Unable. It has not been only two years. It has been since 2003. The Iraqi military is unable to be stood up. The regional powers need to decide how this continues. The USA is not going to do anything that matters. UNABLE.
The abandonment of their post when a USA soldier died is the equivalent a green on blue attack. Being a soldier needs bravery. The Iraqis don't have it. Iran needs to absorb the Shi'ite province. The Saudis take an Albar and northern Iraq needs to be the land of the Kurds. Each of those provinces need to form alliances with neighboring powers to reoganize to survive the fracturing of authority in Iraq. There is too much corruption in the country to expect any Iraqi to respect any authority.
This is since 2003, not two years ago. Iraq didn't have a strong defense during Gulf War One, it hasn't changed except the USA switched sides and are no longer the invading forces. At least legally.
The USA continues to believe Iraq is one country and DEMANDS all those involved to defend it as one country. It is not one country and has never been one country. Saddam Hussein carried out massive deaths with the Kurds and the Shi'ites within a country named Iraq. There were never sovereign borders.
10, 2016
By Loveday Morris and Missy Ryan
Baghdad — In the days before his death last month, (click here) Col. Ihab Hashem al-Araji confided that his battle against the Islamic State too often felt like a suicide mission, despite the more than $1.6 billion in U.S. arms and training that has flowed to the Iraqi army over the past two years.
The abandonment of their post when a USA soldier died is the equivalent a green on blue attack. Being a soldier needs bravery. The Iraqis don't have it. Iran needs to absorb the Shi'ite province. The Saudis take an Albar and northern Iraq needs to be the land of the Kurds. Each of those provinces need to form alliances with neighboring powers to reoganize to survive the fracturing of authority in Iraq. There is too much corruption in the country to expect any Iraqi to respect any authority.
This is since 2003, not two years ago. Iraq didn't have a strong defense during Gulf War One, it hasn't changed except the USA switched sides and are no longer the invading forces. At least legally.
The USA continues to believe Iraq is one country and DEMANDS all those involved to defend it as one country. It is not one country and has never been one country. Saddam Hussein carried out massive deaths with the Kurds and the Shi'ites within a country named Iraq. There were never sovereign borders.
10, 2016
By Loveday Morris and Missy Ryan
Baghdad — In the days before his death last month, (click here) Col. Ihab Hashem al-Araji confided that his battle against the Islamic State too often felt like a suicide mission, despite the more than $1.6 billion in U.S. arms and training that has flowed to the Iraqi army over the past two years.
He had even begun taking a white funeral shroud to the battlefield with him.
To support his forces advancing on enemy-held Fallujah, Araji had requested a U.S.-supplied M1 Abrams tank but said he was asked to pay $2,000 in bribes to secure it. Instead, he was given a run-down Russian one, which arrived without a driver trained to use it.
“It was useless,’’ one of his men, Lt. Nassir Hamza, recalled....
...Two years ago this week, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as the Islamic State seized control. Senior U.S. and Iraqi military leaders say foreign assistance since then has helped correct, at least temporarily, some of the Iraqi army’s weaknesses that allowed the city to fall: inadequate intelligence, logistical issues, corruption and poor leadership.
But as Araji’s last days indicate, many of these problems remain chronic and threaten to undermine even the narrowly focused goals of the U.S. and allied training effort....
The Iraqi government will always be Shi'ite. There are Shi'ite majorities in the electorate. The Iraqi military have conflicting priorities within it's ranks. That is not a military with a future. They stop their advance because they don't have water. The reason they don't have water is because Baghdad doesn't send it. There is no loyalty between the ethnicities. Baghdad is not dedicated to a single country. From the beginning of the return of the USA the corruption has been the central issue. No matter the promises of the new Prime Minister the dysfunction of the government and the corruption has not ended.
WATER is the defeat of the military's advance. The government doesn't care about the war.
...At the same time, only limited progress has been made in addressing the frustration that Iraqi Sunnis have with their Shiite-led government, a core reason some of them initially welcomed militants into their cities. That jeopardizes the longevity of any territorial victories U.S. trainers hope to achieve....
To support his forces advancing on enemy-held Fallujah, Araji had requested a U.S.-supplied M1 Abrams tank but said he was asked to pay $2,000 in bribes to secure it. Instead, he was given a run-down Russian one, which arrived without a driver trained to use it.
“It was useless,’’ one of his men, Lt. Nassir Hamza, recalled....
...Two years ago this week, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as the Islamic State seized control. Senior U.S. and Iraqi military leaders say foreign assistance since then has helped correct, at least temporarily, some of the Iraqi army’s weaknesses that allowed the city to fall: inadequate intelligence, logistical issues, corruption and poor leadership.
But as Araji’s last days indicate, many of these problems remain chronic and threaten to undermine even the narrowly focused goals of the U.S. and allied training effort....
The Iraqi government will always be Shi'ite. There are Shi'ite majorities in the electorate. The Iraqi military have conflicting priorities within it's ranks. That is not a military with a future. They stop their advance because they don't have water. The reason they don't have water is because Baghdad doesn't send it. There is no loyalty between the ethnicities. Baghdad is not dedicated to a single country. From the beginning of the return of the USA the corruption has been the central issue. No matter the promises of the new Prime Minister the dysfunction of the government and the corruption has not ended.
WATER is the defeat of the military's advance. The government doesn't care about the war.
...At the same time, only limited progress has been made in addressing the frustration that Iraqi Sunnis have with their Shiite-led government, a core reason some of them initially welcomed militants into their cities. That jeopardizes the longevity of any territorial victories U.S. trainers hope to achieve....
