Ramadi

[Anomalocaris]

This is what they recruited:

http://iraqdinar.us/unemployment-rate-in-iraq/

Minister of Labor: The unemployment rate in Iraq exceeded the 46%

You know that saying on the recruiting posters:  "It's not just a job its an adventure?"  In Iraq, it's just a job..... and one that no one is going to die to keep.

One thing you got to give saddam, when saddam was in charge, even those very men would not have dared to desert, and every last jihadist of the islamic state would been crucified along the road from ramadi to Baghdad.

[bennyboy]

If you can't win with American arms, then you just don't care enough.

[Anomalocaris]

If you can't win with American arms, then you just don't care enough.

Let's not get carried away with self indulgent exaltation in the supposed omnipotence of American armaments.

[Minimalist]

If you can't win with American arms, then you just don't care enough.

Is that ISIS' motto?

[vorlon13]

All this intramural Islamic strife has got to be a Zionist plot.

[Anomalocaris]

If you can't win with American arms, then you just don't care enough.

Is that ISIS' motto?

I don't see evidence of ISIS making any significant use of American arms they have captured.   Where they might have attempted to use more sophisticated arms, they seem to prefer soviet vintage arms they have captured from the Syrians.

Given how relatively well the Russian armed Syrian forces have done compared to how poorly american armed Iraqi forces, I won't blame the ISIS if they think American arms are somehow tainted.

Also, such professional military advice Isis has been able to receive have largely come from dispossessed and disenfranchised former soldiers and officers of saddam' army, and they are definitely more familiar and comfortable with Russian arms.

[CapnAwesome]

Iraq is a fake bullshit country that was made up by the British post WWI. The people there associate as Shia, Sunni or Kurds and nobody is willing to fight for Iraq.

How many countries didn't start out by some foreign or domestic despot faked it by hold disparate elements together by force, until the fake became to long established by custom that it seem more real than real and everyone though the country is so natural it was handed down in its current format by some deity?

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Quite a few. It's irrelevant anyway as international law says that people are allowed to split and have their own country. The kurds should have their own country. Iraqis have nothing in common with one another other than occupying a border that most of them reject. There is no good reason to keep it together as a country.

[Minimalist]

I don't think it is that uncommon,  Chuck.

[Anomalocaris]

International law is actually totally irrelevant where they conflict with the interests of powers with dominating influence upon event. International law is only of any interest at all when it directly supports the interests of at least some of the major, internationally influential, powers. The coherence of Iraq is vital to the immediate interests of all major powers with dominating influence, Saudi Arabia, gulf sheikhdoms, turkey, Israel, and the U.S. In this situation the rights under international law of those who would benefit from breaking up Iraq is totally irrelevant.

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I don't think it is that uncommon,  Chuck.

You notice he is armed with an ak-47, not some derivative of m-16.  As to the Humvee, it is being used much like the Toyota Hilux pickup, which is the standard ISIS runabout.

[ignoramus]

That's a Middle Eastern copy! It's a HUMMUS H1