A "lurker" who follows ISIS affiliates on Twitter remarked that fighter obituaries have included several officers up to Captain rank from the Saudi military.
Harmony database
Outlaw09 asked:Yes, but is awhile since I've read a CTC report based on them.david---did not know you knew about the Harmony Database?
davidbfpo
A "lurker" who follows ISIS affiliates on Twitter remarked that fighter obituaries have included several officers up to Captain rank from the Saudi military.
davidbfpo
Saudia armored unit officers have been trained over the last seven years on an yearly basis at the NTC---actually quite good on the armored recon side of things. They grasp well the use of armor in desert environments.Originally Posted by Red Rat
Jordanian army SF trained by US SF for a long number of years.
Would be more interested in if the KSA AF goes to alert status as well as the Jordanian AF.
CTC has done extensive harmony work and released some really good papers.
Many do not tend to follow their work because they see West Point and think the military does not get things.
David---two CTC reports on AQI in the period 2006 to 2009 each report has the related Harmony documents which make great background reading since AQI has not changed much of their Iraqi internal structures since 2009.
Now Iran is fully inside Iraqi this older CTC report on Iran is interesting to see what the analysis was then versus now.
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/irani...means%e2%80%9d
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/bombe...nd-out-of-iraq
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/al-qa...sinjar-records
This seems to confirm the fact that Malaki has a way of blaming everyone for problems in Iraq other than those created by himself.
Seems that since we did not deliver the F16s scheduled for delivery in the fall of this year we the US are responsible for the ISIS successes.
"The announcement follows a comment by al-Maliki that militant advances might have been avoided if Iraq had proper air power, in the form of fighter jets that Iraq has been trying to get from the United States.
"I'll be frank and say that we were deluded when we signed the contract" with the United States, al-Maliki told the BBC in the interview last week, which was released Friday.
Iraq has now turned to Russia and Belarus to buy fighter jets, he said. "God willing, within one week, this force will be effective and will destroy the terrorists' dens," he said.
U.S. officials were quick to reject al-Maliki's complaints. U.S. fighter jets have not been slow in coming, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby told CNN. The first two promised F-16s "weren't expected to be delivered until the fall, which is still months away," Kirby said. "And we were in the process of working towards that delivery."
The advance of the al Qaeda splinter group "couldn't have been stemmed through the use of two particular fighter planes," he said.
Al-Maliki's statements about the need for air support came as American and Arab diplomats told CNN that the United States is unlikely to undertake any military strikes against the militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and its allied fighters before a new government is formed in Iraq.
Seems that while the Iraqi Army leadership is claiming today on Iraqi News they control Tikrit there are a number of online YouTube videos taken at the same time that indicate no Iraqi Army personnel in the main streets of Tikrit. YouTube videos seem to be released by the Sunni tribes controlling Tikrit not from ISIS.
The closest they seem to be is in a village 25 kms away after being driven out from the first initial assualt----the Iraqi SF that assaulted in via copter seem to be encircled in the university.
Again reports indicate that the relief column is still bogged down with IEDs and have not moved much from Samarra.
Seems every time the Iraqi Army makes an announcement on successes the ISIS releases social media reporting evidently the direct opposite.
Now the question begs to be asked---(with the new Obama foreign policy in place, the US foreign policy for Syria in tatters and virtually non existent, and Russia not being punished for basically doing nothing to end the Ukrainian irregular war)----can anyone explain to me in a sentence or two why we need Russian assistance in anything now or in the future?
Escalating Iraq-Syria war now pits Iran-Russia-Assad/Maliki v. ISIS, other extremists. US effectively on sidelines. http://nyti.ms/1muwI46
5:15 PM - 29 Jun 2014
Seems the Russians have effectively placed themselves on the side of Shia Islam and against the Sunni Islam---will be interesting to see how the Gulf States and the KSA now respond with basically an Iranian invasion supported by Russia of Iraq under the guise of combatting ISIS.
For Russia it has been in the ME always about the oil and naval ports tied to that oil.
It seems that the Iraqi government still does not get it that it is not about the number of aircraft that will make the difference.
This attitude that if I have a large number of weapons then I will win is I believe part of what we created--they looked at the US military and assumed the same thing would work for them---thus never really believing they needed a political solution.
Appears that the IS new name for the ISIS has held Tikrit and shot down another copter in the process so now the Iraqi Army think Abrams tanks will dislodge the insurgents but that means placing Abrams tanks directly into a narrow MOUT environment which will not work out well and fail as well.
"Earlier on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain Al-Shahristani, one of Iraq’s most senior politicians, faulted the US for not doing enough to bolster the country’s military.
“Yes, there has been a delay from the Americans in handing over the contracted arms. We told them, ‘You once did an air bridge to send arms to your ally Israel, so why don’t you give us the contracted arms in time?’” he told Al-Hurra television. (NOTE: again the complaint from the Shia this time from Iraq--hey you Americans support the Jews but not the Shia---similar argument from the previous Iranian President) In a sign of Iraq’s attempts to bolster its lackluster air force, five Russian Sukhoi jets were delivered to Baghdad late on Saturday, which state television said “would be used in the coming days to strike ISIL terrorist groups.”
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-30-2014 at 06:29 AM.
Isis rebels declare 'Islamic state' in Iraq and Syria
And importantly:Islamist militant group Isis has said it is establishing a caliphate, or Islamic state, on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria.
It also proclaimed the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as caliph and "leader for Muslims everywhere".
The question is whether to disparate Sunni groups will fall into line behind ISIS and if they do for how long?In the recording, the rebels also demanded that all Muslims "pledge allegiance" to the new ruler and "reject democracy and other garbage from the West".
Here's my latest article "Tracking Al Qaeda in Iraq's Zarqawi Interview With Ex-CIA Analyst Nada Bakos". I interviewed former CIA analyst Nada Bakos who was part of the Counterterrorism Center tasked with following bin Laden. She went to Iraq May 2003 to track Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.
JWing--an interesting interview---reference point five---I one had a an insurgent draw me the linkage concept of the Sunni insurgency (Emir of the ASA Baqubah cell who led a group of 70 fighters).
It was actually a spider web with concentric circles and at each point where a part of the spider web cell touched another section of the web there was a physical cell and at the center of the spider web it was the core founders of the Sunni insurgency who had been together since 2002.
What is interesting when I attempted to write it up no one wanted to hear it nor read as everyone was hung up on the hierarchy thing that was alluded to in the Manchester AQ document.
When I drew it for someone in DC in 2008 he was totally surprised and asked where I had gotten it as it was news for him.
So much was reported but never read nor analyzed by national---- it was all about the numbers generated not the information as no one really thought we were in a deeply developing guerrilla war.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-30-2014 at 08:12 PM.
How ISIS is winning the online war for Iraq
A brief article in the popular scientific weekly magazine, with details that I'd not read about before and with links:http://www.newscientist.com/article/...8#.U7HaRkCRcdV
davidbfpo
That one is easy. Mr. Obama is a Red Diaper baby. Red diaper babies grew up believing that the only reason there was trouble between the USSR and the rest of the world was the US being mean to them, if only we had seen that and engaged in sincere dialog and cooperation, all would have been well. That world still exists in Mr. Obama's mind and nothing short of a nuke going off over Omaha will change that. So no matter what or where, we have to cooperate with the Russkis.
Sorry, that was 4 sentences.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Outlaw 09:
Why did we blow up Zarqawi instead of catching him? If I recall right there were sufficient forces very close by but we blew him up instead. Why we did that always puzzled me.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Interesting. The more I look at ISIS the more I come to realize that, contrary to Outlaws assertion, Pop-centric COIN is not dead but dead-on. ISIS has taken and now controls territory without the armor that Gian Gentile believes is necessary for an army. They have done it without the air power that COL Warden believes is necessary to win. They have done it by convincing key elements of the population that they are the lessor of two evils. They won the hearts and minds of key Sunni leadership as well as potential insurgents from around the world. Too bad we don't believe these tactics can work.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
Honest answer?---there was a massive reward on his top dead or alive---no one ever stopped to ask was it paid out and did the individual leave Iraq---yes to both.
There was a second source indicating the exact location at the same time---some said it was to kill him so the second person's identify was not revealed as everyone would be looking at person one---which is what happened the second one drifted into cyper-space somewhere still in Iraq.
TC---have never said pop centric is dead as it has been at the heart of every guerrilla war in the last 300 years---what is dead is COIN as it was never designed to fight an aggressive UW/IW war which Iraq was even in 2003.
Many never did want to hear my constant remarks about the effective inforwar being carried out by AQI and the other Sunni groups---for a vast majority of Army officers it was all "propaganda" thus they would right rite refuse to even look at the internet infowar materials that were streaming almost daily from over six internet sites---now IS and the related Sunni groups have moved on to twitter and youtube which is in my personal opinion not as effective but it sure sidesteps the NSA.
carl---there was a third rumor going around---the tipper was close to Zarqawi for awhile and was killed as well in the airstrike---so the humor was "we saved ourselves the reward money intentionally".
There was no interest in capturing him alive---- based on his reputation he would have been just as valuable to the insurgency and AQ in prison.
Now Russia is flying in Iraq and maybe NK pilots in Syria?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...over-iraq.html
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