http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/plan-to-liberate-mosul-from-isis-already-a-dysfunctional-mess/

March 2, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 16 Comments

I’m sensing military officials pushing back against unrealistic expectations and mission orders that are simply impossible.

The U.S. military is considering a months-long campaign of airstrikes to squeeze Islamic State fighters in Mosul before inserting Iraqi ground forces to retake the city, officials said Friday.
The on-the-ground fight to retake Mosul isn’t likely to start until the fall at the earliest, after an intensified air campaign to target Islamic State leaders and cut off supply lines in and around the city, the officials said.
The emerging plan is at odds with a briefing by a U.S. military’s Central Command official in February in which he said the U.S. and Iraq were looking at starting a campaign to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by April or May.
Afterward, Iraqi and American officials cast doubt on the likely readiness of Iraqi forces.

So we’re already reversing a plan that apparently shouldn’t have been announced, because going back on it just diminishes the credibility of Iraq’s government and what little credibility Obama left us.

These days the military makes no decisions on its own. Everything gets run out of the White House by people with no clue. It turns out that their expectations that the Iraqis could do this were wrong, so now we’re falling back to Plan B in which we try to bomb ISIS into so many little pieces that even the Iraqi Army can handle what’s left.

The only problem is that ISIS could see this coming a mile away.

Filed Under: The Point

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.