Ads

Expect some serious blood letting in Aleppo shortly with the Syrian Army looking to cut off the final supply route out of the city, essentially encircling it.

The piss troll... Still lives!

It means killing; I was referring to the RAF's strike on the IS Technical from the other day. A Technical is a pick up truck with a weapon on it, much used by third world bandits.

Illuminate me.

I didn't agree at all with OBE post and I didn't agree with his second one either, hence why I crystallised what I meant by blunders and how they and every decision taken by either external forces or the regional players, is framed by the Sunni/Twelver too and fro. There is a reason The Magic Kingdom is only now fencing off al Anbar.

Well, thanks for the (dubious) quality of both responses. I didn't think the original post was all that cryptic, but you asked for clarification.

The mistakes post 2003 are pretty clear. What we did, or what Paul Bremer did, was disband the Iraqi Army and cut off the Sunni cash flow. Officers couldn't dip their beak and everybody lost their pay and pensions. Unsurprisingly a sectarian Shia government, influenced from Tehran, patronised Shia militias until AQI really kicked off in al Anbar (cheers Saudi Arabia). Enter Sunni tribal forces to expel them and Barry entering the White House. Maliki repeats Bremer's mistakes and doesn't amalgamate awakening forces into the Iraqi Security structure. Meanwhile Barry is back peddling so fast out of Iraq, he doesn't care who owns the problem now. Fast forward to the Syrian problem and you have AQI rebranded, refunded by Qatar and KSA, re-manned too and cutting their teeth against Iranian proxies in Hizbollah and surviving (not without Turkish help) invited into Anbar again by Sunni tribes who see them as a lesser evil. I'm not sure of the relevance of your remark unless it's just to say that it's not solely the septics. I think that is fairly obvious.

@ Snowy; there has been a lot of blundering, but it's not all American blundering.

AWOL has the measure of it; you won't solve the IS problem by looking at Iraq alone. Slotting Technicals supporting the Pesh is one thing (wouldn't surprise me if it's actually YPG in there too given the recent Kurdish gains) but Syria needs addressing. Worrying that JaN and IS seem to be getting cosy again, potentially as a consequence of the bombing campaign. Slotting Assad and dealing with somebody else in his stead (whoever Iran thinks in other words) to fracture the aims of the rebels (all 1500 odd groups of them) might not be the worse idea.

The main floor with your point is that it implies that the conditions that enable IS to exist were planned, when the reality is that it's a series of poor decisions, combined with the local tribal and sectarian flavour. I don't think the part about our military capability and our apparent colony status merits too much comment.

For no real reason, I have imagined that Clive was wearing a small spider poncho during this tale.

I am interested by what is happening behind the scenes in Iraq at the moment. We have a case in the north, where coalition air strikes have helped the Pesh pick up key villages around Kirkuk and also Mosul, going from essentially a defensive force into one capable of counter offensives against IS. Yet closer to Baghdad we have seen Iraqi Army units of battlion size left under siege until overran, without support from the air or reinforcement from other Iraqi units. We have also had a failed IS offensive against a Sunni tribe following a siege on 55 miles north of Baghdad. It makes me wonder what the Iraqi government is doing to not request strikes in support of their own forces and the Sunni tribes who can peel a lot of man power off IS and hold the key to defeating them in Iraq.

I don't know much about fabrics myself, but if we're talking about social impacts then defence spending is good for providing highly skilled jobs to thousands of people in the UK. Maybe the people in Barrow or up on the Clyde can knit something to pass the time with all that improved fabric? There are other benefits too of course to an economy reliant upon global trade. Not to mention, in context of this mini discussion, the benefits to people in Mali who now do not have to face an insurgency thanks to French force of arms and Crab Air who got them there of course.

UK has provided some logistical support. We might complain about how UK forces have been cut to the bone, but we still have more air and sea lift than the rest of Europe put together. US has provided some funding too.

There is no oil in CAR? Somebody better tell all those French troops that have been fighting an insurgency in there that they may as well pull out.

It's been suggested that there will be three detectives, with a younger man and a woman coming in. I have heard Vaughan is some gangster that is involved in corruption with the LA transportation system and politicos. One of his guys gets clipped, with satanic cult styling and up steps Mr In Bruges to investigate.

I would say the outcome for Alan Henning doesn't look good tonight, if he is not already dead.

I am not sure anybody can make a serious argument that the black lines on the map around Syria actually mean anything. Best evidenced when IS chopped their way through the 17th division a few weeks back, Raqqa is as much apart of Syria and Syrian governmental control as Stanley is apart of Argentina.

Time for the Crabs to do their bit for their piece of the pie ahead of SDR 2015. Happy flying boys.

Note that the US in their strikes into Syria thus far they've used the F-22 for the first time [testing Syria's Russian made air defence maybe? There is no other real explanation for why you would pick that airframe for the mission); in context that is a $60billion programme that has taken 41 years from chalkboard to dropping ordinance There is no doubt that the US have the capability to carry out this mission on their own. Our involvement though, to a lesser degree than the locals, helps the politics of the decision from Obama's prospective. France and Australia offer the same, who at least provide something tangible in military terms, rather than merely token. The Aussies are actually sending a pretty reasonably sized force and it will be interesting to see what we end up deploying if they vote Yes in a few moments. In terms of whether we're required for any strategic value… well, we have been doing these sorts of missions for some considerable time (often better too in the early days if you look at the Balkans) so our FAC will be up there with what the US are doing, we have bases local, we have the capability, but this will all be under and run by CENTCOM and those boys from Virginia. It is actually in that last comment re the CIA that long term strategically, our SF (who will be on the deck calling in the shots [and I suspect have been for some time]) may offer an ability to fill in that vacuum in intelligence we have lacked since the hasty exit the US made out of Iraq in 2011. In respect of a few previous comments, I heard one commentator suggest we hold our nose regarding Assad. The best example possible comes with the 17th Division and the mass IS attack that finished them off in Raqqa (leading to a lot of choppy choppy). Air strikes a few weeks previously would have prevented such an attack, because it wouldn't have been possible for an IS to build up the necessary men and material and the manoeuvre to execute the operation. A consequence of that is you either create a stalemate or a vaccum, and one group or another will fill it.

I haven't heard the speech, but assume that is a rather obvious finger wag at Iraq and a bit of "get the Sunni's into government positions and bung them some cash" call to Abadi. You might find, in fact you would find, they'd turn on IS (again). We need to squeeze IS from all sides.

Its worth pointing out that there hasn't been a Commons vote on hitting IS or JaN in Syria, as the vote last year was targetting Assad.

I would have to question the legitimacy of that Russia Today press release on the vote in Crimea. I wonder how free the vote in Scotland would have been last week if we had 16 Air Assault milling around the polling stations.

UAE strikeseas by a female pilot too. That will twist a few Takfiri heads.

Assad is reaching out and is grasping for rehabilitation. It’s a very tricky sitaution and complex situation with no real "good guys", hence its absence from our news screens. However, I see US providing CAS to Iranian backed militia and potentiallty Quds Froce in Iraq, as well as being welcomed into Syrian air-space, that there is a willingness from Washington to engage with Iran and their proxies in Iraq/Syria. It is something of an elephant in the room that The Kingdom et al are involved in strikes on groups they facilitated while Obama was twiddling his thumbs. Contradictory policies from states in that region are not uncoomon. ISI in Pakistan are another classic example of a bizzare duelism. The building of the border fence between The Kingdom and al Anbar province perhaps does give an indication that the Saudis have woken up to a problem of their creation; a porous border can flow both ways. It was fine when Salafists were flooding Anbar to be human ordinance in their insurgency against the US, but now IS have specifically rejected SA, the penny may have dropped. For what it is worth, I think bringing Iran into the tent is a very good idea.