In the Age of Twit here's ISIS: “I can report to the Muslims that Amir Al-Momineen Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Hafid hu'allah is alive and well.”
That pretty much let you know he's dead. Then ISIS released a tape of a generic sermon from al-Baghdadi -- no reference to the known dead from al-Qa'im, nothing in the week's headlines. He's gone.
Here's a pic of al-Qa'im in Iraq from a week ago. It depicts the first air strike that splattered that ISIS conclave:
The initial missile blast was followed up with a thumper. As you can see, the big blast took out quite a few blocks of residential housing in al-Qa'im. One can assume there was substantial collateral damage:
Surveillance on western Iraq features humans using binoculars. They are male members of Sunni tribes, mostly, not that religion matters all that much to the people fighting ISIS.
The fanatic bxllshxt out of ISIS is turning Iraqi and Syrian Muslims into what parallels our own "ashes and palms"/A&P Catholics. If you don't go to mosque, you don't get dragged into crazy.
Binoculars and maps make an old system for triangulating targets of opportunity. Takes five minutes to learn how to do it, to adjust for magnetic field vs. true north. It works.
Same time, the propeller driven Sarir drones can stay up pretty much all day or all night -- simple, slow machines improved incrementally over three decades -- so telescopic imagery is available for the attack wings. Support imagery goes to Al Asad and the Americans for almost anything the spotters can identify.
al-Baghdadi and the Perpetual War Party
al-Baghdadi ??? King of the Psychopaths? Fergeddaboudit. The Iraqis had their take on a bearded Chris Christie and he got his 15 minutes of fame.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. That's the scenario for the PWP and their followers. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, all the way !!
The Perpetual War Party, clearly, ought to be in full mourning. Doing "acceptance" full speed ahead. They put all their budget eggs in this loon's basket. Fighting ISIS was going to make everything comfortable for them, give them a well budgeted "two or three years to degrade ISIS."
The American Way: there's no problem that can't be colonized.
Wars can be lost. No problem. All that matters in the money.
The Coalition
But that's not how the Persians do war. They are fighting ISIS and assisting ISF, the Kurds, and their allies to fight ISIS like it was a replay of World War II plus drones, advanced comm gear, and what's called "gasoline bombs."
Contrast with the Perpetual War Party's creation of the Sunni/Baathist insurgency in Iraq in 2002/2003. Bush43's man on the ground, J. Paul Bremer, deliberately inflicted unemployability on 2,000,000 Sunni males. He also refused to do Buy-Back operations to remove Saddam's military weapons from the streets. Under Bremer it got to be legal for every single house in Iraq to have one full-auto assault rifle.
Then the PWP's generals on the American side invented the idiocy of driving around Iraq in Humvee jeeps for no reason other than getting hit with "IED" bombs 2003-2006. There was no mission. Nothing other than getting killed or injured. And then in 2007 "The Surge" from Gen. Petraeus advanced into NW Baghdad and Fallujhah, against which Al Qaeda in Iraqi retreated intact (losing some 2% of its fighting force.) Petraeus had no concept of surrounding an enemy before you attack. "Run away !!" saved AQI for another day.
Yeah, Gen. Petraeus wrote the "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" for the U.S. Army and Marines. That study work, unfortunately, only qualified him as a no-experience beginner at fighting a guerrilla war.
Yet to the Perpetual War Party, Gen. Petraeus is a hero. One of their greatest for preserving Al Qaeda in Iraq, from whence sprang ISIS.
Bremer wasn't even a beginner -- more a saboteur, if you rate him for war fighting. As a representative for the Perpetual War Party, he was a bloody genius.
Persians Ain't in the PWP
The Iranians came over to Iraq in June, 2014, with the initial tasks of stopping ISIS short of Samarra, Erbil, Kirkuk, and Baghdad. They have two battalions in country for 6,000 troops on the ground in combat units. Their guys speak Arabic, reportedly well enough to get by without problems.
"Surround-and-annihilate" is the tactical system, brought over from Syria. The battle at al-Qusayr in 2012 demonstrated the many weaknesses of ISIS and al-Nusra. The Jihadis got wiped out. That system has been replicated on large scales at the west side of Tikrit, Amerli, and Jurf al-Sakhar. Combined with use of heavy artillery during pursuit operations and the steady pounding of aerial attacks, we get estimates that ISIS is losing 2,000 men a month in Iraq.
And now with al-Baghdadi gone we're sure to see a power struggle. ISIS will fragment among the local ISIS commanders. The smart money predicts utter collapse for ISIS inside Iraq. All of which is the worst possible outcome for the Perpetual War Party.
PWP's teddy bear has been taken away from them.
As we go into the New Year the Coalition expands politically out of Samarra-Tikrit and Karballa-Jurf al-Sakhar and the Iraqi Security Force further matures as a fighting machine. The billions of dollars Saudi spent generating al-Nusra and then ISIS is washing down the drain -- boo-hoo for Bandar bin Sultan and the Saudi "intelligence" service.
The one big problem remaining, eliminating ISIS, goes to logistics. ISF and the Coalition since September/October are killing everything they can find. Moving up to retake Mosul and to secure the border crossings in force will take a plan that includes pacifying rear areas as well as getting control of supply routes into Syria.
Catastrophe !!
Perpetual War Party ??? Those guys? Their on-the-take Senators and Representatives ??? The lobbyists? What are they going to do to generate revenue?
How you gonna make Granny pee her knickers?
O.M.G. This is a major crisis !!