US officials are starting to doubt that Iraq's prime minister can defeat ISIS

[SocalDinar]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is publicly voicing confidence in Iraq’s prime minister in the fight against surging Islamic State militants, but privately some U.S. officials question whether he is too weak to bridge the sectarian divide.

Washington is still betting on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who stands at the center of President Barack Obama's strategy to roll back the latest conquests of Islamic State while keeping the United States from being pulled deeper into a conflict U.S. combat troops left in 2011.

But even if Abadi’s forces manage to retake the provincial capital of Ramadi after its capture last weekend by Islamic State, his reliance on Iran-backed Shi'ite militias could strengthen his political rivals in Baghdad and signify U.S. acquiescence to greater Iranian influence in Iraq.

That underscores how few options Washington has to beat back Islamic State without overhauling a policy that relies heavily on air strikes or committing large forces of American ground troops, which Obama has ruled out.

As the jihadists shore up their positions, Abadi, a moderate Shi'ite leader, faces an important test over whether he can draw Sunni Arabs away from Islamic State, a challenge he has struggled to meet despite vows of a more inclusive governance. He must also show the ability to control powerful Shi'ite militias tainted by earlier abuses that have stoked Sunni anger toward his government.

"Abadi may be more vulnerable than ever,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And if he’s on the hot seat, we’re being tested too.”

Islamic State, meanwhile, appears to have the momentum, with the Sunni radicals on Thursday seizing the central Syrian city of Palmyra, one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world, and overrunning Iraqi government defenses east of Ramadi.

The U.S. response has been limited, including air strikes, stepped-up weapons deliveries and a push for expanded training and equipping of moderate Sunnis, aimed at building up Iraqi forces to retake Ramadi.

But just as notable is what Washington has not done and may not be prepared to do. There has been no announcement, for instance, of increasing troop levels beyond the 3,000 deployed to Iraq in train-and-assist roles in recent months.

Also on hold for now is the idea of positioning U.S. special forces or military advisers closer to the fighting, which would put them at risk but provide more effective forward spotters for targeting U.S. air strikes. A senior U.S. State Department official said no such recommendation had yet been made by the Pentagon.

 

  FETED IN WASHINGTON

The mood in Washington has been tempered since a White House visit last month when Abadi was hailed by Obama as a “strong partner” who would create the multi-sectarian Iraqi government needed to beat back the Islamic State onslaught.

U.S. officials have made clear that Washington is not ready to seek a replacement for Abadi, who took over from a polarizing figure, Nuri al-Maliki, as prime minister in late 2014 with strong backing from Washington.

Obama, in an interview with The Atlantic magazine published on Thursday, described Abadi as “sincere and committed to an inclusive Iraqi state” and pledged to provide his government with “all assistance that they need.” But he added, “We can’t do it for them.”

One U.S. official said there had been longstanding concerns in Washington about Abadi’s ability to navigate Iraq’s sectarian politics, especially with fellow Shi’ite politicians such as Maliki believed to be actively seeking to undermine him. Recent events had raised misgivings about him, the official added.

“That fear still exists,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

ONLY HORSE TO BACK'

One reason Washington is sticking with him is that it sees no viable alternative to lead the fractured country, current and former U.S. officials said.

“I expect administration thinking at this stage is still that he is the only horse to back,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA specialist on the Middle East and now a professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

The biggest test of U.S. patience will be whether Iraqi forces and Shi'ite militias, under Abadi's command, can retake Ramadi, capital of Iraq's biggest province in the Sunni heartland, without the fighting spiraling into a sectarian bloodbath by hardline militias accused of committing atrocities in an earlier campaign to reclaim Tikrit.

Such violence would fuel Sunni resentment against the Shi’ite-dominated government in Baghdad and suggest Abadi was powerless to rein in the militias, some of which have strong financial backing from Iran.

Shi’ite militias have sent thousands of fighters to join government forces outside Ramadi.

The United States has said it will support the counter-offensive but that Shi’ite irregular forces must be under direct Iraqi military command and Sunni fighters must also be included.

Despite Abadi’s efforts to arm and train local Sunni tribesmen and integrate them into Iraq’s security forces, little progress has been made, U.S. officials acknowledge, blaming this mostly on Shi’ite hardliners.

The risk now is that even if Ramadi is retaken, Abadi will only be weakened while Iran will be seen, at least among Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, as having come to Baghdad’s aid. The timing is critical: many Sunni Arabs fear Iranian influence over Iraq will only grow if Washington clinches an Iran nuclear deal, possibly further damaging Abadi's chances of bridging the sectarian gap between Sunnis and Shi'ite Muslims.

“He may survive as prime minister but his power will be limited and his aims of inclusiveness frustrated,” Dennis Ross, Obama’s former top Middle East adviser, said of Abadi. But he added, “Iran probably prefers a weak prime minister that leaves the Islamic Republic with all the leverage.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-despite-obama-endorsement-us-concerns-grow-over-iraqi-premier-2015-5

[Officiallytook]

That's only kuz they wanna help...to create more money and need...blah blah blah...just hurry up international assistance and rid Isis from the streets of Iraq...

[olivesman]

And I doubt that US officials will ever defeat "drug lords" and "mob bosses" here in the USA. It is NOT near as relevant as the media want you to believe.

Edited May 22, 2015 by olivesman

[Soledad]

O's incompetence grants him the right to blame everybody else and not accept responsibility, his weakness is not only destroying the USA, but our allies! ! !

[TrinityeXchange]

O's incompetence grants him the right to blame everybody else and not accept responsibility, his weakness is not only destroying the USA, but our allies! ! !

help me understand.  what responsibility is he not accepting in regards to ISIS and Iraq?  specifically?

[Soledad]

help me understand.  what responsibility is he not accepting in regards to ISIS and Iraq?  specifically?

O never had an strategic offense plan, we have been wasting time and money entertaining the ISIS; wish we have Ronald Reagan in command, the story will be very different!

[k98nights]

...wish we had Ronald Reagan in command, the story will be very different!

 

 

I HEAR THAT!!

[yota691]

US hawks criticize Obama for 'fundamentally flawed' Iraq strategy

After the fall of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria to Isis militants, critics say president’s strategy is no longer viable and US should step in

 

 

 

 Displaced Iraqis from Ramadi cross the Bzebiz bridge fleeing fighting. Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP

Spencer Ackerman in New York

 

 

 

Thursday 21 May 2015 13.05 EDT

 

Last modified on Thursday 21 May 201513.57 EDT

 

• • Iraq hawks began to argue for re-Americanizing the war against the Islamic State on Thursday in response to nearly a week of audacious territorial gains in Iraq and Syria.

Key architects of the 2007-8 troop surge called Obama’s strategy in the nine-month-old war no longer viable now that Isis has seized Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. They stopped just short of urging the one step most allergic to the American president: returning US combat troops to the battlefield where nearly 4,500 of them died during the 2003-2011 occupation.

Calling Isis an “unfathomable evil” during a Thursday morning Senate hearing, Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute urged “a total of 15 to 20,000 US troops in Iraq in order to provide the necessary enablers, advisers and so forth. Anything less than that is simply unserious.”

Jack Keane, the former army vice-chief of staff and mentor to General David Petraeus, excoriated the Obama administration for a “fundamentally flawed” strategy that effectively cedes Syria to Isis. He said it was time to begin “serious planning” for the reintroduction of US combat brigades, something Obama has consistently ruled out since he began the anti-Isis war last summer.

But Keane stopped short of urging large-scale American involvement. Instead, US war planners should allow American forces to spot for air strikes, supplement the air war with attack helicopters and C-130 logistics transport planes, and special-operations strike teams should “routinely” raid Isis positions in Iraq and Syria.

Early indications after the fall of Ramadi and now the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra were that Obama is not considering such a sweeping recalibration.

“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” the president told the Atlantic magazine in an interview conducted a day before Palmyra fell and published a day after. “There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time.”

 

 

The president put the onus on Iraqis to find a solution.

“And one lesson that I think is important to draw from what happened [after the 2003 invasion] is that if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them.”

General Martin Dempsey, the most senior US military officer and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, portrayed the rout of Iraqi soldiers and police in Ramadi as a calculated retreat.

Iraqi security forces “were not driven out of Ramadi; they drove out of Ramadi,” Dempsey told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

US officials indicated that they are considering another acceleration of arms and training to Sunni tribesmen attempting to recapture Ramadi. No decision has been reached on sending US special operations forces into the city, according to a top State Department official briefing reporters on Wednesday, nor have military officials recommended using US forces on the ground to call in airstrikes.

The most serious adjustment to US strategy, US diplomats and military officials indicated, is the abandonment of a months-long plan that placed recapturing Mosul as the defining military objective of 2015 – a coming battle for Iraq’s second city that General Lloyd Austin, the top US commander in the Middle East, has long called potentially “decisive”.

But now that Isis has captured the capital of Anbar province, “you got to do Anbar to isolate Mosul,” the State Department official said.

“Anyone who knows Anbar province from back when we were there, it’s going to be really hard.”

Barely a month before the fall of Ramadi, the Pentagon attempted to quantify its successes in Iraq. A map prepared by senior officials for public consumption boasted that Isis was losing its hold on territory it gained since last year, attributing the alleged brittleness of the group to US-backed Iraqi forces.

Iraqi troops, aided by US warplanes, were “forcing them out of areas”, interim Pentagon spokesman Col Steve Warren said on 13 April.

US officials nevertheless conceded that Isis had consolidated and even expanded its Syrian territory. Territorial gains in Iraq against Isis that drove the Pentagon to boast concentrated around Kurdish areas, where peshmerga irregulars have fought Isis for a year, and the belts around and south of Baghdad.

On the Pentagon’s map, however, Isis-held snaked from Syria’s Deir az-Zour southeast through the al-Qaim border crossing and deep into Anbar Province. In its midst, the Pentagon placed a burnt-orange dot on Ramadi to dub it a “contested city”.

Dempsey signaled disinterest in the city in a 16 April briefing while the assault on Ramadi intensified: “The city itself is not symbolic in any way, it’s not been declared part of the caliphate on one hand or central to the future of Iraq … I’d much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall. We’ve got to get it back.”

Further adjustments to US strategy may follow changes to US personnel. Dempsey is soon to retire, to be replaced by the Marine general Joseph Dunford. Dunford, the former commander of US troops in Afghanistan, persuaded Obama to slow his withdrawal of US troops from America’s longest war, to the chagrin of many of Obama’s supporters. His elevation to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has been perceived by many in defense circles as a signal of course correction against Isis.

Much of the current political debate over Iraq has been characterized by recrimination. The Republican presidential candidates have rushed over each other to swear they would not have invaded Iraq in 2003, capitalizing on Jeb Bush’s vacillation and eventual reversal on the subject. Those Republicans have blamed Obama for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, while Obama aides have shot back that the fundamental flaw of the war was the initial invasion.

Keane said the US needed to get over its “political psychosis on Iraq” and escalate the war. He faulted Obama for downplaying the rising fortunes of Isis out of a desire to avoid a deeper American commitment, considering administration pronouncements reminiscent of the unrealities of the Rumsfeld Pentagon – a critique that is gaining purchase within defense observers on either side of the Isis debate.

There is “a disturbing and frightening echo of the summer of 2006,” Keane said, when “these officials looked at you and defended that strategy and told you that overall the strategy was succeeding.”

[Boozer]

The U S officials Cant even RUN there own Country

[Nelg]

Obama did and does have a strategy, but it is not to defeat ISIS. 

Obama does have a plan and it is to "lead from behind," which should be voted to receive the "Stupid Statement of the Past 6 Years" award.  

The Obama Administration does have a strategy, the containment strategy.  It is NOT TO WIN, NOT TO DEFEAT ISIS, BUT TO JUST MAKE SURE THEY ARE CONTAINED.  

 

If we are going to fight a war, we better be in it to win!!!  If not, then we will be dragging our tails between our legs (AGAIN) as we march proudly back home.  

WAKE UP OBAMA!!

[SocalDinar]

O never had an strategic offense plan, we have been wasting time and money entertaining the ISIS; wish we have Ronald Reagan in command, the story will be very different!

Totally!

I HEAR THAT!!

Loud and clear.  I miss President Reagan

[gymrat76541]

I say they should invite Russia to send in troops!

They will wipe ISIS off the map & bring stability to the country.

Who cares if America loses it's influence in Iraq. Washington is only willing to commit limited resources anyways!

 

Make my dinar worth real money or rubles if need be!

[sandfly]

YEP BOOZER

[Butifldrm]

Obama Under Pressure to Send U.S. Target Spotters to Iraqi Front

4:00 AM CDT 

May 22, 2015

Islamic State’s seizure of Ramadi has revived a debate in the Obama administration about whether to send a limited number of U.S. military specialists to Iraqi battlefields to target airstrikes on the extremists.

The group’s advances in the capital of Anbar province have called attention to the limits of using U.S. airpower to support Iraqi government and Kurdish forces and local militias.

Conducting precision airstrikes that avoid civilian casualties is more difficult without spotters using laser designators and other tools to guide them, particularly in and around cities, said a State Department official who spoke under ground rules requiring anonymity.

 

A U.S. airstrike in November against a different extremist group in Syria killed two children and wounded two adults, the Defense Department reported Thursday.

President Barack Obama and some of his advisers have opposed sending U.S. forces back into combat zones in Iraq, arguing that they should remain confined to training operations away from the fighting.

While the issue of spotters has been raised before, no recommendation to deploy the specialists known as joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, has reached the president, according to the official.

Obama described the fall of Ramadi as a “tactical setback,” and White House officials downplayed the prospect that he might order any major policy shift in its aftermath.

“Those who are calling on a change in strategy, I would encourage them to be specific,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “And I don’t think that they will find either a lot of support on the part of the American people for a large-scale deployment of military resources to essentially re-invade Iraq or invade Syria.”

Limited Numbers

A decision to send air controllers wouldn’t necessarily clash with his comment because their numbers would be small, and several military authorities are saying that’s an option the president should consider.

However, a second U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss the debate, said one concern is that extremists could kill or capture U.S. personnel deployed in forward areas in the constantly shifting battle.

On Capitol Hill Thursday, retired General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, said deploying JTACs, also called forward air controllers, could quickly shift the balance against Islamic State by making its fighters more vulnerable to U.S. and coalition air attacks.

The war in Iraq is largely close-combat urban warfare that requires people on the ground to target precision-guided bombs from airplanes, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing on Iraq policy.

Coming Home Full

“Seventy-five percent of the sorties we are currently running with our attack aircraft come back without dropping bombs, mostly because they cannot acquire the target or cannot properly identify the target,” he said. “Forward air controllers fix that problem.”

Keane was an early advocate for the U.S. troop surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, and he told the committee, led by Republican John McCain of Arizona, that Obama should increase U.S. involvement to turn back Islamic State.

The current strategy won’t defeat Islamic State, he said. “We are not only failing, we are in fact losing this war,” he said.

Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said in a commentary Thursday that “modern forward air control is critical” along with measures to improve intelligence and training using forward-deployed special forces or Army Rangers.

Greater Flexibility

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates also advocated sending forward air controllers, speaking last Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“Sending large numbers of U.S. ground troops back into Iraq would be a serious mistake,” he said. “But I do believe that the rules of engagement for our troops need to be more flexible. We need to have more deeply embedded trainers with the Iraqi, Kurdish, the Iraqi security forces, the Sunni tribes with the Kurds in the north. I think we need to have forward air controllers and spotters. We need to have special forces in there.”

During the battle in October against Islamic State fighters holding the Syrian city of Kobani, Kurdish forces guided the coalition airstrikes that helped rout the extremists. The U.S. has been training some Iraqis as observers to help with targeting, according to the State Department official.

Training Iraqis

The Iraqis are being trained to call in airstrikes on a general location, not as full-fledged JTACs, according to a Pentagon spokesman, Army Colonel Steve Warren.

One risk is that Iraqis may misidentify a target, resulting in civilian casualties. The U.S. has been cautious in its strikes, most often targeting militants’ vehicles, tanks, fighting positions, makeshift oil refineries and buildings.

U.S. personnel are more highly trained, enabling targeting that is faster and more precise. The latter would be particularly important on confused battlefields where Iraqi military units are supplemented by Iraqi Shiite militias, some closely tied to Iran.

If there are pro-government units outside the formal chain of command, it can be impossible to tell who’s who from the air, said the State Department official. The U.S. doesn’t want a situation in which U.S. warplanes mistakenly strike Shiite militia fighters, the official said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-22/obama-under-pressure-to-send-u-s-target-spotters-to-iraqi-front