Iraq Falls Apart

[joepistole]

No what they didn't want was an all Shiite government. Sia's represent 55 to 60 percent of the population whereas Shiites are 30 to 35%. Saddam was a Sunni and as evil as he supposedly was he kept sectarianism to a minimum. The ousting of Saddam exacerbated these underlying tensions and the US support of a predominantly Shiite government of course didn't help. This is a backlash against a bad government that happens to represent a minority within the country. This minority of course also represent Iran's majority (they too are Sunni), which is why the Iranians are offering the government help.




Now of course the Americans can just sit back and sing like Silkk The Shocker "It ain't my fault. Did I do that!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-Yzj57NO4

The Americans must have known this. I mean, I can't believe that they are COMPLETELY stupid. Or maybe they are.

Actually, Iraqi political instability didn't begin with the US. It began when the British and the French carved up the Ottoman Empire. The US cannot and should not do everything for the Iraqis. As Iraqi ambassador to the UN said this evening on NPR, at some point the Iraqis need to put on their big boy pants. This is an Iraqi political problem and only Iraqis can resolve it.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Actually, Iraqi political instability didn't begin with the US. It began when the British and the French carved up the Ottoman Empire. The US cannot and should not do everything for the Iraqis. As Iraqi ambassador to the UN said this evening on NPR, at some point the Iraqis need to put on their big boy pants. This is an Iraqi political problem and only Iraqis can resolve it.

I completely agree but it was the US who toppled Saddam and supported a Shia government. Not the British or the French. I agree the US cannot and should not do everything for the Iraqis but that bit of wisdom should have kicked in before they ousted the man. I mean maybe it was up to the Iraqi people to put on their "big boy pants" and effect change themselves. Now change has occurred. Do you think the US will allow islamic militants to take control of the country? Will they let the Iraqi's put on their "big boys pants"? Or is this the Iraqi's putting on their "big boy pants"? Taking the bull by the horns so to speak. Saddam was "an Iraqi political problem" until the Americans made it their problem. That's why I say the Americans can now sit on the side lines and sing like Silkk The Shocker "It ain't my fault. Did I do that!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-Yzj57NO4

The French and the Brits were to blame for the first part of the tragedy and the US gets the big slice of the second half of the tragedy. Pointing to earlier nations who upset the apple cart doesn't absolve the American government for the part they played.

 

[joepistole]

I completely agree but it was the US who toppled Saddam and supported a Shia government. Not the British or the French. I agree the US cannot and should not do everything for the Iraqis but that bit of wisdom should have kicked in before they ousted the man. I mean maybe it was up to the Iraqi people to put on their "big boy pants" and effect change themselves. Now change has occurred. Do you think the US will allow islamic militants to take control of the country? Will they let the Iraqi's put on their "big boys pants"? Or is this the Iraqi's putting on their "big boy pants"? Taking the bull by the horns so to speak. Saddam was "an Iraqi political problem" until the Americans made it their problem. That's why I say the Americans can now sit on the side lines and sing like Silkk The Shocker "It ain't my fault. Did I do that!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-Yzj57NO4

The French and the Brits were to blame for the first part of the tragedy and the US gets the big slice of the second half of the tragedy. Pointing to earlier nations who upset the apple cart doesn't absolve the American government for the part they played.

I don't think you are going to find many who think the Saddam dictatorship and his death squads and his sanctioned economy were all that great. So I don't see the Iraqis as victims here. Life has been difficult for Iraqis for a very long time.

The US led invasion was poorly conceived and poorly executed.

 

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

The US led invasion was poorly conceived and poorly executed.

Reporting on the current situation today, NBC Evening News gave the number of US soldiers who were killed & the number wounded there since the start of the war. They did not mention the many thousands of Iraqis who were killed or the many more wounded.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

I don't think you are going to find many who think the Saddam dictatorship and his death squads and his sanctioned economy were all that great. So I don't see the Iraqis as victims here. Life has been difficult for Iraqis for a very long time.

The US led invasion was poorly conceived and poorly executed.

Are they as responsible for their government as you are responsible for yours?

 

[iceaura]

This minority of course also represent Iran's majority (they too are Sunni), which is why the Iranians are offering the government help.

Iran is essentially Shiite, with some scattered minority groups. That's why Al Qaida has no foothold there, and part of the reason they were fighting the Sunni Hussein in Iraq all those years, and part of the reason the Shia in Iraq do not want to share power with the Sunni who were their oppressors for so long.

So the Iranians have an opportunity here, and they have been good at spotting such in the past: they can solidify their current alliance with the Iraqi Shia government, and do so without triggering bad reactions from the US etc - because they are fighting against Al Qaida.

 

[sculptor]

Anyone have knowledge about how Quds and Saberin are deployed in Iraq?
Are they fighting as independent units along side Iraqi army forces?
Or are they embedded within Iraqi units?

.......................
wow
someone seems to have actually taken offense to the picture of my clay(avatar)
It's just clay, and that reaction seems so crazy to me----
Oh well, it's just an avatar picture of clay, I suppose if the site was run by the taliban, they'd just go ahead and cut off my hands?
pity i don't do non-figurative stuff.

You should consider that Imitation is the most acceptable part of Worship, and that the Gods had much rather Mankind should Resemble, than Flatter them

Just this morning, a leaf got stuck upright between 2 boards on my deck. A butterfly of roughly the same shape, size, and color landed next to the leaf and stood there----for awhile.

 

[joepistole]

Obama has just confirmed what I wrote last evening. It's time the Iraqis put on their big boy pants. And Obama is requiring reforms as a condition for additional aid. Iraq needs need to resolve their political differences. Actually they need a new leader. It's amazing, a group of 1,000 or so insurgents have caused a well equiped army of 300,000+ to crumble virtually overnight. Iraq's salvation may lie in it's private militias.

 

[Yazata]

Anyone have knowledge about how Quds and Saberin are deployed in Iraq?

I believe that I saw news that the first of them to be deployed went to Samarra, north of Baghdad. Not very many, perhaps 100-200. Samarra is in predominantely Sunni territory but is the site of a major Shi'ite religious site. Reportedly ISIS was outside Samarra, probed into the town and were repulsed. ISIS has been taking over larger Iraqi towns with just a few hundred fighters, so even small forces willing to fight them might be effective. Besides, since Samarra is important to the Iraqi Shi'ites, it might have had a Shi'ite military garrison less inclined to desert.

Subsequent editorial addition: I just saw a CNN news story, about 2 hours old, that suggests about 500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards are in Iraq at the moment (with more probably on the way) and that some of them are headed to Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, where ISIS took over several regional towns this morning. (Diyala province isn't far from the Iranian border.) ISIS is already entrenched in Falluja to Baghdad's west, is closing in from the north and seems to be trying to move around to the east as well, encircling the capital on three sides.

Are they fighting as independent units along side Iraqi army forces?
Or are they embedded within Iraqi units?

Dunno. My guess is that they are independent units.

wow
someone seems to have actually taken offense to the picture of my clay(avatar)
It's just clay, and that reaction seems so crazy to me----

I liked it.

 

[sculptor]

I liked it.

Thanks

Peshmerga ("those who confront death") seem well organized, and motivated.
It's beginning to look like a win for the Kurds.
It seems that the Iranians are only moving into Iraq's eastern border provinces.
With them and the Kurds, Isis has a very long exposed flank--------I wonder if a combined counteroffensive could trap them or force them west into Sunni lands?

 

[Arne Saknussemm]

Hmm. Sculptor, maybe you could have a naked lady's marble butt as your avatar rather than mudman.

 

[sculptor]

Hmm. Sculptor, maybe you could have a naked lady's marble butt as your avatar rather than mudman.

"mudman" huh
(grumble scowl)
I call him the persian war vet-------inspired by the riace statues
hmmmm

ok, butts are ok, but breast ain't?

OK
let's try "nelly"

.................
cool?

 

[Arne Saknussemm]

Whoa Nelly!

 

[sculptor]

Whoa Nelly!

long ago and far away there was a song
within which was the phrase:
"She started the heat wave by letting her seat wave"

...............
back to iraq:

I have been rather impressed by Haj Qasem Soleimani from previous actions.
He is said to be the quiet calm in the middle of the storm, who listens and advises well.
However, his efforts in Syria seem to have been fruitless.

 

[Israel.Goldstein]

Cool, we get to invade Iraq again!

Freedom requires eternal vigilance.

 

[cosmictraveler]

Once the Sunni were in charge and wouldn't let the Shiite have any say in governmental proceedings and now the rolls are reversed and the Shiite won't allow the Sunni have any political power which the Sunni are now trying to have with another civil war. If America supplies money to help the Shiite it will either be stolen by them or the Sunni as they have done with the robbing of the bank for over 500 million dollars. I wonder why they did not move all that money when they saw the Sunni taking over the towns a few hundred miles away? Well this isn't going to turn out well especially if the Shiite drop and run away from the fight as they have been doing.

 

[hypewaders]

Obama has just confirmed what I wrote last evening. It's time the Iraqis put on their big boy pants. And Obama is requiring reforms as a condition for additional aid. Iraq needs need to resolve their political differences. Actually they need a new leader. It's amazing, a group of 1,000 or so insurgents have caused a well equiped army of 300,000+ to crumble virtually overnight. Iraq's salvation may lie in it's private militias.

Or (which I weep at the bloody process of, if not the ends) Iraq's sectarian militias will be her complete and existential undoing, precipitating sectarian conflict throughout the Gulf, and also the sudden implosion of the Sykes-Pikot artifice. This recalls for me a prior thread about this, which I found interesting on review: Iraq War and a Cascade of Regional Chaos.

Confusion has abounded about how counterproductive and irresponsible US entanglement has consistently been with respect to concerns of security, national interests, economics, etc. I don't mean to characterize your comment this way at all, joepistole when I mention the disheartening phenomenon where in the West, our cognitive dissonance stymies us, as self-absorbed powers play so irresponsibly with fire, often to the depraved delight of the most extreme of extremists in zionism and political Islam.

It is so discouraging to me, our intense difficulty discerning our deep state in the USA, or (what's more imperative) holding it accountable for consistently irrational and murderous behavior because we can't recognize the dark organism as antithetical to our republic and our humanity. We have growing evidence of a dark uncaring monster moving in seismic scale, extending tentacles from within our military-industrial deep state and infecting our political memes. Eisenhower's "MIC" will likely continue to evolve defense mechanisms that we had best set about seriously studying and learning to dismantle before the vast, fast-evolving, self-concealing, and soulless organism overcomes us in the USA (or even destroys our world).

 

[sculptor]

Once the Sunni were in charge and wouldn't let the Shiite have any say in governmental proceedings and now the rolls are reversed and the Shiite won't allow the Sunni have any political power which the Sunni are now trying to have with another civil war. If America supplies money to help the Shiite it will either be stolen by them or the Sunni as they have done with the robbing of the bank for over 500 million dollars. I wonder why they did not move all that money when they saw the Sunni taking over the towns a few hundred miles away? Well this isn't going to turn out well especially if the Shiite drop and run away from the fight as they have been doing.

The Iraqi soldiers who fled the fight in northern Iraq were mostly Sunni, who couldn't see any advantage in fighting for Maliki's government.
Maliki's distribution of the troops is as idiotic and short sighted as the rest of his concept of governance.

 

[joepistole]

The Iraqi soldiers who fled the fight in northern Iraq were mostly Sunni, who couldn't see any advantage in fighting for Maliki's government.
Maliki's distribution of the troops is as idiotic and short sighted as the rest of his concept of governance.

I think the Shia militas will prevent the fall of Bagdad. But unless and until the Iraqi government gets its act together, blood will continue to flow in the country.

On the good side, and there isn't much good, most of the oil assets are deep into Shia country and Kurd controlled land.

 

[Yazata]

Peshmerga ("those who confront death") seem well organized, and motivated.

They do. Perhaps the best organized and motivated fighting force in Iraq.

It's beginning to look like a win for the Kurds.

Yes. The Kurds are going to end up with de-facto independence, to say nothing of control of the important oil refining city of Kirkuk that they've always coveted. Kirkuk once was overwhelmingly Kurdish, I believe, but Saddam Hussein moved large numbers of Arabs there. Now the Kurds seem to have claimed it back.)

When this is over, Baghdad will only have nominal sovergnty over the Kurdish region, and perhaps not even that.

It seems that the Iranians are only moving into Iraq's eastern border provinces.

And the Shi'ite holy places. I'm not really sure what's up with the Iranians. Tehran denies that any of its forces are in Iraq, but is offering to send them if Iraq asks. But the Iraqi government is saying that Iranians are already fighting in Iraq. (I'm inclined to think that they are probably already there.)

I'm just speculating, but Tehran might want Washington DC to take on ISIS on behalf of the Shi'ites. And the Mullahs may fear that Washington might get cold-feet if they think that they would be fighting alongside the Iranians. So Iran might want to keep a low profile for the time being to avoid scaring the Americans off.

With them and the Kurds, Isis has a very long exposed flank--------I wonder if a combined counteroffensive could trap them or force them west into Sunni lands?

I still think that ISIS might be more vulnerable than people think. Reportedly they have less than 10,000 fighters total, including both Syria and Iraq. The number given for ISIS fighters in Iraq is said to be about 4,000. They've taken many places with only a few hundred men each. Their success is more the result of the weakness of their enemies than of their own military strength. They are filling the vacuum created when the Sunnis refused to fight for al-Maliki.

So... anyone who wants to attack ISIS (the Peshmerga perhaps) could probably slice right through the areas they occupy on the map. (The prospect of street-fighting in Mosul is worrisome though.)

I'm not sure if the Kurds really want to capture territory though. That would mean occupying areas with Arab populations which might become a major headache. So I expect the Kurds to defend their own turf, probably pretty effectively, but they probably won't launch a bigger offensive.

Of course capturing a treasure trove of Iraqi military equipment in Mosul (much of it American made) strengthens ISIS tremendously. (They suddenly have everything from Apache attack helicopters to surface-to-air missiles.) And they are probably getting lots of recruits from Sunni Islamists who are thrilled with their success. (Just as militant Shi'ites seem to be flocking to enlist against them further south.) So if somebody wants to attack ISIS and roll them back, sooner might be better than later.