Thread: Iraq Endgame

August 18, 2009
By George Friedman

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blog...q-endgame.aspx


Though the Iraq war is certainly not over, it has reached a crossroads. During the course of the war, about 40 countries sent troops to fight in what was called "Multi-National Force-Iraq." As of this summer, only one foreign country's fighting forces remain in Iraq — those of the United States. A name change in January 2010 will reflect the new reality, when the term "Multi-National Force-Iraq" will be changed to "United States Forces-Iraq." If there is an endgame in Iraq, we are now in it.

The plan that U.S. President Barack Obama inherited from former President George W. Bush called for coalition forces to help create a viable Iraqi national military and security force that would maintain the Baghdad government's authority and Iraq's territorial cohesion and integrity. In the meantime, the major factions in Iraq would devise a regime in which all factions would participate and be satisfied that their factional interests were protected. While this was going on, the United States would systematically reduce its presence in Iraq until around the summer of 2010, when the last U.S. forces would leave.

Two provisos qualified this plan. The first was that the plan depended on the reality on the ground for its timeline. The second was the possibility that some residual force would remain in Iraq to guarantee the agreements made between factions, until they matured and solidified into a self-sustaining regime. Aside from minor tinkering with the timeline, the Obama administration — guided by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom Bush appointed and Obama retained — has followed the Bush plan faithfully.

The moment of truth for the U.S. plan is now approaching. The United States still has substantial forces in Iraq. There is a coalition government in Baghdad dominated by Shia (a reasonable situation, since the Shia comprise the largest segment of the population of Iraq). Iraqi security forces are far from world-class, and will continue to struggle in asserting themselves in Iraq. As we move into the endgame, internal and external forces are re-examining power-sharing deals, with some trying to disrupt the entire process.

There are two foci for this disruption. The first concerns the Arab-Kurdish struggle over Kirkuk. The second concerns threats to Iran's national security.

The Kurdish Question

Fighting continues in the Kirkuk region, where the Arabs and Kurds have a major issue to battle over: oil. The Kirkuk region is one of two major oil-producing regions in Iraq (the other is in the Shiite-dominated south). Whoever controls Kirkuk is in a position to extract a substantial amount of wealth from the surrounding region's oil development. There are historical ethnic issues in play here, but the real issue is money. Iraqi central government laws on energy development remain unclear, precisely because there is no practical agreement on the degree to which the central government will control — and benefit — from oil development as opposed to the Kurdish Regional Government. Both Kurdish and Arab factions thus continue to jockey for control of the key city of Kirkuk.

Arab, particularly Sunni Arab, retention of control over Kirkuk opens the door for an expansion of Sunni Arab power into Iraqi Kurdistan. By contrast, Kurdish control of Kirkuk shuts down the Sunni threat to Iraqi Kurdish autonomy and cuts Sunni access to oil revenues from any route other than the Shiite-controlled central government. If the Sunnis get shut out of Kirkuk, they are on the road to marginalization by their bitter enemies — the Kurds and the Shia. Thus, from the Sunni point of view, the battle for Kirkuk is the battle for the Sunni place at the Iraqi table.

Turkey further complicates the situation in Iraq. Currently embedded in constitutional and political thinking in Iraq is the idea that the Kurds would not be independent, but could enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Couple autonomy with the financial benefits of heavy oil development and the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq becomes a powerful entity. Add to that the peshmerga, the Kurdish independent military forces that have had U.S. patronage since the 1990s, and an autonomous Kurdistan becomes a substantial regional force. And this is not something Turkey wants to see.

The broader Kurdish region is divided among four countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Kurds have a substantial presence in southeastern Turkey, where Ankara is engaged in a low-intensity war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), members of which have taken refuge in northern Iraq. Turkey's current government has adopted a much more nuanced approach in dealing with the Kurdish question. This has involved coupling the traditional military threats with guarantees of political and economic security to the Iraqi Kurds as long as the Iraqi Kurdish leadership abides by Turkish demands not to press the Kirkuk issue.

Still, whatever the constitutional and political arrangements between Iraqi Kurds and Iraq's central government, or between Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish government, the Iraqi Kurds have a nationalist imperative. The Turkish expectation is that over the long haul, a wealthy and powerful Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region could slip out of Baghdad's control and become a center of Kurdish nationalism. Put another way, no matter what the Iraqi Kurds say now about cooperating with Turkey regarding the PKK, over the long run, they still have an interest in underwriting a broader Kurdish nationalism that will strike directly at Turkish national interests.

The degree to which Sunni activity in northern Iraq is coordinated with Turkish intelligence is unknown to us. The Sunnis are quite capable of waging this battle on their own. But the Turks are not disinterested bystanders, and already support local Turkmen in the Kirkuk region to counter the Iraqi Kurds. The Turks want to see Kurdish economic power and military power limited, and as such they are inherently in favor of the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. The stronger Baghdad is, the weaker the Kurds will be.

Baghdad understands something critical: While the Kurds may be a significant fighting force in Iraq, they can't possibly stand up to the Turkish army. More broadly, Iraq as a whole can't stand up to the Turkish army. We are entering a period in which a significant strategic threat to Turkey from Iraq could potentially mean Turkish countermeasures. Iraqi memories of Turkish domination during the Ottoman Empire are not pleasant. Therefore, Iraq will be very careful not to cross any redline with the Turks.

This places the United States in a difficult position. Washington has supported the Kurds in Iraq ever since Operation Desert Storm. Through the last decade of the Saddam regime, U.S. special operations forces helped create a de facto autonomous region in Kurdistan. Washington and the Kurds have a long and bumpy history, now complicated by substantial private U.S. investment in Iraqi Kurdistan for the development of oil resources. Iraqi Kurdish and U.S. interests are strongly intertwined, and Washington would rather not see Iraqi Kurdistan swallowed up by arrangements in Baghdad that undermine current U.S. interests and past U.S. promises.

On the other hand, the U.S. relationship with Turkey is one of Washington's most important. Whether the question at hand is Iran, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan, Russia or Iraq, the Turks have a role. Given the status of U.S. power in the region, alienating Turkey is not an option. And the United States must remember that for Turkey, Kurdish power in Iraq and Turkey's desired role in developing Iraqi oil are issues of fundamental national importance.

Now left alone to play out this endgame, the United States must figure out a way to finesse the Kurdish issue. In one sense, it doesn't matter. Turkey has the power ultimately to redefine whatever institutional relationships the United States leaves behind in Iraq. But for Turkey, the sooner Washington hands over this responsibility, the better. The longer the Turks wait, the stronger the Kurds might become and the more destabilizing their actions could be to Turkey. Best of all, if Turkey can assert its influence now, which it has already begun to do, it doesn't have to be branded as the villain.

All Turkey needs to do is make sure that the United States doesn't intervene decisively against the Iraqi Sunnis in the battle over Kirkuk in honor of Washington's commitment to the Kurds.

In any case, the United States doesn't want to intervene against Iraq's Sunnis again. In protecting Sunni Arab interests, the Americans have already been sidestepping any measures to organize a census and follow through with a constitutional mandate to hold a referendum in Kirkuk. For the United States, a strong Sunni community is the necessary counterweight to the Iraqi Shia since, over the long haul, it is not clear how a Shiite-dominated government will relate to Iran.

The Shiite Question

The Shiite-dominated government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is no puppet of Iran, but at the same time, it is not Iran's enemy. As matters develop in Iraq, Iran remains the ultimate guarantor of Shiite interests. And Iranian support might not flow directly to the current Iraqi government, but to al-Maliki's opponents within the Shiite community who have closer ties to Tehran. It is not clear whether Iranian militant networks in Iraq have been broken, or are simply lying low. But it is clear that Iran still has levers in place with which it could destabilize the Shiite community or rivals of the Iraqi Shia if it so desired.

Therefore, the United States has a vested interest in building up the Iraqi Sunni community before it leaves. And from an economic point of view, that means giving the Sunnis access to oil revenue as well as a guarantee of control over that revenue after the United States leaves.

With the tempo of attacks picking up as U.S. forces draw down, Iraq's Sunni community is evidently not satisfied with the current security and political arrangements in Iraq. Attacks are on the upswing in the northern areas — where remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq continue to operate in Mosul — as well as in central Iraq in and around Baghdad. The foreign jihadists in Iraq hope such attacks will trigger a massive response from the Shiite community, thus plunging Iraq back into civil war. But the foreign jihadists would not be able to operate without some level of support from the local Sunni community. This broader community wants to make sure that the Shia and Americans don't forget what the Sunnis are capable of should their political, economic and security interests fall by the wayside as the Americans withdraw.

Neither the Iraqi Sunnis nor the Kurds really want the Americans to leave. Neither trust that the intentions or guarantees of the Shiite-dominated government. Iraq lacks a tradition of respect for government institutions and agreements; a piece of paper is just that. Instead, the Sunnis and Kurds see the United States as the only force that can guarantee their interests. Ironically, the United States is now seen as the only real honest broker in Iraq.

But the United States is an honest broker with severe conflicts of interest. Satisfying both Sunni and Kurdish interests is possible only under three conditions. The first is that Washington exercise a substantial degree of control over the Shiite administration of the country — and particularly over energy laws — for a long period of time. The second is that the United States give significant guarantees to Turkey that the Kurds will not extend their nationalist campaign to Turkey, even if they are permitted to extend it to Iran in a bid to destabilize the Iranian regime. The third is that success in the first two conditions not force Iran into a position where it sees its own national security at risk, and so responds by destabilizing Baghdad — and with it, the entire foundation of the national settlement in Iraq negotiated by the United States.

The American strategy in this matter has been primarily tactical. Wanting to leave, it has promised everyone everything. That is not a bad strategy in the short run, but at a certain point, everyone adds up the promises and realizes that they can't all be kept, either because they are contradictory or because there is no force to guarantee them. Boiled down, this leaves the United States with two strategic options.

First, the United States can leave a residual force of about 20,000 troops in Iraq to guarantee Sunni and Kurdish interests, to protect Turkish interests, etc. The price of pursuing this option is that it leaves Iran facing a nightmare scenario: e.g., the potential re-emergence of a powerful Iraq and the recurrence down the road of the age-old conflict between Persia and Mesopotamia — with the added possibility of a division of American troops supporting their foes. This would pose an existential threat to Iran, forcing Tehran to use covert means to destabilize Iraq that would take advantage of a minimal, widely dispersed U.S. force vulnerable to local violence.

Second, the United States could withdraw and allow Iraq to become a cockpit for competition among neighboring countries: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria — and ultimately major regional powers like Russia. While chaos in Iraq is not inherently inconsistent with U.S. interests, it is highly unpredictable, meaning the United States could be pulled back into Iraq at the least opportune time and place.

The first option is attractive, but its major weakness is the uncertainty created by Iran. With Iran in the picture, a residual force is as much a hostage as a guarantor of Sunni and Kurdish interests. With Iran out of the picture, the residual U.S. force could be smaller and would be more secure. Eliminate the Iran problem completely, and the picture for all players becomes safer and more secure. But eliminating Iran from the equation is not an option — Iran most assuredly gets a vote in this endgame.



Related Special Topic Pages

Iraq, Turkey and the Kurdish Position http://www.stratfor.com/themes/iraq_...rdish_position

Iraq, Iran and the Shia http://www.stratfor.com/themes/iraq_iran_and_shia

Turkey's Re-Emergence http://www.stratfor.com/themes/turkeys_political_regime

U.S. Military Involvement in Iraq http://www.stratfor.com/themes/u_s_involvement_iraq

Iraq's Oil http://www.stratfor.com/themes/iraqs_oil

Obama stands by Iraqi troop pullout
By Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press Writer
2 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama renewed his vow Tuesday to have all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by next August, while nudging Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to see that his parliament quickly passes a critical election law essential to a nationwide vote in January.

Without an election law, the vote could be delayed, snarling American plans to begin significantly scaling back U.S. troop presence after the national referendum.

"We have seen in the last several months a consolidation of a commitment to democratic politics inside of Iraq," Obama said. "We are very interested, both of us, in making sure that Iraq has an election law that is completed on time so that elections can take place on time in January."

Vice President Joe Biden also pressed al-Maliki on the election legislation when they met a day earlier.

As Obama promised to hold to U.S. withdrawal plans, which would see all troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011, Obama also told al-Maliki that he was glad the two leaders were now able to expand their talks beyond warfare to the "enormous opportunities for our countries to do business together."

The Iraqi leader was in the United States in conjunction with a conference designed to boost international business and investment in Iraq, where six years of war have devastated the national infrastructure, factories and all-important oil sector.

"We didn't just talk about military and security issues," the president said. "What is wonderful about this trip is that it represents a transition in our bilateral relationship so that we are moving now to issues beyond security and we are beginning to talk about economy, trade, commerce."

The U.S. negotiated a status of forces agreement in the latter months of the Bush administration which commits the United States to having all combat troops out of the country by the end of August and all other forces — counterinsurgency and support troops — gone by the end of 2011.

Beyond its significance for the U.S. pullout, the January election will be critical for the Iraqis with the potential for important political and power realignments. It could threaten al-Maliki's hold on power after the powerful political bloc of his Shiite Islam co-religionists excluded him from its coalition going into the vote.

It that estrangement holds, it would require that al-Maliki turn for political allies among Sunni Muslims, whose insurgency took the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007, and secular parties.

Al-Maliki also repeated his call for help from the Obama administration in the cancellation of all U.N. sanctions and resolutions adopted after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, saying Iraq is a democracy and has no weapons of mass destruction .

"This is important to move Iraq forward and to promote investment," the Iraqi leader said.

Obama nodded as he listened to a translation of al-Maliki's remarks, but neither leader took questions after their brief statements in the White House Oval Office.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091020/...bama_al_maliki

2/40

My fellow Marines continue to lead the way down in Helmand:

Before a battalion of U.S. Marines swooped into this dusty farming community along the Helmand River in early July, almost every stall in the bazaar had been padlocked, as had the school and the health clinic. Thousands of residents had fled. Government officials and municipal services were nonexistent. Taliban fighters swaggered about with impunity, setting up checkpoints and seeding the roads with bombs.

In the three months since the Marines arrived, the school has reopened, the district governor is on the job and the market is bustling. The insurgents have demonstrated far less resistance than U.S. commanders expected. Many of the residents who left are returning home, their possessions piled onto rickety trailers, and the Marines deem the central part of the town so secure that they routinely walk around without body armor and helmets.

"Nawa has returned from the dead," said the district administrator, Mohammed Khan.

It hasn't been easy, not at all, but from the point of view of COIN operations, this is straightforward. Emplace yourself among the population, secure the population, gain the trust of the population; then, you can begin the rebuilding. The displaced enemy will have to fight you to retake the ground, and will have work uphill against their own evil and improvident ways. Then you transition and move on.

Nonmilitary reconstruction efforts have also begun to gather momentum. The battalion's two civilian advisers are working with a team of U.S.-funded contractors to provide agricultural assistance to farmers, the Obama administration's top priority for Afghan reconstruction. The contractors plan to hand out shovels, gloves and even tractors over the next few months. They hope the goods will increase prosperity and jobs and reduce the number of disaffected young men who want to fight for the Taliban.

"Everyone makes promises to us -- the Americans, our government, even the Taliban," said Mohammed Ekhlas, a snowy-bearded elder of the Noorzai tribe. "If the Marines and the people in our government are true to their words, then there will be peace in Nawa. If not, there will be fighting again."

Note, please, that this is in the heart of Pashtunistan, the Taliban's front and back yards. The loss of one town and the inability to take it back is a significant set-back for them, and a victory for us. Our men on the ground are obviously willing to stick it out. Are we?


October 22, 2009 03:40 AM

http://op-for.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2398

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 10/22/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
http://www.thunderrun.us/2009/10/fro...-10222009.html

The third front in Afghanistan: the American public
By Jacob Bronsther And Shalev Roisman Thu Oct 22, 5:00 am ET

New York – Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. This is said to weigh heavily on President Obama as he considers Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request to focus on counterinsurgency and add 40,000 troops to the field.

Ideally, when leaders deliberate over a proposed foreign policy, they consider whether it furthers the national interest, not whether the public supports it at the moment. A paradox of US democracy is that people expect their officials to ignore them from time to time.

Leaders generally depend on two assumptions when making foreign-policy decisions: (1) that the public will support what emerges as good policy over the long term, and (2) that a foreign policy's effectiveness is divorced from domestic public support.

Under normal circumstances, the public could expect Mr. Obama to focus only on the question of whether the war's goals are worth its costs, ignoring the transitory polls.

The situation in Afghanistan, however, throws this model out the window. Today, the American public is the newest front in winning the conflict in Afghanistan.

Obama's consideration of public opinion shows that the administration recognizes that the public might not support even a successful long-term effort, and this lack of support might doom an otherwise effective mission.

What are some of the reasons for lagging support?

Because the war's goals are vague and abstract (e.g., building democracy and stability) and difficult to measure (e.g., making terrorism less likely), the public might deem any long-term mission obscure and wasteful – even an effective one.

It is also possible that the public is able to comprehend and measure the goals, but disagrees with the president that they are achievable or worthy enough. Or it may simply be that Americans are worn out – tired of sending soldiers to fight and tired of spending billions in faraway lands to liberate people who do not want us there entirely.

The nature of the war's goals makes it difficult to maintain public support – a point to be considered before entering into such conflicts in the future.

No matter the reasons for declining support, it seems a president should ignore public opinion to execute a necessary war – a term Obama applies to the Afghanistan conflict. In Afghanistan however, the viability of any counterinsurgency strategy depends upon continued support from the American public.

The US government must convince our existing and would-be Afghan allies that US commitment to developing a stable nation is resolute. Among the Iraqi Sunnis, Washington won allies not by being friendly, but by convincing them that US-Iraqi interests dovetailed and that the US was committed to and capable of winning.

Washington will see no such parallel in Afghanistan if Afghans believe US troops leaving early is likely. But if public opinion stays negative, Afghans may be justified in their skepticism.

American leaders can resist the public's wishes for only so long. If the public continues to oppose the effort in Afghanistan, the US may have to pull out early – even if the counterinsurgency is working.

This is crucial, because under a counterinsurgency strategy Afghanistan is either worth fighting until our goals are achieved, no matter how long it takes, or not worth fighting at all. A middle ground – where the US spends billions more, American soldiers and Afghan civilians continue to die, and we place yet more credibility on the line, only to leave early and have the Taliban return to power – would be worse than if the US pulled out in the first place.

For these reasons, when Obama analyzes McChrystal's plan he needs to consider not only if it would work had he five to 10 years of steady support, but also – despite the vague nature of some of the goals – whether it will deliver results tangible enough to convince a weary public to provide that very support.

Should he choose prolonged escalation, Obama has to walk a fine line between managing and raising expectations. While telling the truth, he needs to raise expectations so people believe the goals are worth the costs. But he needs to manage expectations so people won't lose faith if the strategy doesn't deliver immediately.

He needs to make the public aware of the absurdity of nation-building on two and four-year election-cycle time frames. It took America 12 years to replace the unworkable Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. Americans seem to forget that when we complain about the lack of progress in Iraq or Afghanistan.

After eight years of war, there are now three fronts in the conflict against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and associated regional movements, commonly called "AfPak."

The first is in Afghanistan. The second is in Pakistan. And the third is in America, where the public needs to maintain a high enough level of support for our commitment to the Afghan people to have credibility and sufficient longevity.

It is now the age of "AfPakAm."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091022...m/ybronsther22

Bombings target gover nment in Baghdad, 147 killed
ByRebecca Santana, Associated Press Writer
8 mins ago

BAGHDAD – A pair of suicide car bombings Sunday devastated the heart of Iraq's capital, killing at least 147 people in the country's deadliest attack in more than two years. The bombs targeted two government buildings and called into question Iraq's ability to protect its people as U.S. forces withdraw.

The bombings show that insurgents still have the ability to launch horrific attacks even as violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq. Many fear such attacks will only increase as Iraq prepares for crucial January elections.

The dead included 35 employees at the Ministry of Justice and at least 25 staff members of the Baghdad Provincial Council, said police and medical officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. At least 721 people were wounded, including three American contractors.

The street where the blasts occurred had just been reopened to vehicle traffic six months ago. Shortly after, blast walls were repositioned to allow traffic closer to the government buildings. Such changes were touted by Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a sign that safety was returning to the city.

The Iraqi leader walked among the mangled and blackened cars, which lay in front of blast walls that had been decorated with peaceful street scenes of Iraq. At the Justice Ministry, windows and walls on both sides of the street were blown away, and blood pooled with water from burst pipes.

Al-Maliki has staked his political reputation and re-election bid on his ability to bring peace to the country and pledged to punish those responsible, who he said wanted to "spread chaos in the country, undermine the political process and prevent the holding of parliamentary elections." But the Sunday attacks seemed designed to paint the Iraqi leader as incapable of providing security to the beleaguered city, undermining much of his political support.

The attacks occurred just hours before Iraq's top leadership was scheduled to meet with heads of political parties in order to reach a compromise on election guidelines needed to hold the January vote.

President Barack Obama, who earlier this week reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to withdrawing its troops from the country, called al-Maliki to offer his condolences.

"These bombings serve no purpose other than the murder of innocent men, women and children, and they only reveal the hateful and destructive agenda of those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that they deserve," Obama said.

The fact that the vehicles were able to get into an area home to numerous government institutions — just hundreds of yards from the heavily fortified Green Zone where the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office are located — sparked demands that those in charge of the city's security be held accountable.

"Those responsible for security and intelligence should be checked and interrogated," said Sunni Iraqi lawmaker Wathab Shakir. "Why should innocent people be killed?"

The initial investigation suggested the vehicles, each loaded down with more than 1,500 pounds of explosives, might have passed through some security checkpoints before hitting their destination, said Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi, a spokesman for the city's operations command center.

There have been no claims of responsibility so far, but massive car bombs have been the hallmark of the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow the country's Shiite-dominated government. Iraq has accused members of the outlawed Baath Party living in neighboring Syria of being behind another series of deadly bombings in August that also targeted government buildings. Al-Maliki blamed the attacks on Baathist and Al-Qaida.

Black smoke billowed from the frantic scene, as emergency service vehicles sped to the area. Many of the wounded were loaded into the back of trucks and into civilian cars because there were too many for ambulances to carry.

"The walls collapsed and we had to run out," said Yasmeen Afdhal, 24, an employee of the Baghdad provincial administration, which runs the city. "There are many wounded, and I saw them being taken away. They were pulling victims out of the rubble, and rushing them to ambulances."

The provincial council is the city government, which oversees a broad range of city services such as garbage collection, electricity, distribution of fuel for generators and school maintenance.

U.S. troops were also called in at the request of the Iraqi government to help secure the area, deal with any explosive material and offer forensics personnel to assist in the investigation, said a military spokesman, Maj. Dave Shoupe.

The coordinated bombings were the deadliest since a series of massive truck bombs in northern Iraq killed nearly 500 villagers from the minority Yazidi sect in August 2007. In Baghdad itself, it was the worst attack since a series of suicide bombings against Shiite neighborhoods in April 2007 killed 183.

Three American security contractors working for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad were injured in the blasts, said Philip Frayne, an embassy spokesman. Frayne could not immediately provide details about who the contractors were escorting, which company they worked for or the nature of their injuries.

The explosions were just a few hundred yards from Iraq's Foreign Ministry, which is still rebuilding after massive bombings there in August. The bombings were a devastating blow for a country that has seen a dramatic drop in violence since the height of the sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007.

On the streets of Baghdad, many Iraqis were angry at what they described as a lapse in security and wary about what will happen when U.S. forces leave.

"Everyday, we hear statements from different government officials that our forces are ready to control the situation on the ground when the U.S. forces withdraw," Zahid Hussain Najim said. "But day after day it has been found that these officials are either liars or have no idea about what's going on outside their offices."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_iraq

Uh Oh, Looks Like the Weapons America Air Dropped to Fight ISIS Fell Into the Wrong Hands
By Justen Charters - 14 hours ago

On Tuesday, an ISIS affiliated YouTube account posted a chilling video showing how U.S. weapons meant for Kurdish forces had fallen into terrorist hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOuPX6z50EM



In the video, the terrorist shows a large bundle of boxes with a massive parachute attached to them. Then, he walks to some smaller crates and reveals hand grenades and ammunition for RPGs.

IJReview spoke with former Delta Force Operator and Green Beret Dale Comstock about the incident. He said: http://www.dalecomstock.com/

This can be one of three things:

One can be poor intelligence for where the drop zone is. It’s a possibility that the Kurds lost ground to ISIS. Or it was a blind drop and there weren’t any signals.

We could provide easy assistance, if we had Americans on the ground with two-way communication with the aircraft. This is what Air Force Combat Controllers do. This is what infantry does. This is what special forces does. This was easily preventable.

When White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes was questioned about ISIS intercepting U.S. aid, he said, http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...our-hands.html

“We feel very confident that, when we air drop support as we did into Kobani… we’ve been able to hit the target in terms of reaching the people we want to reach.”

Unfortunately, as evidenced by this latest ISIS video, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/10/1906...l-wrong-hands/