{"id":58386,"date":"2015-02-23T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=58386"},"modified":"2015-02-22T16:42:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T21:42:55","slug":"nyt-battle-to-retake-iraqi-city-looms-as-test-of-obamas-isis-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=58386","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Battle to Retake Iraqi City Looms as Test of Obama\u2019s ISIS Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"last<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

So, the New York Times<\/a> wants to test Obama’s strategy against ISIS with that full disclosure of the plan announced to reporters last week by the pentagon. <\/p>\n

According to the article, the new Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, says he didn’t know anything about the sand-table discussion that the pentagon had with the media, but, ya know, for some reason, I’m finding that hard to believe;<\/p>\n

American officials took the unusual step on Thursday of announcing the timing of the battle and the number of Iraqi and Kurdish forces to be deployed. Openly discussing future military operations is normally off-limits to avoid aiding the enemy, but American officials said it was done this time to try to weaken the resolve of the Islamic State fighters and to spur Mosul\u2019s residents to rise up against the occupiers and help the Iraqi ground forces.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

A defense official said Friday that the White House and Ashton B. Carter, the new defense secretary, \u201chad no advance knowledge\u201d of the briefing.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

American officials said it was possible that announcing the battle for Mosul ahead of time could prompt many of the Islamic State fighters to slip away and make the retaking of the city less of a fight….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that hasn’t worked so well in the past, for either the Syrian government forces or for the Kurds at Kobani. These are people who think that blowing themselves up into a fine mist is a victory. They’ll gladly pour back into Mosul on the chance they might get to kill more Iraqis before they bite the big one.<\/p>\n

But, then this is the administration that sees the world the way they want it to be, rather than the way it is. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, the New York Times wants to test Obama’s strategy against ISIS with that full disclosure … NYT: Battle to Retake Iraqi City Looms as Test of Obama\u2019s ISIS Strategy<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}