Thursday, December 31, 2015

The Good news from the Middle East

The Iraqi army has retaken Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
When ISIS took it last year, it was headlines, especially since the Iraqi army fled. Now the Iraqis took it back, so don't expect this good news to be reported on your tv news.

StrategyPage has the details.

The Iraqi army the Islamic State confronted at Ramadi this month is much more lethal than the Iraqi army was in April. Yes, it is still green, but observers report that Iraqi combat engineers made good tactical use of U.S.-provided land mine-clearing equipment. Mine and lane clearing is very tricky business under enemy fire, and in urban combat, that is usually the case. Friendly infantry and tanks must provide engineers with covering fire. This requires coordination and good leadership.
Coalition special operations troops are no longer so covert. Special-ops.org reported that 80 Australian special forces soldiers embedded in front-line Iraqi units and directed over 1,000 airstrikes. This is precisely what Washington should have done in mid-2014, when the Islamic State first invaded Iraq: provide embedded air control teams and combat advisers

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