Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[OUTLAW 09]

Outlaw

Outside of our government talking heads, who said USSOF wasn't fighting?

Second, and I'm sure you will appreciate this, it would make perfect sense for any of our adversaries, especially state adversaries, to quietly (through cut outs) provide limited support to ISIS. The goal isn't for ISIS to win, but to keep the U.S. distracted and provide freedom of movement elsewhere in the world (South China Sea, Ukraine, etc.).

Bill--you bring an interesting comment---by the way where SAS shows up inside Syria and or Iraq so shows up US SOF--an "old saying". The two orgs have trained and deployed together for too many years to not work "quietly" together.

There have been some serious rumint for a number of years that indicated Russia did not do much of anything in allowing/slowing down Russian Islamists from the RF to leave Russia and fight in Syria and Iraq-estimated in the 1300 range potentially though much higher--same goes for some arms shipments from Russia that somehow "disappeared enroute to Syria" that magically reappeared in the hands of the IS. There is also some strong rumint of money laundering via the Russian mob concerning the IS stolen oil sales via Turkish criminal gangs.

Allowing the Russian Islamists to leave might inside the Russian FSB be viewed as a "hope they leave, get killed and or do not return" kind of program.

Russian fear is now the blowback as a large number of those Russian Islamists are headed home and none to happy with Russian control of their individual states inside the RF and the Russian perceived oppression of Muslims in general.

IS has by the way in a number of their recent PR releases attacked Russia directly and are serious about their threats to send home the fighters to cause Russia major problems within their Muslim populations which are extremely tense at the moment due to Russian oppression of their individual rights and there have been a number of Russian nationalist attacks on their mosques as well.

Coupled with the "disappearance" and murders of over 12 Crimea Tartars since the Russian annexation of the Crimea
--it does not bode well for Russia.