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| Iraq |
| Top Iraqi generals retired after huge loss to IS militants |
| 2014-09-24 |
| [ARABNEWS] Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi retired two senior generals on Tuesday as part of an overhaul of the country's armed forces, which collapsed this summer in the face of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... Lion of Islams. The two commanders had been close allies of Abadi's predecessor, Nuri Al-Maliki, a Shi'ite widely blamed for sectarian rule. Abadi's decision to remove the two generals followed an Islamic State assault on an Iraqi army base in Saqlawiya in western Anbar province on the weekend. A senior Iraqi security official said the attack left 400 to 600 soldiers dead or captured. Iraqi soldiers described on Monday how Islamic State fighters inflicted heavy losses in a chaotic raid on a military base just an hour's drive from Baghdad, highlighting the fighters' ability to attack high-profile targets despite US air strikes. A statement from Al-Abadi's office said he had issued orders to detain two commanders for "negligence" in the incidents 50 km west of Baghdad, while some troops who escaped accused the military leadership of failing to help them during the siege. Their raid at Saqlawiya is the latest since the northern city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... fell to Islamic State in June to exposes the Iraqi military's shortcomings. It followed a massacre of an army detachment at Camp Speicher in the same month, in which military recruits were led off the base unarmed and murdered in their hundreds. One officer who survived the raid said that of an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Saqlawiya, only about 200 had managed to flee. "This failure is not the fault of the soldiers ... the mistake was that of the military leadership, they failed," said the officer, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. The officer said that Islamic State gunnies had gained control of Sijir, near Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperityor a really nice place to raise your kids... a week ago, allowing them to surround the Saqlawiya base. "We were without ammunition and without food. Every time we contacted military commanders, they promised to send helicopters to air drop reinforcements but nothing happened," said the officer, who fled to another base close to Fallujah on Sunday. "We ... were drinking salty well water and eating canned tomato paste." The government statement quoted the front man of the armed forces general command as saying that orders had been issued four days ago for supplies and military reinforcements to be sent to Saqlawiya and Sijir, in addition to intensifying overflights. On Wednesday, the gunnies sent a Humvee vehicle rigged with explosives into the camp. Guards mistakenly assumed that an army driver was at the wheel. "When it went kaboom!, it caused a lot of confusion. Islamic State exploited that and entered the camp. Now most of regiment headquarters within the base are under the control of Islamic State," said the officer, adding that one, small army unit remained besieged in the camp. About 200 soldiers managed to escape the base on Sunday after battling with the holy warriors in the area which soldiers call the "kilometer of death." "On the road, the images were tragic. Burnt Humvees and burnt corpses of soldiers are still on the streets," said the officer who retreated to the nearby Camp Tareq. One soldier, identified as a Saqlawiya camp survivor, recounted his testimony in a video that was shown on Iraqi state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe? and widely circulated online. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Luckily for them they were NOT in Pudgy-land = NOKOR. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2014-09-24 22:42 |