This is going to be big, very big, watch this space sort of thing. The stupidity of the Left worldwide is starting to bear fruit.

Hi Individual,

Yes, an ISIS takeover of Baghdad itself is not out of the question. All those young Shia recruits can ra-ra in the streets of Sadr City, but when they go off north into battle, they will be slaughtered in the tens of thousands, poor buggers. ISIS is very heavily- armed, it has a huge chunk of the entire Iraqi army's arsenal, courtesy of the Iraqi army abandoning Mosul and Tikrit etc. The Iraqi military has run out of missiles. Soon it will run out of planes and attack-helicopters. Then what ?

If I were the Yanks, I would be bribing Sunni tribes north and west of Baghdad like mad, and making deals with the ex-Baathists, and even with Assad in Syria. Sooner or later, if Iraq is to stay relatively in one piece, any central government would have to make some room for Sunnis, perhaps generously funding some form of semi-autonomy, perhaps even along the lines of Kurdish autonomy. [I didn't realise that there were many Shia Kurds - how minority would that be !? And Yazidis. And Turcomans. How unnecessarily complicated.]

And of course, nobody wants to think about what the Iranians would do, if ISIS took Baghdad. If they intervened, would the Saudis ?

Yes, this could get very big.

Joe

Yes Jay Of Melbourne and individual

The Caliphate is spreading. I have evidence that the Saracens are again liberating Córdoba and the Ottomans (from Turkey naturally) may retake Budapest.
--

Hello Joe - You Loudmouth you

I to worry that the Shiite blokes in Baghdad spend more time marching very badly instead of quietly and professionally training - they "protesteth too much".

The Kurds are a particularly wily foe - known to fight other Kurds in order to keep their Turkish, Sunni and Shiite enemies off balance.

The Saudis for their part buy many $Billions in weapons from the US, Europe and China, then leave the weapons in packing-boxes in warehouses. The Saudis employ Pakistani mercenaries to fight for them - not trusting the Saudi "military" (really a Princes' supporters club) to do it.

This is, after all, Middle East.

Thanks, Plantagenet,

Being of little brain and vision, I hadn't thought about the Pakistani Taliban :) But would they be stupid enough to attack Iran, the Shia Shaitanists ? What the hell, if it gets you into Paradise, I suppose. But, on that direct Pakistan front, they would have to get through the Baluchi insurgents, who, I'm sure, would be funded by the Iranians, Sunni or otherwise. So they would probably work through Afghanistan with Sheikh Omar.

Hey, this is better than any board game ! Dungeons and dragons, eat your heart out !

Not too many Western action-novelists have written about this rich picture for their block-buster best-seller scenarios. Maybe it's just too rich and complicated for them to get their heads around.

Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Joe

If the west could line up some alternative oil supply we could just let
them get on with it and fight themselves to a standstill.

Trouble is, if Saudi Arabia got involved there would be no way we could
replace both their export and Iraq's output without rationing and a recession.

Someone on the TV was just going on about Islamaphobia.
Re that, if you do not express Islamaphobia then you do not know what is going on.

ISIS - a Successful Business Entity

The records of US military intelligence have put a whole corporate perspective on ISIS - upsetting previous assumptions that ISIS was mainly funded by Sunni countries.

A US article of 23 June 2014 reports: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/23/231223/records-show-how-iraqi-extremists.html

ISIS "sprang from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype whose resilience to counterterrorism operations was proven by the time Abu Bakr al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010.

[ISIS that] Baghdadi inherited had in place a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. [ISIS] middle-managers detailed, for example, the number of wives and children each fighter had, to gauge compensation rates upon death or capture, and listed expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets that noted payments to an “assassination platoon” and “Al Mustafa Explosives Company.” Income from [ISIS] looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.”

By the time Baghdadi took charge, [ISIS] even had begun siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors _ enterprises that Baghdadi would build on and replicate as he expanded operations across the border into Syria, ultimately breaking from his al Qaida roots and declaring himself emir of [ISIS]".