Ray Jay wrote:is anyone else wondering why ISIS did not destroy the Mosul dam?

Doctor Fate wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:is anyone else wondering why ISIS did not destroy the Mosul dam?

Yes.

The only reasons I came up with: 1) they expect to win and don't want to create a problem for themselves; 2) they had no idea what would happen and feared the flooding would trap or thwart them.

Ray Jay wrote:is anyone else wondering why ISIS did not destroy the Mosul dam?

I think it is more or less like #1. They may have a mindset straight out of the 16th or 17th century, but they are not totally stupid.

A month ago, the ISIS--controlled oil market in Iraq was reported to be worth $1 million a day. Now, with expansion, further control of oil fields and smuggling routes, the market is believed to be raising around $2 million a day.
This could fetch them $730 million a year, enough to sustain the operation beyond Iraq.

This is, if unwittingly, disingenuous. ISIS/ISIL is not a new threat.

. How did ISIS become so dominant in western Iraq? Wasn't it supposed to have been defeated before the Americans pulled out of Iraq in 2011?
The so-called "surge" launched by President George W. Bush did indeed reduce both Shia and Sunni violence in Iraq between 2006 and 2008.
However, lower level violence, including bombings by ISI especially of Shia pilgrimages and police stations continued, rising slowly last year.
Then, in a lightning strike in December, ISIS seized control of Fallujah and Ramadi, the two major Sunni strongholds of western Anbar province, neighbouring Syria. The Iraqi security forces made some inroads against them, but without any apparent strategy either to retake the cities or to win back their populations. Last week, ISIS began a major assault against other Iraqi cities in Sunni areas, including both Samarra, north of Baghdad, and Mosul

I would place 2 divisions in Kurd territory and destroy ISIL completely.

Secondly, I never said anything and staying after peace was achieved

rickyp wrote:bbauska

Secondly, I never said anything and staying after peace was achieved

.

when was peace achieved in iraq? in afghanistan?
never. and yet troops stayed there 10 years.

rickyp wrote:fate

This is, if unwittingly, disingenuous. ISIS/ISIL is not a new threat.

It really only became recognizable as a distinct significant threat late 2013. (December).

fate

I would place 2 divisions in Kurd territory and destroy ISIL completely.

How many divisions were involved in the Surge in 2008. How fleeting was that supposed victory against ISIS and other insurgents?

Now, let's say all you're saying is that they were part of the group defeated by the Surge

You still lose. It was Obama who turned victory into defeat by offering a laughable number of "residual" troops to stay in Iraq.

rickyp wrote:fate

Now, let's say all you're saying is that they were part of the group defeated by the Surge

I'm saying they were a small part of the group that was ultimately not defeated by the Surge.
Obviously the Surge solved nothing.

fate

You still lose. It was Obama who turned victory into defeat by offering a laughable number of "residual" troops to stay in Iraq.

You would have prefered that a much larger force remain but be subject to Iraquis (sic) law?

because that was the alternative. You would have prefered to continue to spend billions in an occupation?

To what end? To continue to prop up the Shiite government in Baghdad. A government who's closest allies were Iran?

Really? I thought you had no wish to enter into any kind of alliance with Iran against ISIS? But its okay to ally closely with a surrogate of iran in Baghdad?

Maliki's friendly gestures towards Iran have sometimes created tension between his government and the United States but he has also been willing to consider steps opposed by Tehran, particularly while carrying out negotiations with the United States on a joint-security pact. A June 2008 news report noted that al-Maliki's visit to Tehran seemed to be "aimed at getting Iran to tone down its opposition and ease criticism within Iraq". Al-Maliki said an agreement reached with the U.S. won't preclude good relations with neighbors like Iran.(March 2009)

Sassenach wrote:Actually, you're both wrong. The surge was a great success. It comprehensively defeated AQ in Iraq. However, the way that this victory was achieved was mostly down to co-opting the Sunni tribes, who had grown to be disgusted by then terrorist element in their midst and so were receptive to engagement (and bribery) to take up arms against them. What subsequently happened is that the Iraqi government under Maliki adopted aggressively sectarian policies which have alienated the Sunnis again and pushed them into the arms of the islamists. The surge was a successful policy but it couldn't be sustained because of the lack of an inclusive government in Baghdad. In order for something similar to work again it really is going to need a new government that's willing to include the Sunnis in decision making and share the spoils of the oil revenue more equally. Obama is right about that, and I think he's right to be wary of writing a blank cheque to the Shia dominated government in Baghdad without firm commitments to them changing their ways.

For the first time since the American troop withdrawal of 2011, fighters from a Qaeda affiliate have recaptured Iraqi territory. In the past few days they have seized parts of the two biggest cities in Anbar Province, where the government, which the fighters revile as a tool of Shiite Iran, struggles to maintain a semblance of authority. . . .

For all the attention paid to Syria over the past three years, Iraq’s slow disintegration also offers a vivid glimpse of the region’s bloody sectarian dynamic. In March 2012, Anthony Blinken, who is now President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, gave a speech echoing the White House’s rosy view of Iraq’s prospects after the withdrawal of American forces.

Iraq, Mr. Blinken said, was “less violent, more democratic and more prosperous” than “at any time in recent history.”

But the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, was already pursuing an aggressive campaign against Sunni political figures that infuriated Iraq’s Sunni minority. Those sectarian policies and the absence of American ground and air forces gave Al Qaeda in Iraq, a local Sunni insurgency that had become a spent force, a golden opportunity to rebuild its reputation as a champion of the Sunnis both in Iraq and in neighboring Syria. Violence in Iraq grew steadily over the following year.

Rebranding itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the group seized territory in rebel-held parts of Syria, where it now aspires to erase the border between the two countries and carve out a haven for its transnational, jihadist project. Sending 30 to 40 suicide bombers a month to Iraq from Syria, it has mounted a campaign of violence that led to the deaths of more than 8,000 Iraqis in 2013, according to the United Nations, the highest level of violence there since 2008.

In recent days, after ISIS fighters rode into the cities of Falluja and Ramadi, they fought gun battles with Sunni tribal fighters backed by the Iraqi government, illustrating that the battle lines in the Middle East are about far more than just sect. Yet the tribal fighters see the government as the lesser of two evils, and their loyalty is likely to be temporary and conditional.

As the United States rushed weapons to Mr. Maliki’s government late last year to help him fight off the jihadis, some analysts said American officials had not pushed the Iraqi prime minister hard enough to be more inclusive. “Maliki has done everything he could to deepen the sectarian divide over the past year and a half, and he still enjoys unconditional American support,” said Peter Harling, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “The pretext is always the same: They don’t want to rock the boat. How is this not rocking the boat?”

The worsening violence in Iraq and Syria has spread into Lebanon, where a local Qaeda affiliate conducted a suicide bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in November, in an attack meant as revenge for Iran’s support of Mr. Assad.

Maliki was forced into Iran's arms. Now, he may have wanted to be there, but we gave him no choice

The surge was a great success. It comprehensively defeated AQ in Iraq. However, the way that this victory was achieved was mostly down to co-opting the Sunni tribes, who had grown to be disgusted by then terrorist element in their midst and so were receptive to engagement (and bribery) to take up arms against them

rickyp wrote:fate

Maliki was forced into Iran's arms. Now, he may have wanted to be there, but we gave him no choice

Maliki fled Iraq in 79 after being charged and sentenced to death by Sadaam. He was given refuge in first Iran and then Syria.
His party members were mostly hiding with him in Iran,. During the Iran Iraq war a battalion of exIraqis (all dawa party members) all fought with the Iranian forces against Iraq.
If you think he was "forced into Irans arms" by the US you are delusional.

Describing it as a success, is like saying, "The operation was a success, though the patient later died."