’s.
Thanks for the fascinating inside info. And for exposing the utter scandal of Obama and Dempsey’s foolish, politically driven “strategy”.
Won’t amount to a pinprick. hussein is setting us up to fail.
We’ve been training them for 12 years. How it this a “new strategy? What makes anyone think this time will turn out different?
All he needs is the cover to be able to say he “did something” so that his voters and the media can defend him. It’s nothing more than that.
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