When the Brits drew a line in the sand, they created a monster. The Kurds need to decide the terrirtory they can defend to protect their people and the Shi'ites need to do the same thing. Saudi Arabia needs to decide how much of a buffer they need into Iraq. Those regions have to be stabilized and well enforced as sovereign land. Once that is done, the rest of the land, including Syria, can be decided.
There are more tanks to blow up now, the sooner the better. There has to be stable borders that are known to protect from Daesh. Then the ambitions of destroying them can be decided. It's not going to matter how much time passes, the stability of the region is more important.
The Iraq government doesn't have a military that can enforce their borders. Just that simple. Holding territory has always been impossible for the new Iraqi government.
May 19, 2015
By Hugh Naylor
As Islamic State militants (click here) repeatedly attacked Ramadi this year, police solicited cash from local families and businessmen to buy weapons, one officer recalled. The Iraqi government didn’t pay the police for months, he said.
“We begged and begged for more support from the government, but nothing,” said Col. Eissa al-Alwani, a senior police officer in the city.
The fall of Ramadi amounts to more than the loss of a major city in Iraq’s largest province, analysts say. It could undermine Sunni support for Iraq’s broader effort to drive back the Islamic State, vastly complicating the war effort....
Why was this released now? Were allies consulted? It doesn't make sense to me unless NSA wanted a new shiny object for the news media at the time when McConnell wants to pass The Patriot Act without changes.
May 20, 2015
By Greg Miller
Osama bin Laden (click here) kept an extensive library of English-language books in the compound where he was killed in 2011, a collection whose titles appear to reflect the al-Qaeda leader’s constant search for U.S. vulnerabilities and insights into troubled American military campaigns from Vietnam to the wars that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bin Laden’s bookshelf included “Imperial Hubris,” a critical account of U.S. counterterrorism programs by the former head of the CIA unit that was responsible for tracking the al-Qaeda leader. Other books included a copy of “Obama’s Wars” by Bob Woodward, a history of the Federal Reserve, and — in perhaps an indirect acknowledgment of al-Qaeda’s struggle to survive CIA drone strikes — a book on “antiaircraft weapons and techniques for guerrilla forces.”...
There are more tanks to blow up now, the sooner the better. There has to be stable borders that are known to protect from Daesh. Then the ambitions of destroying them can be decided. It's not going to matter how much time passes, the stability of the region is more important.
The Iraq government doesn't have a military that can enforce their borders. Just that simple. Holding territory has always been impossible for the new Iraqi government.
May 19, 2015
By Hugh Naylor
As Islamic State militants (click here) repeatedly attacked Ramadi this year, police solicited cash from local families and businessmen to buy weapons, one officer recalled. The Iraqi government didn’t pay the police for months, he said.
“We begged and begged for more support from the government, but nothing,” said Col. Eissa al-Alwani, a senior police officer in the city.
The fall of Ramadi amounts to more than the loss of a major city in Iraq’s largest province, analysts say. It could undermine Sunni support for Iraq’s broader effort to drive back the Islamic State, vastly complicating the war effort....
Why was this released now? Were allies consulted? It doesn't make sense to me unless NSA wanted a new shiny object for the news media at the time when McConnell wants to pass The Patriot Act without changes.
May 20, 2015
By Greg Miller
Osama bin Laden (click here) kept an extensive library of English-language books in the compound where he was killed in 2011, a collection whose titles appear to reflect the al-Qaeda leader’s constant search for U.S. vulnerabilities and insights into troubled American military campaigns from Vietnam to the wars that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bin Laden’s bookshelf included “Imperial Hubris,” a critical account of U.S. counterterrorism programs by the former head of the CIA unit that was responsible for tracking the al-Qaeda leader. Other books included a copy of “Obama’s Wars” by Bob Woodward, a history of the Federal Reserve, and — in perhaps an indirect acknowledgment of al-Qaeda’s struggle to survive CIA drone strikes — a book on “antiaircraft weapons and techniques for guerrilla forces.”...
