[tomder55]

At least Geller gets PAID for her crap!

Je Suis Geller

[paraclete]

Je suis idiot

[paraclete]

And another one bites the dust, apparently US forces took out a daesh leader in a boots on the ground operation in Syria.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-1...n-says/6475492

must be getting a little lonely at the top

[tomder55]

They are like cockroaches . They multiply . They adjust . You don't see any images of long convoys of trucks anymore because they were being targeted . The next commander won't be as visible . The Syria situation is getting dire as the Islamic State continues to make gains.

[paraclete]

The Syria situation has been dire for four years, but while there is an undesirable in power no one is going to do more than fiddle at the edges. Daesh represents one of the more organised groups and yet what they have done is take over in a vacuum. They don't seem to be very good at fighting pitched battles. We shouldn't count retreats by Iraqi forces as gains by Daesh. The arabs don't appear to have the heart for the fight and as the shiia Iraqi won't arm the sunni tribes we can expect that Daesh will be permitted to walk in. What is amazing here is a that a relatively small force of Daesh can rout a larger force ofIraqi army and shiia militia. Very poor leadership, I wonder who trained them?

[tomder55]

The arabs don't appearto have the heart for the fight and as the shiia Iraqi won't arm the sunni tribes we can expect that Daesh will be permitted to walk in. What is amazing here is a that a relatively small force of Daesh can rout a larger force ofIraqi army and shiia militia. Very poor leadership, I wonder who trained them?

The Sunnis can't be rallied to fight the Islamic State as they were during the surge because they know that a Shia goon squad will replace them . So the Sunnis on the fence would rather stay out of the fight ,or align themselves with the Islamic State . Take as an example the Iranian backed militias taking back Tikrit . They then went house to house doing a pogrom against Sunnis in the city . The militias continue to do the same in Baghdad . The central government is powerless to stop it .

As for your cheap shot at American training ... The Iraqi army is comprised of mostly Shia recruits who are in for the payday . They have no incentive to fight.
If you are looking for fault then look no further than the emperor's decision to retreat ,and not renew the status of forces agreement . Don't blame American trainers (all 3,000 of them) who have been confined to their base ,and cannot travel with the troops they train into the battle . They are not even permitted to call in air strikes.
The US has a half hearted effort against the Islamic State . Oh you can look it up and they are happy to tell you how many tanks they've taken out during 'Operation Pin Prick' aka 'Operation Inherent Resolve' .
Defense.gov Special Report: Operation Inherent Resolve

But the Islamic State continues to make gains in Iraq and Syria . The good news is that they did manage to find 100 troops from the Free Syrian Army to train.

This is the emperor's legacy . Reporters in this country should stop asking gotcha questions to Repubic candidates about what they would've done in 2003 about Iraq ,and start asking what they would do today about the Levant .

[paraclete]

Tom you aren't the only guys who have trainers on the ground but it has obviously been ineffective because the troops aren't supported by a good officer cadre and logistics the troops ran because they were running out of ammunition, Ramadi has been a long fight, and air strikes, well they are surgical and not used where there are civilian populations, if they still exist in Ramadi. I think it is time to say to Iran, I think we will let you do the heavy lifting this time and just back the kurds.

What would you do Tom have your trainers on the front line carrying the fight to the enemy? Vietnam all over again? In all the time you were in Iraq you couldn't pacify Anbar so you won't do it with 3,000 backed by a rag tag army that runs when it gets serious opposition. What legacy? You won the war in Iraq, remember the surge? But if you were serious you could sweep in and take it again. The Saudi would applaud and give you a base of operations. Your media isn't going to ask the right questions, to do that you might have some inkling of the right answer.

What I don't understand is with all your air power daesh is still selling electricity to the Syrian regime, the oil refineries and oil fields still operate, the Syrians are using low grade chemical weapons and Obama has splinters in his arse

[tomder55]

In all the time you were in Iraq you couldn't pacify Anbar so you won't do it with 3,000 backed by a rag tag army that runs when it gets serious opposition

We did not have to pacify Anbar. All we had to do was be strong enough to get the Sunni tribes on our side having them know that we had their back . Then they did the heavy lifting and drove AQ Iraq out .
The status of forces agreement was for a larger force than just 3,000 trainers . It was big enough to keep Iran out of Iraq until a time when the Iraqi government could take care of security on their own.
But the emperor screwed it up 2 ways .
1. He did not extend the status of forces agreement
2. He backed the Iranian stooge Maliki in the election even though Ayad Allawi won the vote.

What I don't understand is with all your air power daesh is still selling electricity to the Syrian regime, the oil refineries and oil fields still operate, the Syrians are using low grade chemical weapons and Obama has splinters in his arse What's not to understand ? The emperor is an incompetent CIC and he has surrounded himself with yes men like General Dempsey .

 Th 

[paraclete]

What's not to understand ? The emperor is an incompetent CIC and he has surrounded himself with yes men like General Dempsey .

Maybe he should recall stormin Norman you can't recall those other generals they were disgraced. The way I thought it worked was the Joint Chiefs were advisors to the CIC not the other way around. No you should let Iran get its arse kicked in Iraq, they should experience their own personal Vietnam, they wouldn't shrink from using tactical nukes, if they had them

[paraclete]

One aspect we tend to forget is Daesh recruiting in unlikely places

A Georgian region is fertile ground for Islamic State - US news

The news media focuses on the big hit items, Palmyra, Ramadi, Tikrit while the real problem is stemming the flow of fighters into the conflict. Those fighters will also be coming from within Iraq because the sunni will not stand by and let the shiia have their way. Old enmities die hard and Iraq is proving that it may become another generational war

[tomder55]

it's a millenial war dating back to the beginning when the pedophile Prophet formed his religion with a sword and conquest . The Islamic state is an army of 20,000 savages . But they are treated by the world like they are the greatest force in the region. Shia militias will drive them out of Ramadi just like they did in Tikrit.
The problem then will be that the Shia militias will do a pogrom against the Sunni residents .

The problem you raise about foreign fighters comes into play when they return home after training to be a jihadists in Iraq and Syria .

[paraclete]

You may like to think that but in fact it is a war that you unleashed on the region because of Bush's unfinished business. I think we all understand that the arab mind thinks in terms of vengeance, generational vengeance and given opportunity the shiia will extract it as they have been doing. You cannot minimise what Daesh is, a well organised force of fanatics who have acquired weapons that make them more formidable. Their main force will not be easily driven out and a victory in Tikrit doesn't mean much. This is a war of attrition. It has become a proxy war for the gulf states, saudi and Iran

As to returning fighters, the question is why are they returning? They may be a threat in radicalising others or they may be a moderating influence. We have laws which will prosecute them and jail them, not a great incentive to return. But the flow of foreign fighters must be stopped and Turkey is the key, obviously they are facilitating this. A weakened Syria is in their interests

[tomder55]

a moderating influence ? they are learning jihad .......the Muslim reformation.

[paraclete]

Yes Tom but there are some who think that these fighters have found that the reality is not a glorious caliphate but death and degradation and that they would use their experiences to convince disaffected youth not to join in. I am personally skeptical. I don't think our western mind can grasp the driving forces behind this muslim jihad to cleanse Islam of the apostate shiia and restablish the caliphate and don't forget Turkey was, until 1918, the last vestigate of that ancient caliphate. Past glories die hard in that world of tribalism and religious furvour.

OBL successfully used this furvour to raise a standard against infidel US forces in Saudi Arabia, and Daesh has undoubtedly used it to drive out or kill anyone other than the most militant sunni in Syria and Iraq. You think this is about reformation in the muslim world and some good will come of it?

[tomder55]

no I don't think any good will come to it . I am just throwing out the proposition that there are people in the West who think that Islam needs a reformation similar to what happened to Christianity(allegedly to return Christianity to the way Christ intended ) ....and I say it is possible that this jihadistan movement is that reformation (return Islam to what the 'prophet ' intended ). It most likely is a false assumption that any good will come of it at all.

[paraclete]

The Christian reformation was about redemption but this Muslim revolution is about death. Do you know the wahhabist sunni consider the shiia even worse than kaffir? Their view of the shiia is something akin to the way we thought about muslims a thousand years ago. We should not glorify what they are doing by calling it a reformation and if it is a restoration then we must crush this blood cult. Mudhutmad was desert terrorist who raided neighbouring settlements, his followers are no different today. Mudhutmad would have loved to have had 30,000 wahhabists at his disposal, but not even he could command such a force while he was alive

[tomder55]

reform ...... “make changes (in something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it.” What if improving Islam means purging it of “infidels” and “apostates,” segregating Muslim men from women, keeping the latter under wraps or quarantined at home; Banning many forms of freedoms taken for granted in the rest of the world ? The Protestant reformation was a return to sola scriptura .....scriptural literalism ;and it appears that is the basis for the current jihadi movement. The teachings of the Bible and Koran are antithetical and that explains the different results of 'reformation' .

[paraclete]

Your definition includes the word improve. In what way do you think what you have laid out is an improvement, it is just more of the same? Any system that subjects men and women to a system that is more akin to slavery is not an improvement. Islam is a system of domination in every form of life. If you had spent any time in a muslim country you would know this. Fundamentalism can have unintended consequences, in the case of Islam it is a return to its barbaric past

[tomder55]

If you had spent any time in a muslim country you would know this

I'll admit it's been a long time. But I spent considerable time in a Muslim country in the 1970s. I did not see anything close to the radicalization that happened only a couple years later .
In the jihadist mind ;they are improving Islam by returning it to the tenets on the book .It's the book that's the problem .

[talaniman]

I think it's the fundamentalist interpretation of the book that's the problem. Not much different than the Holy War Catholics, or the blue blood monarchs of medieval time, or those devout christian gentlemen who owned slaves and fought for the right to keep and spread the practice.

Seems to be what religions have done throughout the history of man. Doesn't matter the book, somebody is always a savage, a heathen, or an infidel at some time or another, depending on which self righteous religious bast@rd and his conquering army decides to spread the word.

This is but the latest manifestation of my god is better than yours, after some colonial power has reeked havoc on a population.