janjak desalin
Junior Member
That's just it, they're not a nation! There is no sense of one unified 'we' in Iraq! Without that, these is no concept or feeling of a greater whole worth fighting or dying for.
ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I only heard of one small strike against ISIS in Ramadi.
Your assertion that they had CAS simply does not hold up.
The quote from the article you posted indicated that the ISIS forces were unhindered by US Air Strikes...which in English would mean means they were not hindered (meaning attacked) from the air.
If it is true that there were only 150 ISIS troops...and I have a very hard time believing that...my own intel tells me that there were several hundred...then it is likely in either case that they were pretty dispersed in small groups and did not present an acceptable target.
What this sounds like to me is that for whatever reason...rumor, effective terror tactics, bad intel...or simply a complete lack of will...the Iraqi forces panicked, did not put up a fight at all, and simply left the place..
Ultra
Junior Member
Note the word "air strike(s)". Plural. The fact of the matter is the US and the coalition forces don't want Iraq to fall into ISIS's hand, and they do whatever they can to help the Iraqi forces.
Coalition conducts 55 airstrikes against ISIS
The military has released videos of the US pounding ISIS targets around Tikrit
US Central Command (CENTCOM) has released twelve videos of US airstrikes against various ISIS targets around the Iraqi city of Tikrit.
CENTCOM conducted a total of 17 strikes against ISIS targets over the night of March 25 using a combination of fighter, bomber, and remotely piloted aircraft.
Islamic State hit with 24 air strikes by U.S., allies – statement
The United States and its allies staged 24 strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in a 24-hour period ending Saturday, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement. Seventeen of the strikes were in Syria near the cities of Raqqah, Kobani, Al Hasakah and Dair Az Zawr, hitting Islamic State units, fighting positions, vehicles and other targets. In Iraq, seven air strikes near Mosul, Ramadi, Bayji, Tal Afar and Fallujah hit units, buildings, fighting positions and a supply cache, the statement said.
The coalition forces probably did more airstrikes than reported (or due to my cursory search). The ISIS just "evolved" to be very good at evading them, or developed tactics to minimize the effectiveness of airstrikes against them, which basically unhindered their progress to Romandi. For example, in the CNN article, the ISIS effectively used the sandstorm as cover to attack the city, when coalition air forces are down, by the time they are able to fly up it was impossible for coalition forces to distinguish friends from foes when ISIS forces mingled with friendly Iraqi forces.
Even without CAS, Iraqi forces VASTLY outnumbered the ISIS forces by every news outlet reported - even Iraqi interior ministry acknowledged that. Even if ISIS forces is not the reported 150, but let's say 500, the Iraqi forces still outnumber them more than 10 to 1. And Iraqi forces has better equipments than them!
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Yes...the US has conducted numerous air strikes throughout Iraq.
Bu your assertion earlier was directed squarely at Ramadi and, in your words, how even with CAS, ISIS took the city.
My point was that there was very, very little US air strike activity during the fighting in Ramadi. The ISIS forces were small and the Iraqi forces folded up and left quickly.
That's all.
Bu your assertion earlier was directed squarely at Ramadi and, in your words, how even with CAS, ISIS took the city.
My point was that there was very, very little US air strike activity during the fighting in Ramadi. The ISIS forces were small and the Iraqi forces folded up and left quickly.
That's all.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Given Obama's method of operation, he's probably hoping his term will run out before he would be forced to commit troops. If he sent a large force to deal with ISIS, most likely they would be there well after his term ends especially if ISIS proves to be resilient.
broadsword
Brigadier
Probably, when the ISIL troops were assessed to be in the hundreds vs 3000, CAS was not needed. I am sure Ramadi will be recovered with CAS later since it is located so close to Baghdad.
This morning I heard the BBC correspondent in Beirut discussing the fall of Ramadi on BBC radio 4 Today program. He said the town was defended by the Golden Division, the best US trained and supported Iraqi army division, but that the division had been exhausted by fighting too many days on a stretch and that it was not supported by USAF as was promised. He said this was in the first place a defeat for the US strategy in the country and that there was no doubt the town would be retaken by the Iraqi milities supported by Iranian artillery.
thunderchief
Senior Member
Yeah, right
They were too exhausted to fight, but not exhausted to run In reality, one of the biggest mistakes of US military did was trying to copy itself into Iraqi army . What Iraq needs are local territorial defense units, closley knit with local tribal loyalty and central government as paymaster to keep them for getting too autonomous . Maybe some Special Forces and Air Force under direct control of Baghdad and that is about it . If a country is bound to disintegrate along ethnic and religious lines , oversized military would not be able to stop that .
plawolf
Lieutenant General
From a purely neutral standpoint from someone who dislikes IS, it looks like both the US and Iraqi governments needs to man up and stop taking stupid pot shots at each other over the media. The only ones who benefit from such petty behaviour is IS.
As things stand, you have top US officials all but explicitly accusing the Iraqis of incompetence and cowardice, while you have top Iraqi officials blaming the US for insufficient and/or inadequate training, equipment and close air support.
I think both sides have a point.
The conduct of the Iraqi national military has been shamefully poor, at the other end, anyone who has even a passing familiarity with post-war Iraq reconstruction will be aware of the truly epic levels of corruption and graft going on on all sides, western and Iraqi.
You have private military contractors who have a well-established track record of "creative" accounting and claims, and you have Iraqis treating military service as a free meal ticket, often with ghost soldiers who are on the books and who collect their monthly pay, but who doesn't show up for anything else.
Add to the mix all the Al-Q/IS sponsored "green on blue" attacks, and is it any wonder the Iraqi troops' training are not up to scratch, when their instructors either don't turn up, or who turn up more worried about not getting shot in the back by one of their recruits than training them?
Higher up, you have Iraqis treating officer commissions like a commodity and status symbol and buy rather than earn ranks.
On the American side, it looks like the US never really seriously trained or equipped the Iraqi armed forces as a counter-insurgency force, and was rather building it up as a conventional military geared more towards countering Iran.
But enough background.
Analysing events on the ground, I think we need to also take a unbiased prospective and look at things honestly rather than wishing to prove a point.
The terrible conduct of the Iraqi military should not be only blamed on the Iraqis, even though they deserve their share of the blame, but to get a truly accurate assessment, we also need to give credit where it is due to IS.
Say what you will of their beliefs and conduct, their troops fight with determination and bravery, if not skill.
After having another think, I believe all the horrific atrocities they have committed is not mere random evil, but serves a purpose.
The main practical reason for IS to commit the public mass killings are twofold.
Firstly, it bloodies their new recruits. Further radicalising them to be truly fanatical, and also serves to bind those new recruits to IS' cause by effectively making it impossible for them to have second thoughts. With their grinning faces posted all over the internet with their victims, any recruits from foreign countries will never be able to go back to their old lives. IS becomes their only option if they don't want to spend the rest of their lives in jail or facing the needle.
The second goal of committing such atrocities is to conduct psychological warfare on their opponents.
Sure, knowing you will get executed or worse if captured will make you fight to the death if concerned, but it looks like IS is actually fairly careful to leave large Iraqi formations an obvious escape route.
So faced with the ferocity of a typical IS attack, and knowing what would happen if captured, it seems most Iraqi units fold and turn tail at the first sign of an IS attack.
I think this has been exacerbated by the new tactics IS has adopted to counter coalition air strikes by breaking their forces down into small units to infiltrate cities and the link up to attack once they are within an urban area.
So often, Iraqi units find themselves under sudden attack at close quarters, with all the confusion that causes, and if attacked on multiple sides at the same time, the threat of being cut-off and captured would be great, so the Iraqis are extra proven to panic and flee rather than fight.
There are several tactics and strategies that spring to mind to counter these tactics.
Firstly, consider moving the front lines out of the cities and into the open deserts.
Have the Iraqis dig trenches ad/or build barricades out in the middle of nowhere to check IS advances far from built up areas that IS can use to hide in.
Rather than have a single check point on the roads that easily form bottlenecks, build temporary diversions so you split the one road into dozens of branches that each lead to a separate checkpoint, like a toll road entrance/exit, and force IS to fight there.
Also, issue the Iraqis with secure communication gear and their jam the crap out of all other signals in your chosen battlefield.
If IS divide their forces, denying them effective communications will make their forces easier to pick of piecemeal, and prevent them from acting together.
As things stand, you have top US officials all but explicitly accusing the Iraqis of incompetence and cowardice, while you have top Iraqi officials blaming the US for insufficient and/or inadequate training, equipment and close air support.
I think both sides have a point.
The conduct of the Iraqi national military has been shamefully poor, at the other end, anyone who has even a passing familiarity with post-war Iraq reconstruction will be aware of the truly epic levels of corruption and graft going on on all sides, western and Iraqi.
You have private military contractors who have a well-established track record of "creative" accounting and claims, and you have Iraqis treating military service as a free meal ticket, often with ghost soldiers who are on the books and who collect their monthly pay, but who doesn't show up for anything else.
Add to the mix all the Al-Q/IS sponsored "green on blue" attacks, and is it any wonder the Iraqi troops' training are not up to scratch, when their instructors either don't turn up, or who turn up more worried about not getting shot in the back by one of their recruits than training them?
Higher up, you have Iraqis treating officer commissions like a commodity and status symbol and buy rather than earn ranks.
On the American side, it looks like the US never really seriously trained or equipped the Iraqi armed forces as a counter-insurgency force, and was rather building it up as a conventional military geared more towards countering Iran.
But enough background.
Analysing events on the ground, I think we need to also take a unbiased prospective and look at things honestly rather than wishing to prove a point.
The terrible conduct of the Iraqi military should not be only blamed on the Iraqis, even though they deserve their share of the blame, but to get a truly accurate assessment, we also need to give credit where it is due to IS.
Say what you will of their beliefs and conduct, their troops fight with determination and bravery, if not skill.
After having another think, I believe all the horrific atrocities they have committed is not mere random evil, but serves a purpose.
The main practical reason for IS to commit the public mass killings are twofold.
Firstly, it bloodies their new recruits. Further radicalising them to be truly fanatical, and also serves to bind those new recruits to IS' cause by effectively making it impossible for them to have second thoughts. With their grinning faces posted all over the internet with their victims, any recruits from foreign countries will never be able to go back to their old lives. IS becomes their only option if they don't want to spend the rest of their lives in jail or facing the needle.
The second goal of committing such atrocities is to conduct psychological warfare on their opponents.
Sure, knowing you will get executed or worse if captured will make you fight to the death if concerned, but it looks like IS is actually fairly careful to leave large Iraqi formations an obvious escape route.
So faced with the ferocity of a typical IS attack, and knowing what would happen if captured, it seems most Iraqi units fold and turn tail at the first sign of an IS attack.
I think this has been exacerbated by the new tactics IS has adopted to counter coalition air strikes by breaking their forces down into small units to infiltrate cities and the link up to attack once they are within an urban area.
So often, Iraqi units find themselves under sudden attack at close quarters, with all the confusion that causes, and if attacked on multiple sides at the same time, the threat of being cut-off and captured would be great, so the Iraqis are extra proven to panic and flee rather than fight.
There are several tactics and strategies that spring to mind to counter these tactics.
Firstly, consider moving the front lines out of the cities and into the open deserts.
Have the Iraqis dig trenches ad/or build barricades out in the middle of nowhere to check IS advances far from built up areas that IS can use to hide in.
Rather than have a single check point on the roads that easily form bottlenecks, build temporary diversions so you split the one road into dozens of branches that each lead to a separate checkpoint, like a toll road entrance/exit, and force IS to fight there.
Also, issue the Iraqis with secure communication gear and their jam the crap out of all other signals in your chosen battlefield.
If IS divide their forces, denying them effective communications will make their forces easier to pick of piecemeal, and prevent them from acting together.
thunderchief
Senior Member
Well, actually, desert warfare is all about mobility and controlling sources of water . You cannot just build outpost in the middle of nowhere . You could stockpile food and ammo, but is very hard to stockpile enough water for even 100 men if there isn't large enough well around . ISIS understands that very well, they are constantly on the move, bypassing strong-points and attacking at unexpected places. On the other hand, I never saw attempting similar tactics, using small but mobile units to raid ISIS rear areas .