Reuters
Nancy Youssef, Daily Beast: ‘Islamic State’ Turning Into a Guerrilla Army, Top General Warns
Four days ago, the U.S. defense secretary was predicting a ‘lasting defeat’ of ISIS. Now, a top general is warning that the terror group is preparing for a guerrilla war.
The capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq is now under assault. But ISIS isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the terror group is beginning to rebrand itself from a “caliphate” to an insurgency, a top U.S. general fighting ISIS said Wednesday.
It’s much more than a change of name, or even a shift in tactics. It could well mean that there will be no “lasting defeat” of ISIS, even if it loses control of Iraq’s second-largest city, despite Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s claim of such a victory just four days ago, when the Iraqi campaign for Mosul began. After two years of either training local forces to fight ISIS or hitting the terror group with airstrikes, U.S. officials said they believe it still could evolve into the kind of threat that has plagued Iraq since shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion.
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WNU editor: They are still far from being just a guerrilla army, and there is still their stronghold in Raqqa, Syria.
3 comments:
mlacix,
Well it looks like ISIS is making noise near Kirkuk. Probably a distraction, but as fragile as the "alliance" is and as critical as the Kurdish participation is it could produce some unfortunate results.
"Unfortunate results." For the sake of our armed forces operating in the region and the Kurds, I certainly hope and pray not.
I think the Obama Administration and team Clinton are counting on a quick victory here in the run up to the election. Given the strength of this enemy and the fragility of the "alliance", they may be in for a nasty surprise.
I would assume such a surprise would affect the election. How this surprise might affect the election is unknown but it would have an effect. So far there has been an almost comical, if it weren't so serious, stubborn refusal on the part of many to recognize just how tough ISIS is. Understanding an enemy is going to be among the first steps to defeating it. Failure to understand an enemy is going to make it extremely problematic to defeat it.
B,
Don't know how much legs all this has, mlacix is one I'd trust on that call. It does seem that all our whiz bang satellite, signit, and humint, capapbilities dropped the ball big time on this one.
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