(12-12-2016, 01:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: ...I dread Trump taking over the war on IS....
Trump coming onboard is the cause of the biggest tactical (but not the biggest strategic) mistake made so far by the Iraqis in their current effort to retake Mosul - the IA 9th's impatient capture of al-Salam hospital (just a click from the 4th Bridge over the Tigres into Mosul's Right Bank) and subsequent ambush entrampment; the IA's losses are much more than the offically reported and a big setback. They had been settling in with the war of attrition on the Left Bank particularly after the Coalition took out the final bridge that sets an upper limit to VBIEDs on the Left Bank. But, Trump's election got them anxious and wanting to get the offensive completely over or at least have E. Mosul in hand and the Right Bank surrounded and isolated. The latter objective is still feasible but we'll have to wait and see.
On a better note, the Iraqis seemed to have gotton some control over the Al-Hashd (Iranian-connected Shia milita) in the Ninevih province west of Mosul to open back up the "escape hatch" for IS douchbags to flee Mosul and escape to Syria. Letting Iran convince them to choke off that escape hatch was the biggest Iraqi strategic mistake so far. If you're reading that part of the underreported news, you'll see that reopening the escape hatch has resulted in the Syrian pro-govt and Russians paying a big price (Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor) for their Alleppo war crimes. We'll see if it has the downside of also eventually impacting Turkey and the SLA in the al-Bab offensive or the Kurds' al Raqqa effort - ME is always a risk and a fools poker game.
The Iraqis still have a good chance of expelling IS, as a calliphate, from their lands in 3-6 months. Let's see if Trump takes credit for it. More importantly, let's see how he sucks up to Putin and al-Assad as they continue to commit war crimes. And once the SLA comes in direct contact with the Syrian Army, Trump's gonna have to decide between his lover Putin and Erdogan at some point, and both play pretty rough -
Turkey threatening Trump’s business to sway policy – report
Hardly reported at all was just a couple weeks ago WW3 almost got started when supposedly Syrian jets bombed and killed a lot of Turkey troops. Turkey rushed in their most sophisticated SAMs and have now constant fighter jet patrols over their troops - something a tad more necessary for Syrian jets meaning it may have been, or could become, Russian jets attacking a NATO ally. Obama and Putin did talk and both calmed the situation down before it was even generally noticed by anybody. Next time, imagine Trump tweeting about it at 3am?