via Daily Mail.
Iraqi troops are losing control of one of the country's major oil refineries to the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, according to a U.S. official today.Read the entire story here.
The estimated 270 soldiers on the Baiji refinery are outnumbered and trapped as the battle raged on for a fourth day with up to 500 ISIS militants.
The terrorists plan to keep the soldiers isolated until the run out of food and ammunition, a U..S. source said.
An amphibious assault is the most difficult of military operations. An airborne assault comes a close second. Assaulting a fortified urban redoubt is also up there.
But relieving a beleaguered force that has been surrounded and cutoff has to rank high too.
Quite honestly it would take the audacity and skill of an Armored Brigade to get the job done and the Iraqis just don't have it. If previous results are predictors of future performance then these guys in the refinery are already dead....they just don't know it yet.
The bigger problem for western democracies, China and the world is that this will be the excuse that speculators will need to jack up oil prices to obscene levels.
Profits will be made but the world will be plunged into a recession.
ISIS has accomplished what AQ couldn't. They will have wrecked the world economy with one bold military operation. I hate the bastards but I have to admire the audacity of this plan...the execution and the skill that they've demonstrated on the battlefield.
I might have called them Haji in the past....but after this performance its Mr. Haji. Once again we learn an age old lesson. You don't have to like your enemy, but if they demonstrate skill you must respect them.
The refinery is in the Sunni north but the major oil production is in the Shia south. China, the largest producer, has pulled some of its staff but expects to continue operations as you can read here.
ReplyDeletePepe Escobar has some thoughts on ISIS:
ReplyDelete...It's all extremely fishy about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Abu Dua, born in Samarra in 1971, a Saddam "remnant" but - crucially - a former prisoner of the US government in Camp Bocca [Bucca] from 2005 to 2009, as well as a former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It's no secret in the Levant that ISIS Men in Black were trained in 2012 by US instructors at a secret base in Safawi, in the northern desert of that fiction disguised as a country, Jordan, so they would later fight as Western-approved "rebels" in Syria. . .
The whole piece is here.
Merely taking advantage of an incompetent leader, in Maliki and in an incompetent US State department in John Forbes Kerry and Hillary R. Clinton, an idealist socialist President who is following the liberal left wing plan to pull out of Islamic countries. This is what the Haji's did, no Mr. deserved when the win was basically handed to them with blessings.
ReplyDeleteAs went Saigon that April in 1975 here goes Iraq, the wrong war from the hated Bush which must be lost in revenge for him winning an election twice.
never looking farther than their navels and never thinking beyond their emotions these clowns never even thought for one minute nor cared what would happen to the economies of the world if they did it was to destroy evil oil production, to save the earth, for the children of the future.
Never ascribe to skill and experience what can be best ascribed to incompetence.
They saw the set up and simply took advantage of it.
These clowns may regret a world wide war caused by their recession, it makes cheap fixes easier to swallow, such as nuclear weapons in place of invasions and nation building.
Perhaps it's time to pull out the old tactical neutron weapons.
That way the oil fields will not burn.
Who doesn't love a parade?
ReplyDelete-- news report:
Iraq's Mahdi Army militia paraded through the streets of Baghdad's Sadr City district, heeding a call from Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to defend holy sites.
He who controls the spice....
ReplyDeletethat's why I don't think an attack on Iran would be as easy as some think it would be.
They could cut off their own oil production, start bombing pipelines and pumping stations in the Middle East, port facilities and attack any ship leaving or entering the Straight of Hormuz and send the world economy into a tail-spin.