{"id":59879,"date":"2015-05-18T08:26:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T12:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=59879"},"modified":"2015-05-18T08:04:21","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T12:04:21","slug":"that-raid-on-abu-sayyaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=59879","title":{"rendered":"That raid on Abu Sayyaf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may never see this again, I know I&#8217;m shocked that it even happened. I&#8217;ve known Jim Hanson for nearly a decade and I&#8217;ve never seen him awake at 6:30 in the morning;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4xxWGAZJATw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He does make some good points, though, despite the early hour. While we&#8217;re all glad that Abu Sayyaf has been properly ventilated, that all of the raiders came back unharmed, what is the deeper meaning of this whole thing, in regards to the overarching strategy? By the way, what is the overarching strategy? The news of this success is overshadowed by the news that <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/suicide-car-bombs-kill-10-iraqi-troops-besieged-121316994.html;_ylt=AwrC1zHXpFlVYhIAugvQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--\">Ramadi fell to ISIS<\/a> this weekend in Iraq.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The contested city of Ramadi fell to the Islamic State group on Sunday, as Iraqi forces abandoned their weapons and armored vehicles to flee the provincial capital in a major loss despite intensified U.S.-led airstrikes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While this raid was a tactical success, the strategy seems to be failing &#8211; the Iraqis, who US troops are there to train and make confident threw down their weapons an ran away. Our air forces being the Iraqi air force isn&#8217;t helping, apparently. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sunday&#8217;s retreat recalled the collapse of Iraqi security forces last summer in the face of the Islamic State group&#8217;s blitz into Iraq that saw it capture a third of the country, where it has declared a caliphate, or Islamic State. It also calls into question the Obama administration&#8217;s hopes of relying solely on airstrikes to support the Iraqi forces in expelling the extremists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, well, this administration, a few months ago, was telling us how well the counter-insurgency in Yemen was working &#8211; whoops. It&#8217;s almost as if this administration has the reverse Midas touch.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-middle-east-32777138\">BBC<\/a> reports that 3,000 Iran-backed Shia troops are moving towards Ramadi to liberate the city. John Kerry has confidence in them, so they have that going for them;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The US has said it is confident the capture of Ramadi can be reversed.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said: &#8220;I am convinced that as the forces are redeployed and as the days flow in the weeks ahead, that&#8217;s going to change.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The reverse-Midas touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may never see this again, I know I&#8217;m shocked that it even happened. I&#8217;ve known &hellip; <a title=\"That raid on Abu Sayyaf\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=59879\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">That raid on Abu Sayyaf<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59879","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\/59879","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=59879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}