What comes after ISIS?

ISIS is crumbling - though there are miles to go before we rest - and the question looming ever larger is simply, "What comes after ISIS?"

The Islamic State could eventually lose control of Raqqa, but it is expected to regroup in remote areas, such as Al Bukamal and Al Qaim, along the Syria-Iraq border. The movement may be disrupted, but U.S. officials concede that it will be almost impossible to totally dismantle it. An end to Syria’s wider six-year war—in any way that both stabilizes one of the most important geostrategic countries in the Middle East and favors U.S. interests—also seems increasingly remote.

And the quest for a caliphate goes on. “Al Qaeda might lay claim to it for a moment, and the Islamic State may lay claim to it, but there’s always been this dream of recapturing and bringing back the caliphate,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told me. “Who’s going to tap into that next?”

Peace is definitely not on the horizon.

Return of the Neo-Cons?

Business Insider says that Trump is considering several Iraq war supporters for top national-security positions:

Despite his professed opposition to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, President-elect Donald Trump is considering several of the major advocates of that war for top national security posts in his administration, according to Republican officials.

Among those who could find places on Trump's team are former top State Department official John Bolton and ex-CIA Director James Woolsey. Both men championed the Iraq invasion ... .

Also involved in transition planning for Trump's presidency is Frederick Fleitz, a top aide to Bolton who earlier worked at the CIA unit that validated much of the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

I wrote a very long essay in 2005 about whether the Bush administration had "bent" the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons program to justify taking down his regime by armed force ("Cooking the War," Nov. 15, 2005):

The question of the accuracy of the intelligence regarding Saddam and WMDs is certainly legitimate. Questions about the conduct of war are legitimate - I have not been kind at times to the administration about that, especially about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's deliberate discarding of studies by the Army Staff before the war that the prospective invasion force was to small by about half to secure the country effectively when organized resistance ceased.  I don't have a problem with inquiring whether the intelligence was "bent" by the administration. But it's been done. The Senate Intelligence Committee addressed at this issue in its "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq."

The Committee found no evidence that the IC's [Intelligence Community's] mischaracterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capbilities was the result of political pressure.

The Committee detailed the many failures of the intelligence community, but there was no misuse of the intelligence assessments by the administration. 

I assessed exhaustively how this conclusion was supported by the administration, by the Congress (including Hillary Clinton and Jay Rockefeller of the Senate Intelligence Committee, both of whom voted for the Iraq war), and by the testimony and documents provided to the UN Security Council by Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

Whether the appointments Business Insider reports or speculates will turn out to be good ones for the country in the four years to come is certainly no foregone conclusion. But they do not deserve to be smeared with false charges that they cooked the intelligence books to go to war with Saddam.

Meanwhile in Iraq, crucifixions continue

Reuters: Crucifixions and vice patrols show Islamic State maintains Mosul grip

Islamic State militants fighting to hold on to their Mosul stronghold have killed at least 20 people in the last two days for passing information to "the enemy" and are back on the city streets policing the length of men's beards, residents say.

Five crucified bodies were put on display at a road junction on Tuesday, a clear message to the city's remaining 1.5 million residents that the ultra-hardline Islamists are still in charge, despite losing territory to the east of the city.

Others were seen hanging from electricity poles and traffic signals around the city, residents said on Wednesday.

Thousands of Islamic State fighters have run Mosul, the largest city under their control in Iraq and neighboring Syria, since they conquered large parts of northern Iraq in 2014.

They are now battling a 100,000-strong coalition including Iraqi troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and mainly Shi'ite paramilitary groups, which has almost surrounded the city and has broken into eastern neighborhoods.

Residents contacted by telephone said many parts of the city were calmer than they had been for days, allowing people to venture out to seek food, even in areas which have seen heavy fighting over the last week.

"I went out in my car for the first time since the start of the clashes in the eastern districts," said one Mosul resident. "I saw some of the Hisba elements of Daesh (Islamic State) checking people's beards and clothes and looking for smokers".

Islamic State's Hisba force is a morality police unit which imposes the Sunni jihadists' interpretation of Islamic behavior. It forbids smoking, says women should be veiled and wear gloves, and bans men from Western-style dress including jeans and logos. ...

"I saw five corpses of young men which had been crucified at a road junction in east Mosul," not far from districts which had seen heavy fighting, said another resident.
"The Daesh people hung the bodies out and said that these were agents passing news to the infidel forces and apostates," he said, referring to the Western allies backing the campaign and the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad.

82d Airborne Division going to Iraq

I'm so old that I remember when the president told us he had "ended the war in Iraq."

Over the next two months, our troops in Iraq—tens of thousands of them—will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home. The last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq—with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.

Yeah, that statement is no longer operative: "Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq."

The U.S. Army announced Thursday it will deploy 1,700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division this winter to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces currently trying to retake Mosul from Islamic State fighters.

The 82nd Airborne's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will deploy to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to take part in Operation Inherent Resolve, according to an Army press release.

The unit will replace the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, in training, advising and assisting the Iraqi forces.

Last spring there were 5,000 US troops who had returned to Iraq to help fight a war that we were told had ended. You will search in vain to find the number there today. But rest assured, it's higher, likely much higher.

The 82d Airborne Division is, of course, the world's premier parachute combat force. They get to the battlefield like this:



The problem is, from then on you walk.

Video: The Rise of ISIS | FRONTLINE Online |

Video: The Rise of ISIS | Watch FRONTLINE Online | PBS Video

An excellent, 52-minute documentary. Does not seem to have an embed link or I would have.

Forward! Forwar! For war!

But the lefty media are aglow already:

Why Obama won't get a coalition to fight ISIS

White House declares America IS 'at war' with ISIS 24 hours after John Kerry denied it

• White House: 'The United States is at war'
• Pentagon: 'We know we are at war'
• State Department: 'If somebody wants to think about it as being a war ... they can do so'
• National security adviser: 'I think this is very different from that' 

There will not be a coalition actually worth the name because every potential ally against ISIS, including Arab ones, can see that the administration can't find its butt in the dark with both hands. And the president's "no boots on the ground" pledge is rightly seen overseas as clear, convincing evidence that he is not committed at all to "destroying" ISIS or "pursuing them to the gates of Hell." 

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White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday that the U.S. is at war with ISIS 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754074/IT-S-WAR-White-House-confirms-U-S-war-ISIS-Secretary-State-denied-yesterday.html

Wretchard on FB observes,

... the WH is going to use the congressional authorization of the Bush administration had from Congress to justify its actions. So the "illegitimate" war of Bush, which had authorization, has now become the legitimate war against ISIS.

And here is National Security Adviser Susan Rice saying that the president's actions against ISIS are "very different" from America being at war.

And this: Arab Nations Can’t Wait to Fight in Obama’s Coalition Against the Islamic State. Well, Not Really…

One sentence crystal ball

Wretchard T. Cat

8 hrs · 

“Radicals will grow in strength on both sides, namely the Salafist ISIS and the Shia militias, eventually driving the entire region towards destabilization, inevitably threatening global energy supplies and the global economy.”

The Worst Case Scenario In The Middle East, In One Sentence

Ali Khedery, the longest continuously serving American official in Iraq (2003 – 09), recently sat down with Reza Akhlaghi of the Foreign Policy Association to discuss...

BUSINESSINSIDER.COM.AU|BY MICHAEL B KELLEY

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No strategy is no news

Gerard:

Obama: “We don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with Islamic State

gerardvanderleun : August 28, 14  |  Your Say (0)  | PermaLink 

NBC News mans up.


Update: Michael Ledeen:

They DO have a strategy, but they prefer to appear indecisive.  That’s because the strategy would likely provoke even greater criticism than the false confession of endless dithering.

The actual strategy is detente first, and then a full alliance with Iran throughout the Middle East and North Africa.  It has been on display since before the beginning of the Obama administration.  During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies.  The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine.  Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.

Ever since, President Obama’s quest for an alliance with Iran has been conducted through at least four channels:  Iraq, Switzerland (the official U.S. representative to Tehran), Oman and a variety of American intermediaries, the most notable of whom is probably Valerie Jarrett, his closest adviser.  In recent months, Middle Eastern leaders reported personal visits from Ms. Jarrett, who briefed them on her efforts to manage the Iranian relationship.  This was confirmed to me by a former high-ranking American official who says he was so informed by several Middle Eastern leaders.

Sadly, I think Ledeen is right.

Methodist church endorses bombing ISIS?

The United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries seems to have endorsed bombing ISIS to protect persecuted Christians and others under ISIS' literal gun:

We join our voices to those of leaders of the World Council of Churches in asking U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to “marshal all available resources to protect the people of Iraq in this hour.” We agree with the WCC assertions that when nations are unable to protect their citizens that “responsibility is taken up by international bodies and their member states.” (italics added)

Pope Francis already called for military attacks against ISIS, as was made clear by one of the chief Vatican spokesmen.

Pope Francis blesses bombings

Can I call 'em, or what? My August 7 analysis of Pope Francis' statement on ISIS: Pope Francis: Bomb ISIS now

Today:

Fearing a genocide of Christians, the Vatican has given its approval to US military air strikes in Iraq -- a rare exception to its policy of peaceful conflict resolution.

Massive shipments of moral support planned for Iraqi Christians

Sources also told Duffel Blog that the White House was bringing “extreme pressure” to bear on Facebook to create a “dislike” button that could be field tested against ISIS websites.

US Prepares Massive Shipment Of Thoughts And Prayers To Kurds

One like = One prayer for the Peshmerga.

DUFFEL BLOG

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“With contributions from around the country, we expect enough thoughts and prayers to fill half an oil supertanker,” Kirby said. “That should sustain the Kurds through the long siege as winter in the mountains sets in next month, and the ISIS troops warm themselves around bonfires made from Yazidis who didn’t get into the mountains.”

The horror of horrors

Muslims Force Christian To Convert To Islam, Then Brutally Behead Him

I have no words, nor are none needed.

Also, "ISIS is ‘Systematically Beheading Children' in 'Christian Genocide'"

Iraq: Hell has broken out here and nobody cares

Barack Obama, Warrior Princess!

So saith a commenter on the news that two US fighters dropped a few bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq.

On Thursday night, President Obama confirmed that he had authorized military air strikes in Iraq against Islamic State forces.

“I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” he said. “We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide.”

"We can act, carefully and responsibly . . . ." Translation: "We will act timidly and ineffectively."

This strike was simply symbolic. It was not an expression of the national will nor even of presidential resolve. It was at best an expression of Obama's distaste for having to deal with the whole situation.

It is an expression of typical leftist thinking about using military force: start small and taper off. It is the baseless hope that ISIS will point to the sky and say, "Holy crap! Two American fighters! Let's stop being ruthless murderers!"

This is what was done:

This is what should be done:

Update: The Washington Post pays Obama the enormous compliment of upgrading the two fighter sorties to "half steps." That is in fact a vast over-estimation.

And remember back in 2008 race when Obama said genocide was no reason to stay engaged in Iraq?

Thank God for the Kurds!

Kurdistan declares "safe haven" for Christian refugees

27 Jul 2014

Author: 

Andrew Boyd

Kurdistan has declared a safe-haven for Christian refugees, as Islamist militants extinguish the Christian presence in Iraq’s second city, Mosul. According to news reports, every Christian has finally been driven out of the city.

Displaced Christians have expressed anger towards the international community for failing to protect them or offer asylum. One priest, who cannot be named, told religious liberty organisation, Release International, that he was furious that Britain ‘offered visas to terrorists’ but refused to grant them to Iraqi Christians. The priest was also dismayed that British jihadis were among the IS fighters.

‘There is no hope, no future. All we have is war and killing and fighting,’ says Thiar, a Christian refugee. He says he desperately wants to leave the country and join the rest of his family in Germany.

Militants from Islamic State (formerly ISIS) ordered Christians in Mosul to convert or pay protection tax and submit to Islamic rule. Those who refused would face execution by midday Saturday.

'For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,’ Patriarch Louis Sako told the AFP news agency. According to reports, IS militants confiscated their homes and stripped them of their remaining belongings as they tried to leave.

Well, how about a fatwa?

Prominent Sunni scholars condemn ISIS' anti-Christian violence. A fatwa calling for Sunnis to oppose and resist ISIS would be more effective.

ISIS now has dozens of US-made howitzers

ISIS Has 52 American Weapons That Could Pummel Cities

ISIS militants may be in a position to pummel other cities in Iraqi army control after capturing American-made weapons the group seized from the Iraqi military, Mitchell Prothero reports for McClatchy DC.

During ISIS's blitz across northern and central Iraq last month, the group captured upwards of 52 155mm M198 howitzers.

An M198, 155mm, towed howitzer being fired by US Army troops.

As a retired Army artillery officer, I can tell you that starting to shoot these things will not necessarily be easy for ISIS. Every howitzer has unique firing tables and ballistic solutions, although calculating those solutions is computationally the same. But unless ISIS also captured the technical ballistic publications for those particular guns, they can fire them, but it will basically be unaimed fire. Nowadays, of course, technical firing data is computed electronically, but inputs have to be done accurately and correctly. GIGO still applies. 

All of this computation is to answer three questions: 

1. Which direction to point the tube (we call this "deflection")
2. How high above the ground to point the tube (we call this "quadrant")
3. How fast should the projectile leave the tube. This varies according to how much propellant is used. Propellant comes in bags encased in a canister. Each canister contains propellant for one round in eight bags. 

There is also a calculation to account for the difference in altitude between the howitzer and the target. This solution is called "site," and techncially consists of site plus angle of site. But angle of site is not actually calculated unless the difference in altitude is +/- 100 meters or more. 

If ISIS has former artillerymen in their ranks, say from Syria or Iraqi Sunnis, then simply shooting the guns will be a lot easier since all modern towed howitzers work much the same and the ballistic principles are quite the same. 

But, as the article goes on to say, for ISIS's purposes accurate fire is not necessary when the target is, after all, the entire city of Baghdad.

The 155mm high-explosive projectile weighs 95 pounds and has a blast radius of 50 meters (55 yards), defined as the radius at which at least half 90 percent of exposed persons will be struck by shell fragments. So it's basically a circle with a slightly larger diameter as a football field. The M198 can, if crewed skillfully, fire two rounds per minute indefinitely.

A correction: the blast radius is the 90-percent kill radius on unwarned (that is, standing) personnel. The casualty radius is the 50-percent line and for the US 155mm projectile is 100 meters. The area of in which at least half  of persons become casualties is thus 31,400 square meters. From one projectile.  

So imagine a section of Baghdad being  residents blasted with 15 minutes of 52 M198s firing two rounds per minute. That's 1,560 rounds. No wonder that residents of Berlin, Germany, said after World War 2 that American and British bombers did not terrify them as much as Soviet artillery did, once it started shelling the city. Bombers came, bombers went. But the artillery was around the clock. It never stopped.

But what we do not know is how much ammunition ISIS also captured. That's the real issue, feeding the beasts. Fifteen minutes of sustained firing, as in my example, uses projectiles weighing 74 tons, plus another 23 tons or so of propellant canisters. Not a casual undertaking.

Here is an example of the kind of technical data I am talking about: Firing Tables

And this PDF os a slide presentation has examples of actual M198 firing tables.

Who says there's no good news? The Orcs fight one another now

Iraqi Official: Sunni Insurgents, Baathists Fighting One Another

Sunni insurgents who are making their way across Iraq in a drive towards the nation’s capital clashed with their Baathist allies this week, Iraq security officials said Saturday.

Citing unnamed Iraqi security officials, the New York Times reports that the Sunni forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and their Baathist allies fought one another in western Kirkuk late this week. An unnamed witness said the two factions fought over gas and oil trucks.

An Iraqi security official told the Times that ISIS tried to disarm the Baathists before eight Baathists and nine ISIS militants were killed in subsequent fighting.

They fought over gas and oil trucks? That means they were killing each other over money. Which is as satisfactory a reason, from our perspective, as any other.

ISIS, Baathists, what's the diff?

They already are in politics and viciousness the Orcs of the earth, and like the Orcs of Middle Earth, they are as liable to turn on one another as their other enemies.

Iraq crisis: Bush's fault or Obama's? A mathematical answer

The dire situation is Iraq is ...

A. mostly Bush's fault, or,

B. mostly Obama's fault.

Well, The Washington Post's column by Marc Thiessen says,

Now in 2014, as Iraq descends into chaos, Democrats are trying to blame the fiasco on — you guessed it — George W. Bush. “I don’t think this is our responsibility,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, declaring that the unfolding disaster in Iraq “represents the failed policies that took us down this path 10 years ago.”

So Iraq in June 2014 is Bush's fault. Because Bush. (Read the rest of the column.)

But let's do some math.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) commenced on March 19, 2003. From that date until January 20, 2009, whatever happened in Iraq was squarely on Bush's plate. That's 2,134 days.

Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. On that day, whatever happened in Iraq landed squarely on his plate. From then until now has been 1,974 days, 160 days fewer than Bush.

That means that the crisis in Iraq is computationally 48 percent Obama's fault and 52 percent Bush's fault.

But wait! A decision (or lack of one) made by a president yesterday is far more influential than one made years before. So we have to find a meaningful way to weight the decisions of each president appropriately. I call it the Recency Weighting Factor, or RWF.

Let's see . . . I've got it!

President George W. Bush played golf 24 times during eight years in the White House, ABC News' Good Morning America reports. Bush stopped playing while in office after an Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing in Baghdad killed the U.N.'s top official in Iraq. He decided at that time, Bush said, according to The Washington Post, that "it's just not worth it anymore." 

"Playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," Bush said. (link)

Last weekend Barack Obama played his 175th and 176th rounds of golf as president. He played first at Sunnylands, the famously private course on the Rancho Mirage, California estate of the late billionaire Walter Annenberg. Obama next played at Porcupine Creek, the equally private course on the nearby estate of the very-much-alive tech billionaire Larry Ellison. (Link)

So Bush played golf an average of once every 122 days of the eight years he was in office. Obama has played golf an average of once every 12 days of the 1,974 days he has been in office. That's basically 10 times as much (10.16, to be exact). 

Therefore - for we are doing this scientifically, with math you know, and you don't want to be a science denier - the Recency Weighting Factor for Obama's decision over Bush's is 10.16. That means that while Bush must shoulder some of the blame for today's Iraq crisis, we must, to be fair, compute the RWF into their respective shares of the blame. 

Easily you can see that we must multiply the RWF for Obama and divide it for Bush. So where before Iraq was 52 percent Bush's fault and 48 percent Obama's, applying the RWF respectively yields that Iraq is really 5 percent Bush's fault and 488 percent Obama's. 

It is so simple as that. And it's math just as rigorously applied as that of IPCC scientists seeking government grants. 

An eyes-on report from Baghdad

I received last evening a report from a retired US Marine officer who just returned from Baghdad last Friday, June 13. It's rather lengthy so I won't just paste it here. Here is an excerpt summary of what he says.

• Baghdad is tense. The airport is extremely busy and flights elsewhere (especially to the Kurdish Region) are far overbooked. With the call to arms by Ayatollah Sistani, the prospect of a sectarian civil war is the highest it has ever been – and has the potential to even be worse than the 2006/2007 era.
• Media's portrayal of a relentless ISIS advance are incorrect. There has been no ISIS "blitzkrieg." The sensationalization of ISIS by the mainstream western media is the number one driving factor for the tension in Baghdad rather than a true appreciation of fact.
• The true facts need putting into context. Key points: Late May saw a substantial increase in insurgent activity across the country, bombings and attacks across the country, VBIEDs near Karbala and Najaf, an assassination of a senior Sahwa commander in Anbar, an assault on Sammara and finally the attack on Mosul which caused the rout of the Iraqi Army and everything that then subsequently unfolded. The key takeaways, however are:
• ISIS' "advance" from Mosul to the outskirts of Baghdad has been blown out of proportion. ISIS was masterful in capitalizing on their success in Mosul and then gaining and achieving momentum. But news of ISIS' Mosul success impelled a fleeing Iraqi Army to leave the Sunni dominated areas north of Baghdad. ISIS units already in place in Sunni areas mobilized all at once. Iraqi army commanders were the first to flee, which caused the mass pullout/desertion/withdrawal.  ISIS then moved into the Iraqi Army positions, taking the majority of them without a fight or meeting only mediocre resistance.  
• Extremely important to note: ISIS have yet to move outside of areas where they have always been traditionally strong.  In addition, ISIS have met no resistance from the predominantly Sunni population in these areas. Also, ‘ISIS’ is not just ISIS.  Other militant organizations and local Sunni tribes who are ‘going along with it for now’ are involved. These ultimately are not interested in the level of radicalism that true ISIS demands – so this is a fragile alliance at best, which will no doubt come to the fore once true resistance appears, or when ISIS start summarily executing people for crimes and issuing strict laws on how to live etc (and we are already seeing evidence of this in Mosul and Tikrit).
• Back to the ‘Advance on Baghdad’. ISIS have not yet set one foot outside areas where they have traditionally been strong, which is why the ‘advance’ has stalled in the area of Samarra/Balad.  In Diyala with its more mixed populace, they have not even ‘advanced’ that far south in parallel – Shia militia groups such as AAH are openly fighting them and the Iraqi Army is maintaining a presence there also. ISIS is not successfully challenging the Kurds' Peshmerga militia, who are currently consolidating positions and expanding their region (they will likely be the ultimate winners in all of this).  
• If ISIS steps off their traditional turf into areas where they have no popular support (i.e. Shia parts of the country – northern Baghdad for instance….) they will not do so well. Don't look for ISIS to threaten Baghdad anytime soon. 

So what’s the realistic prognosis of the situation for Taji and Baghdad?

• Taji has become the main reception point for falling back troops and the point from where counter offensives will be planned and organized.  On current available information, the massing troops there and the size of the facility means that ISIS as yet will have very little chance of attacking it in a conventional sense, so will get back to what they do best – car bombs, suicide attacks etc, along with IDF.  
• It also goes for Baghdad itself.  In Anbar to the west (and southwest of Baghdad) Iraqi army units have mostly withdrawn from Fallujah (presumably so properly battle hardened veterans can redeploy elsewhere).  The has led to more freedom of movement for ISIS/anti govt elements – again with the implication of being able to stage closer to Baghdad.  But we are talking about increased unconventional guerilla attacks in the capital a conventional assault. 
• Baghdad is absolutely teeming with Iraqi Army troops and now, Shia milita of all kinds, including the now gloves-off Jaish al Mahdi (JAM) and Asaib Ahl al Haq (AAH), and I don’t doubt (as with some other parts of the country) Iranian Quds force too.  Iranian involvement is set to increase as this progresses.
• ISIS will not just stroll into Baghdad as they have in a similar fashion in the areas where they’ve always been strong. However, look for an increase in car bombings, suicide bombings, IDF threat to BIAP and IZ.  
• The other major burning issue right now – is the mass Shia mobilization and the fighting that is to follow north of the capital:  Once this begins, we are going to hear many reports of atrocities committed against both Sunni and Shia communities as such a mass, fast mobilization means that training will be poor as will discipline.  And we already know what the other side is capable of.  This has the very real potential to spark bitterness and a renewed civil war period.  In Baghdad, this may well translate as mass sectarian killings on either side on the streets in capital in conjunction with attacks on Mosques etc (as happened in 2006/2007) depending as to what transpires over the coming days ..

Courtesy the Daily Mail, here is a video of the Iraqi air force attacking ISIS positions.