Islamic State vs. The World (except Canada)
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  Islamic State vs. The World (except Canada)
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Author Topic: Islamic State vs. The World (except Canada)  (Read 44473 times)
patrick1
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« Reply #200 on: September 02, 2014, 08:20:55 PM »

How did the the Iraqi army just melt away in the face of ISIS attacks ? Their performance was frankly an embarrassment. The Iraqi army is armed to the teeth with US military toys like the M-1 Abrams, the Apache Helicopter etc.



Weak readiness, deployment of their forces and will. Many of the leaders simply went home and some Sunnis commanders bowed out or switched sides.  They essentially ceded what was hostile ground and regrouped down to the Shia areas.

The Iraqi army now has some fight back in them again but the dangerous thing is that their will is being hardened by the use of Shia militias.
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Boris
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« Reply #201 on: September 02, 2014, 09:33:50 PM »

The UK should join in on the bombing after they execute David Haines.
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Cory
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« Reply #202 on: September 02, 2014, 10:02:02 PM »

The UK should join in on the bombing after they execute David Haines.

As should France. An international effort will be required to defeat the Islamic State. I'm glad to hear reports that Iranian air units have begun giving some close air support to Iraqi forces.
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dead0man
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« Reply #203 on: September 03, 2014, 08:25:21 AM »

'Twice as Many' British Muslims Fighting for ISIS Than in UK Armed Forces
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dead0man
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« Reply #204 on: September 03, 2014, 08:36:57 AM »

That's a very common "tactic" in sh**t holes.  On one hand, it makes it easier when outsiders have to come in to clean up a mess...on the other hand, it makes them really bad at fighting off rebels.
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Tender Branson
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« Reply #205 on: September 03, 2014, 08:40:22 AM »



Those numbers are from June.

The Austrian Interior Ministry now puts the figure at 130 jihadists that have gone to Syria/Iraq to fight for IS. Just recently, police arrested 9 Chechens (asylum seekers) +1 yesterday on the Austrian border who wanted to travel to Syria.

130 + the 10 arrested would put Austria much more on top of that list of Western countries.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28871771
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dead0man
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« Reply #206 on: September 03, 2014, 08:47:26 AM »

Hopefully most of them will die, but certainly some are going to try and go ......"home" again.  That's going to be a problem.

I understand the US doesn't get the same kind of Muslim that France, UK and the rest of the western states get....but even considering that, the US numbers are stupidly small.
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dead0man
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« Reply #207 on: September 03, 2014, 08:56:37 AM »

American and German special forces are on the ground and fighting ISIS
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US and German govts still denying it.
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Tender Branson
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« Reply #208 on: September 03, 2014, 08:58:26 AM »

Hopefully most of them will die, but certainly some are going to try and go ......"home" again.  That's going to be a problem.

I understand the US doesn't get the same kind of Muslim that France, UK and the rest of the western states get....but even considering that, the US numbers are stupidly small.

Yes, some might manage to come back - but it's hard to actually get back in via air because their passports are on a black list.

The few who come back legally (because they are citizens) will likely be put under supervision by the Federal Agency for State Protection and Counter Terrorism or simply arrested.

Besides, it's rather hard here to get weapons like handguns or even explosives, which means a terrorist attack is unlikely.

More on the origins of the 130 or so Austrian jihadists:

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Read more here:

http://www.thelocal.at/20140825/vienna-a-hub-for-european-jihadists
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #209 on: September 04, 2014, 10:44:57 PM »

How did the the Iraqi army just melt away in the face of ISIS attacks ? Their performance was frankly an embarrassment. The Iraqi army is armed to the teeth with US military toys like the M-1 Abrams, the Apache Helicopter etc.



Weak readiness, deployment of their forces and will. Many of the leaders simply went home and some Sunnis commanders bowed out or switched sides.  They essentially ceded what was hostile ground and regrouped down to the Shia areas.

The Iraqi army now has some fight back in them again but the dangerous thing is that their will is being hardened by the use of Shia militias.

Most of what I've read blames the officer corps, which Maliki's administration treated as patronage for (unqualified) Shia cronies until almost no one else was left in command.

I'm afraid that's basically par for the course in Arab states. Lest we forget that Saddam basically just picked his favorite cousins, childhood friends and neighbors to be generals in the Iraqi Army despite them having little to no military training.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #210 on: September 04, 2014, 11:00:24 PM »

How did the the Iraqi army just melt away in the face of ISIS attacks ? Their performance was frankly an embarrassment. The Iraqi army is armed to the teeth with US military toys like the M-1 Abrams, the Apache Helicopter etc.



Weak readiness, deployment of their forces and will. Many of the leaders simply went home and some Sunnis commanders bowed out or switched sides.  They essentially ceded what was hostile ground and regrouped down to the Shia areas.

The Iraqi army now has some fight back in them again but the dangerous thing is that their will is being hardened by the use of Shia militias.

Most of what I've read blames the officer corps, which Maliki's administration treated as patronage for (unqualified) Shia cronies until almost no one else was left in command.

I'm afraid that's basically par for the course in Arab states. Lest we forget that Saddam basically just picked his favorite cousins, childhood friends and neighbors to be generals in the Iraqi Army despite them having little to no military training.

As I said before:

Seriously though, Bremer's dissolution of the Iraqi Army was a major mistake, and it remains a major mistake. It was an essentially unilateral decision taken without consulting neither State nor Defense nor the White House nor even the commanders on the ground.

It is why there were so many angry Sunnis with guns running around Iraq in the following years and good part of why why these particular angry Sunnis are running around now. If there was a single decision that could be pointed to as the largest factor in the present situation in Iraq, this would be it.

Of course, that went hand-in-hand with the excesses of de-Baathification; purging every single member of the party, irrespective of rank, from the civil service, which ended up amounting to up to 100,000 people. Besides the serious diminution of state capacity this effected, it alienated, and deprived of their livelihoods, much of what was the Iraqi middle class. I mean, the state collapse in Iraq can rather plainly be traced to the gutting of the state by the provisional authority. This is particularly bizarre, as we had learnt the perils of such an approach in Germany and didn't even try it in Japan. 

The failure of the US to achieve its goals in Iraq had less to do with the goals themselves as opposed to the people who were entrusted to carry them out. The Bush administration gave the provisional authority an alarming degree of latitude in hastily determining policy, who in turn gave much credence to people like al-Jafari or Chalabi (who arguably got us into this whole mess). It goes back to the disinterest that administration officials had in planning for the post-war reconstruction process. Which, I suppose, stemmed in turn from the naive neo-conservative belief that the Iraqi people would embrace "democracy" eagerly and quickly resolve their problems on their own.

In this vein, I share something of Indy Texas' "realism", but I wouldn't go as far as to say this justifies supporting Assad.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #211 on: September 04, 2014, 11:00:53 PM »

Look at it this way. When moral issues are taken into account, there obviously is no case for supporting Assad.

But when we take out moral issues, there really isn't any benefit the US would have by supporting Assad, is there? What would we gain from it? Assad presumably would crush the rebels and eliminate ISIS, and let's even assume he manages to clean up ISIS in Iraq as well.  At best we'd end up simply hoping that Assad would feel some sort of gratitude towards us for our help (which came after arming his opponents and only after some Americans were killed) and do... what exactly? What could Assad do for us? You'd end up with an almost certainly Teheran-aligned government in Baghdad neighbored by Iran and Assad's Syria. How does this further American interests?
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jfern
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« Reply #212 on: September 05, 2014, 12:26:01 AM »


Boots on the ground isn't warmonger enough for Hillary.
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Beet
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« Reply #213 on: September 05, 2014, 12:52:10 AM »

It's good that we finally have some skin in the game and are supporting someone on the ground, even though it's just the Kurds, who are limited by ethnic/national identity from really ruling the region, and who will always be seen as outsiders.

What we really needed were Sunni Arab allies, similar to the Syrian moderate rebels, who could have governed the majority of the area's non-Kurd population and provided an alternative to ISIS. But hey, this is better than the "don't do stupid stuff", hear no evil, see no evil that was the Obama administration's policy up until a couple months ago.

As for the Kurds, if they are successful on the battlefield perhaps they should use this opportunity to declare independence. Since the West really needs them more than ever now, they have a strong bargaining position.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #214 on: September 05, 2014, 07:16:10 AM »

The Lebanese Justice Minister declared it was necessary to "bring to justice those individuals who burned the ISIS flag in Sassine Square."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/04/the-lebanese-ice-bucket-challenge-has-morphed-into-burning-islamic-state-flags/?Post+generic=?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost
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Nhoj
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« Reply #215 on: September 05, 2014, 10:33:23 AM »

The issue there is that the ISIS flag has religious symbols on it, not that its an ISIS flag. Anyways hes taking criticism for going too far on it in any case.
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Deus Naturae
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« Reply #216 on: September 08, 2014, 09:30:00 PM »

Ben Nelson introduces bill to bomb Syria.
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Frodo
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« Reply #217 on: September 08, 2014, 09:37:26 PM »


That's Bill Nelson (D-FL), not Ben Nelson (D-NE).  
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Tender Branson
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« Reply #218 on: September 11, 2014, 12:29:15 PM »

More teenie girls intercepted by parents/police before they went to Syria/Iraq:

http://www.thelocal.at/20140909/two-austrian-schoolgirls-stopped-en-route-to-syria

It is now estimated by the Interior Ministry that a total of 12 teenie girls have already gone to Syria or attempted, the most notable ones are these 2 in April (no word heard from them since).

Another prominent one is a Vienna-girl of Polish-Catholic origin, who converted to Islam and went to Syria auf nimmerwiedersehen ...

It is estimated that out of the 130-150 Austrians who went to Syria/Iraq, 20-30 were women.

According to the "Economist", only Sweden has a higher number of female jihadis ...
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Frodo
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« Reply #219 on: September 11, 2014, 10:49:49 PM »

The CIA is now saying that the Islamic State has more than twice the number of fighters we thought they had.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #220 on: September 11, 2014, 10:51:34 PM »


ie: they're an even greater threat than we thought.
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Cory
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« Reply #221 on: September 11, 2014, 11:35:37 PM »

More teenie girls intercepted by parents/police before they went to Syria/Iraq:

http://www.thelocal.at/20140909/two-austrian-schoolgirls-stopped-en-route-to-syria

It is now estimated by the Interior Ministry that a total of 12 teenie girls have already gone to Syria or attempted, the most notable ones are these 2 in April (no word heard from them since).

Another prominent one is a Vienna-girl of Polish-Catholic origin, who converted to Islam and went to Syria auf nimmerwiedersehen ...

It is estimated that out of the 130-150 Austrians who went to Syria/Iraq, 20-30 were women.

According to the "Economist", only Sweden has a higher number of female jihadis ...

It's a shame because you know these are jaded individuals who are desperately looking for a greater cause to be a part of to give their lives meaning. the same applies to most fringe/radical groups.
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swl
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« Reply #222 on: September 12, 2014, 03:21:01 AM »
« Edited: September 12, 2014, 03:30:28 AM by swl »

Many of them will come back disappointed and will try to go back to their normal life, when they realize the utopia they are looking for does not exist... They should be allowed to do so, if they accept to remain under surveillance for a while.

After all there are foreign fighters fighting for both sides of the conflict in Ukraine and no one talks about removing their citizenship or stuff like that.
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dead0man
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« Reply #223 on: September 13, 2014, 06:38:42 AM »

Turkey refuses to host U.S. anti-ISIS forces
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Also, a recent survey conducted by Metropoll found that only 62.5% of AKP supporters consider Isis a terrorist organization.
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Atlas Has Shrugged
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« Reply #224 on: September 13, 2014, 05:47:35 PM »

NBC is reporting that a third hostage-this one British-has been beheaded by ISIS. PMQ is going to be interesting on Wednesday.
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