Iraqi 'security' forces lost 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when the ISIS overran the northern city of Mosul, according to the country's prime minister. This is about 1.5B$ worth of Humvee alone not counting the other things they got. Obama sends military equipment to Iraqi run away when ISIS forces come and ISIS gets the equipment. This was last year, I wonder how much equipment was transferred to ISIS this spring. Good Job Obama. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/iraqi-pm-admits-expensive-loss-humvees-150601052521757.html
There were two incidents, one in Mosul where Irqi army fled and left all that equipment behind and another a few months later where the drop target was missed and the equipment reached Da'esh. These things could happen in war, let alone to the crumbling Iraqi army, they gave coordinates according to wishful hopes or simply wrong intel, could happen. crap, Arabs were certain they won 67 till the cease fire talks with Israel. Its certain the US cant trust on them to win the war, either back off or fight it themselves.
500,000 golf clubs [you know Obama ...]. Humor a part, don't be too concerned about the weaponry Americans are leaving in the hands of ISIS, like they don't export F22 Raptors, but they just share base stealth tech with allies, imagine which is the real operational level of the weaponry they send to Iraq [a country which is still far from being a reliable ally], I guess something a bit more modern than ...
The whole thing about ISIS has the rank smell of hypocrisy to me. If the US wanted to take them out, it would have done so. Fairly easily, I should think, too. The fact that it hasn't suggests the possibility that it really isn't as concerned or worried about IS as it claims. My best guess is that when the times comes for IS to be put to sleep, put to sleep they shall be - and that will be that. Another boogey man will appear somewhere else on the planet as usual...
Consider the "Dual Containment Policy".. Remember that... before Bibi and his "Clean Break Strategy" seduced the Neocons of the PNAC into regime change folly.
Maybe the vehicles were bugged to track their movements? That they were allowed to fall into enemy hands? That's the only option I can think of that doesn't leave the Iraq military so totally incompetent that they don't deserve to live. Oh well, it's not like I could have done better.
Disorder and instability ... "divide et impera", odd as it can sound, Dem administration at the White House is acting in a well more Roman way than the missed G.W. Bush ...
It often seems to be the case, Luke, that in a political process (today's) where the divisions between left and right are marginalized and so minimal in real terms - if not actually largely fictitious - that the left do more for the agenda of the so called right then they themselves would dare to undertake when in office. This is the Hegelian dialectic at play. The so called left pushes further right when in office, and when the right gets back into office, they push slightly further to the right too. The end result is a nation pushed ever further to the right politically, where citizens who actually hold real left views are disenfranchised. In my opinion this situation is doomed to failure in the long term, but the elite (you prefer the term 'Establishment', I know) rarely, if ever, care about long term consequences - only short term benefits.
Perhaps he should listen to the requests from the Kurds who are fighting without weapons to be directly supplied. At least it appears that they would use these weapons and not abandon them at the first sight of an enemy.
We have the ability to drive ISIS back into Syria in a month's time if we had the will. Look at Afghanistan, with a few SF and paramilitary on the ground and our massive air power, we helped the Northern Alliance to break out of their small northern Afghanistan Stronghold and drive the Taliban completely out of Afghanistan in a little more than a month. That was in mountainous terrain with all sorts of good hiding places for the Taliban and places very difficult to dislodge them. Iraq is almost all desert and flat land, No good hiding place and no place that is very difficult to dislodge them from if we are willing and wanted to do so. The bottom line is we are not. So ISIS will continue to behead and kill and torture all those who are not of their sect and to gobble up more territory. I think we ought to either deal with these bad boys as we can of if we are not willing to do so, quit and get completely out. By playing footsie we are only making things worse.
Of course the Western powers fund ISIS, it is good news for them to destabilise the middle-East. most funding comes from the Western oil consumers as they pay retail price for the oil delivered to them under the Al-Yamamah arms deal. These funds are administered by MI6 & CIA & flow into the ISIS coffers. What a great policy, Muslims killing Muslims & stops the Middles-East from being stable enough to unite against the West.
Yes, you describe correctly a present political process. It's just happening in Italy now. Renzi theoretically is the leader of the Dem Party, but actually he is acting as a leader of the historical right ... And if you think to an American "leftist" leader like John F. Kennedy ... Anyway, pay attention that [I'm a politician myself] pseudo modern societies [don't ask me to by the fairy tale we live in "post modern societies"!] tend to concentrate their active electorate at the center and overall in the Middle Class. To stay too much to the left can be a trouble for a political party today.
