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Has diplomacy even been attempted? I don't see how providing weapons - to anyone - can lead to peace. From the first days the choice for Assad was between civil war and his own death, and given the options given to him how can we be surprised of the outcome? The interventionist states chose to support the rebels but the amount of help given to them wasn't enough to tip Assad over, instead it was enough to just destabilize Syria.
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May 15, 2015 06:05
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J33uk posted:I used to joke in graduate classes that Syria would turn into "Somalia on the Med" and here we are. I would say that'll become a warning against complacency and the assumption that eventually things will "blow over" and yet here we are four years later. I'm not even sure there is a solution anymore. The idea of a negotiated settlement is a fantasy and I've heard three years of predicting that the issue of the day will the cause the collapse of more extreme groups like ISIS; be it airstrikes from the U.S., the loss of a particular town, the arrival of the much vaunted Kurdish forces, the public displays of barbarism or whatever attempt to convince us that the FSA is viable. I'm sure you're a bastion of rationality and clear thought at your school, but who has even been saying these things other than the people literally paid to do just that?
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May 15, 2015 06:29
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We aren't here because of mistakes but because of a deliberate strategy that supports some factions just enough to keep the fires burning but not enough to win (just like Iran-Iraq in the 80s), because no stable regime that arises in the area is likely to be friendly to Israel or America.
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May 15, 2015 06:39
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tekz posted:We aren't here because of mistakes but because of a deliberate strategy that supports some factions just enough to keep the fires burning but not enough to win (just like Iran-Iraq in the 80s), because no stable regime that arises in the area is likely to be friendly to Israel or America. i kinda doubt it since all of the policy people in america are publicly angry and unhappy with the outcome, and you'd think if it were deliberate policy there would be at least a few people publicly advocating. i mean, sure, i guess everyone could be secretly snickering but that doesn't seem likely. maybe some people in the CIA or israeli intelligence might? but i think at this point even if people were secretly happy for this outcome i think it's post-hoc rather than something intentional i guess to me it just doesn't pass the dumbass test
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May 15, 2015 07:09
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It's more that the American public and policy makers don't understand the inevitable consequences of their actions. Sure they didn't expressly intend to gently caress up the Middle East but that's what their policies led to
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May 15, 2015 07:46
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illrepute posted:i kinda doubt it since all of the policy people in america are publicly angry and unhappy with the outcome, and you'd think if it were deliberate policy there would be at least a few people publicly advocating. i mean, sure, i guess everyone could be secretly snickering but that doesn't seem likely. maybe some people in the CIA or israeli intelligence might? but i think at this point even if people were secretly happy for this outcome i think it's post-hoc rather than something intentional It's tempting to see people as evil republican shitheads who just don't care about mass death resulting from their policies, but the more I learn about U.S. political processes, the more I realize their politicians are just that dumb.
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May 15, 2015 07:54
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Tias posted:It's tempting to see people as evil republican shitheads who just don't care about mass death resulting from their policies, but the more I learn about U.S. political processes, the more I realize their politicians are just that dumb. it's a comfortable mix of true believers and awful shitheads. the reason i doubt the awful shitheads are in primacy right now is because at least during the iraq war the major american businesses were enriching themselves. none of those corporate assholes are getting wealthy off of isis as far as we know
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May 15, 2015 08:18
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Phlegmish posted:I'm sure you're a bastion of rationality and clear thought at your school, but who has even been saying these things other than the people literally paid to do just that? Nah I'm clearly not a bastion of anything like that if I knocked out that post (which was especially whiny) at 2AM. That said, I was hearing lines like that from pretty much every academic that came and spoke. There were similar claims being made here on SA in the early days of the war about how Syria was actually a successfully integrated multicultural country and thusly couldn't descend into the sort of chaotic civil war we're now seeing. Same thing with the rise of ISIS, with people blaming stereotypes of radical Islam just popping up all over the Middle East and how such a group would inevitably burn out. Again these are all pretty personal anecdotes and don't amount to a great deal of evidence, but it's why I got out of that particular field after graduation, there's seemingly a crushing inability to deal with data points that disagree with the academic consensus on how things are supposed to work. Edit: Also the literature on terrorism has pretty much been shredded by the last few years of events, Pape in particular has seen his theories just blown apart J33uk fucked around with this message at 09:34 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 09:30
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farraday posted:http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e08_1431532695 It's strange to live in a world where we can watch a first-person view of some dude rushing an army checkpoint and getting into panicked close-quarters gun fights. It feels so detached from real events I found myself nitpicking the guy. His opening sprint while bullets were bouncing off nearby rocks seemed ludicrous, he ran past a whole lot of open doorways he was lucky were empty and up a lot of staircases he was lucky weren't trapped, and did he even aim those RPG rounds? The one guy he actually catches up to they just shout at each other for a few seconds. I'm sure in the moment there's nothing but adrenaline, but watching a recording afterward just highlights the little things. There's been some similar strange videos in the Ukraine thread as well. I'm reminded of a camera mounted on a UAV that did a flyover of the Donetsk airport after months of heavy fighting, it looked like the surface of the moon. Social media and internet proliferation are taking war to weird places.
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May 15, 2015 09:46
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Dolash posted:It's strange to live in a world where we can watch a first-person view of some dude rushing an army checkpoint and getting into panicked close-quarters gun fights. It feels so detached from real events I found myself nitpicking the guy. His opening sprint while bullets were bouncing off nearby rocks seemed ludicrous, he ran past a whole lot of open doorways he was lucky were empty and up a lot of staircases he was lucky weren't trapped, and did he even aim those RPG rounds? The one guy he actually catches up to they just shout at each other for a few seconds. I'm sure in the moment there's nothing but adrenaline, but watching a recording afterward just highlights the little things. There's a simple way for Obama to address the issues surrounding the OBL raid, to raise some money and to capitalize on this trend. Put the raid video on pay per view, it'll make MayPac look quaint in comparison.
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May 15, 2015 10:11
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J33uk posted:Nah I'm clearly not a bastion of anything like that if I knocked out that post (which was especially whiny) at 2AM. That said, I was hearing lines like that from pretty much every academic that came and spoke. There were similar claims being made here on SA in the early days of the war about how Syria was actually a successfully integrated multicultural country and thusly couldn't descend into the sort of chaotic civil war we're now seeing. Same thing with the rise of ISIS, with people blaming stereotypes of radical Islam just popping up all over the Middle East and how such a group would inevitably burn out. Again these are all pretty personal anecdotes and don't amount to a great deal of evidence, but it's why I got out of that particular field after graduation, there's seemingly a crushing inability to deal with data points that disagree with the academic consensus on how things are supposed to work. Care to elaborate any more on that last point? If I reflect on the last few years I seem to arrive at the conclusion that simply waiting for it to blow over is going to be hard enough as it is.
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May 15, 2015 10:48
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Flaky posted:Care to elaborate any more on that last point? If I reflect on the last few years I seem to arrive at the conclusion that simply waiting for it to blow over is going to be hard enough as it is. Regarding the literature on terrorism? The general consensus in most of the literature framed terrorism (and in particular suicide terrorism with regards to Robert Pape) as a response to occupation or the perception of it. The idea that suicide bombing was a last resort "I have nothing left and want to strike a blow against my perceived oppressor" was the order of the day. And examples of it being used in the West were attributed to especially alienated or otherwise compromised individuals. The more widespread use of it in offensive operations really starts to hurt that argument. ISIS seems to pretty regularly open up an assault with a few VBIEDs when they're trying to take territory. In short, it's no longer a tactic of desperation, but it's become just a standard tool of war. This is awkward because it moves the motivations of the bombers from desperation and exasperation more towards a belief in the religious duty to fight any way you can. This is also being reflected in the messaging shift we have seen. AQ framed things in a relatively defensive context with vague mentions of how the world should convert. Al-Baghdadi is (apparently) straight up saying it's a religious duty to remove everything that isn't Islamic from the world. And that message is seemingly far more effective than AQ's ever was in recruiting people. Just to be clear I'm not a full on scholar or anything like that, but this is just my view from having read a fair bit of the headline works. I'm sure others will have far more informed and considered opinions. Edit: Just to add a little to move away from suicide bombing as a strike against oppression, it's cropped up in ISIS operations against other Islamic groups that they're fighting against. Which in the most generous way to Pape I guess you could spin as the bomber believing that blowing up this other Islamic fighting force is necessary to help crush them to fight the real oppressors? J33uk fucked around with this message at 11:12 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 11:08
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Friendly Factory posted:I'm actually an archaeologist and I have no idea why some people put so much effort into caring about this stuff when genocides are happening. Like, it's the least important thing in that area of the world right now. Genocides are always happening, but that doesn't mean we should stop worrying about everything else.
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May 15, 2015 12:07
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tekz posted:We aren't here because of mistakes but because of a deliberate strategy that supports some factions just enough to keep the fires burning but not enough to win (just like Iran-Iraq in the 80s), because no stable regime that arises in the area is likely to be friendly to Israel or America. I'd bet a lot of money this isn't the case. The collapse of Iraq and Syria into failed states has not exactly aided American interests or its domestic security. And while it's unlikely that a stable, Western friendly government will come out of either country, there's certainly a bad and a worse even from the greediest of US perspectives. Assad is bad because he's friends with Iran and is a state sponsor of terrorism in the region. ISIS is worse because they've encouraged everyone in the world to launch attacks on Americans in the US by claiming the West is fighting Islam in a holy war, and are having a lot of success at that throughout the western world. The strategy pretty clearly revolves around the country of terrorists who present a threat to American lives, which are the only important ones.
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May 15, 2015 13:06
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Looks like ISIS have seized the center of Ramadi
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May 15, 2015 13:57
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There's a movement in Congress to try and crack down on war zone artifact trade to reduce how much money ISIS can make from it. According to al-Monitor, the trade is worth $2.2b, of which ISIS controls $1b. They made $36m plundering al-Nabuk alone. quote:Famed fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones often said antiquities belong in museums. A new bill introduced this week in Congress agrees. http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/14...campaign=buffer And the al-Monitor piece that elaborates on the scale of ISIS' antique sales. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/09/turkey-syria-iraq-isis-artifacts-smuggling.html
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May 15, 2015 14:26
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Tias posted:It's tempting to see people as evil republican shitheads who just don't care about mass death resulting from their policies, but the more I learn about U.S. political processes, the more I realize their politicians are just that dumb. It's tempting, but we can't pretend the republicans have been in charge this entire time. illrepute posted:none of those corporate assholes are getting wealthy off of isis as far as we know All those bombs, missiles, drones, and jets we're using aren't free.
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May 15, 2015 15:09
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To be fair, bombs and missiles have expiration dates. So if you're going to blow up the bomb anyway, you might as well blow up your enemies with it. Jet fuel and maintenance is still hella expensive, though.
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May 15, 2015 15:15
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J33uk posted:Looks like ISIS have seized the center of Ramadi Sounds like it. Anbar hasn't been a priority for the coalition or ISF, but this will make a nice propaganda coup for ISIS.
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May 15, 2015 16:16
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhWGEWMtfTY
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May 15, 2015 16:38
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What... the... gently caress... http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-introduce-poison-gas I don't even... Jesus...
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May 15, 2015 17:47
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Intel5 posted:What... the... gently caress...
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May 15, 2015 17:48
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Come the gently caress on Obama
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May 15, 2015 18:07
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He's saying chlorine is primarily used for peaceful purposes and not banned under international law, unlike nerve gas, which is technically true.
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May 15, 2015 18:08
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J33uk posted:Regarding the literature on terrorism? The general consensus in most of the literature framed terrorism (and in particular suicide terrorism with regards to Robert Pape) as a response to occupation or the perception of it. The idea that suicide bombing was a last resort "I have nothing left and want to strike a blow against my perceived oppressor" was the order of the day. And examples of it being used in the West were attributed to especially alienated or otherwise compromised individuals. The more widespread use of it in offensive operations really starts to hurt that argument. ISIS seems to pretty regularly open up an assault with a few VBIEDs when they're trying to take territory. In short, it's no longer a tactic of desperation, but it's become just a standard tool of war. Honestly how did the consensus even last this long? 9/11 blew apart the idea that these are desperate poor people, pretty much all the evidence we have points to Jihad being comprised of fairly well off individuals. I think one of the reasons the old consensus has survived so long is there is a clear drive to avoid having to talk about the role of Islam and current day Islamic culture, so people try to re-frame it in the more easily understood lens of poverty. Brown Moses posted:Funnily enough I was actually visiting them a couple of weeks ago, they're really about gathering evidence and building solid cases now, and making sure as much documentation is preserved and archived correctly for possible future prosecutions, even if it's a decade or two down the line. They all seem very dedicated and hard working, and they're experienced enough to know what they need to do and how to go about doing it. Man, a couple decades is going to make for one hell of a sternly worded letter. Glenn Zimmerman posted:He's saying chlorine is primarily used for peaceful purposes and not banned under international law, unlike nerve gas, which is technically true. But how it was used in Syria is still clearly a chemical weapon attack. Though I've never understood why so much ink is spilled over chemical weapons, they have always been ineffective compared to traditional weapons. I mean at the end of the day it's kinda silly that we are still going on and on about a weapons class that is responsible for .001% of the people killed in Syria.
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May 15, 2015 18:38
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tsa posted:But how it was used in Syria is still clearly a chemical weapon attack. Though I've never understood why so much ink is spilled over chemical weapons, they have always been ineffective compared to traditional weapons. I mean at the end of the day it's kinda silly that we are still going on and on about a weapons class that is responsible for .001% of the people killed in Syria. It's much more indiscriminate than conventional weapons, and often has lingering, dangerous effects. If an area is shelled many people will die, but civilians hiding in cellars or whatnot may be okay. If that same area is shelled with mustard gas anyone without NBC gear is hosed. The area is contaminated also, so anyone wandering through days later us also hosed. And that's not even getting into the nastier nerve agents. Also, guess who's more likely to not have access to gas masks (hint: not soldiers).
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May 15, 2015 18:47
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J33uk posted:This is awkward because it moves the motivations of the bombers from desperation and exasperation more towards a belief in the religious duty to fight any way you can. These two things aren't incompatible. I think you're on the money 100% that the tactics with ISIS in particular have embraced coordinated suicide bombs in a way that trumps previous efforts, but that's not exclusive to desperation exactly. I have a hunch that if ISIS had IR packages, GPS, and industrialized missile manufacturing then they'd use those instead. In lieu of that, considering local supplies including a surfeit of wannabe martyrs, ISIS (and increasingly al-Nusra as well) settle for driving truck bombs at people until they leave. The underlying attitude is the same as always, but the deployment has changed from ineffectual hit-and-run stand alone attacks to a component of an actual ongoing battle where spectacular explosions serve to coordinate ISIS infantry and disorganize coalition infantry for follow-up attacks. It is a further representation of ISIS moving away from al-Qaeda's loser ideology espoused by losers who kill people and then don't do anything with the chaos, losers who lost everything they had since they got "lucky" on 9-11 and then died, to an insurgent and outmatched but material state building and fighting for something even if that something is horrible. I'm sure the knowledge that on a meta-level VBIEDs are a sign of relative weakness are of great comfort to the people of Ramadi tonight  J33uk posted:Looks like ISIS have seized the center of Ramadi This loving sucks but when the city was wavering a month and change ago and US coalition generals seemed strangely blase about it I spent a little time trying to suss out why, and on consideration I agree with the strategies of American military advisors (which is not a sentence I'm used to writing I tell ya what). That article paraphrases Dempsey as saying it would be a humanitarian problem but not a strategic setback, and that is 100% factually descriptive of the situation though it should stick in the craw of any right thinking person. That abdicating Ramadi feels bad is why ISIS spent so much time isolating and capturing Ramadi. here is some sophisitcated satellite imagery i hacked out of the DoD. don't share this with anyone. OPSEC, btich  This is a really really really almost criminally oversimplified view of the Iraqi front right now. There's less an Iraqi Army and more Iraqi Confederated Militia Patchwork, and ISIS is a terrorist-group-cum-light-mechanized-infantry brigade which relies on flanking and strikes behind the lines to cause chaos, and even within that there are some edge cases (habbaniyah is absolutely contested right now, which is why Ramadi fell) but to the degree it can be talked about at all this is more or less what the territory looks like. And it looks bad. It looks like the Army and Shia militias are overextended with a piercing flank driving toward Baghdad proper. But view this from the perspective of ISIS: Where do you go after this? As I can tell, there are two main options: 1. Sweep south on the road to Karbala, praying for all you're worth that nobody impedes you to take a city in the heavily Shiite south where everyone local to the area hates the loving poo poo out of you. Will require consultation with the USA on how to successfully execute a hostile occupation in unfriendly territory, and with Bashar al-Assad on the merits of stretching your supply lines hundreds of kilometers over open desert. 2. Establish a Corps of Takfiri Engineers to ford the Euphrates with a sizeable force--again, praying to the Highest One that the coalition just sits back and lets you do it--to attack Baghdad from the Southwest. ISIS is a mobile light infantry/light cavalry formation where its a formation at all, and it would be assaulting one of the largest and most sprawling cities on Earth where every single resident, every man, woman and child will pick up a gun to fight them off if they even reach the city outskirts. But this too, is an option. Technically. 3. Stay in Ramadi and drain supplies and manpower from offensives and holding actions elsewhere. Or: leave. 4. Continue the offensive by crossing the Euphrates at the one place they absolutely postiively cannot avoid crossing short of the aformentioned Takfir Engineers making pontoon bridges. It's a smallish town really, but I bet you've heard of it.  Assaulting Fallujah given the surrounding terrain is no mean feat ever, assaulting from the West as a light mechanized infantry relying on VBIEDs for shock is hilarious considering I want the people performing this hypothetical assault to die screaming. This is what "come at me, bro" looks like when generals say it. The US Marines are some of the rowdiest heavy infantry on earth. They had six months to plan and scout, drew on some of the sexiest firepower in the world including heavy armor and gunship support and could assault a hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered and undersupplied and undertrained enemy from 360 degrees around the city. It still took them drat near a month to get the poo poo under control. I would very much like to see ISIS try anything past Ramadi. I would like them to make a lot of peoples' days, trying something like that. Now here's what a good-feeling and righteous counterattack at Ramadi could do: 1. Split the forces pushing north to the second largest city in Iraq, a city with some key oil infrastructure enroute, so half of them can expend hellacious quantities of time and manpower assaulting and clearing a city that's probably being fortified to poo poo with IEDs as we speak. 2. Barring US or god-forbid Iranian intervention, there is no realistic option 2. You'll notice this continues a broad trend: ISIS manufactures victories by hurting its enemies' feelings and then getting them to do something stupid. When the coalition keeps its head and doesn't overcommit to a losing fight in hasty counterattacks that feel good emotionally, such as when withdrawing to Kobani in order to be a lodestone for ISIS forces in Syria so they can be bombed and massacred in one place as they try and try and try again to take a city that can't be taken, then ISIS is defeated. If you want to bleed ISIS out, to starve them of momentum, then events like this are... kinda okay, actually. So yeah, losing Ramadi is terrible. As my mother used to say before her arrest, however, "when life gives you lemons, contain + murder the salafist scum when they've all gathered in one place with nowhere to go after that" Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 19:31 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 19:29
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That is some really interesting and in depth analysis. I think you're definitely on to something with just how limited the options for ISIS are in terms of going any further. It'll be interesting to see what a stalled advance does to the group overall if it remains that way for a while. It's real easy to proclaim yourself the unstoppable black flag army of Islam when you've expanded as explosively as they have but when you stall out that recruit supply will surely dry up.
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May 15, 2015 19:43
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Willie Tomg posted:These two things aren't incompatible. Fallujah is already under IS-control you know?
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May 15, 2015 19:58
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Glenn Zimmerman posted:He's saying chlorine is primarily used for peaceful purposes and not banned under international law, unlike nerve gas, which is technically true. He probably meant that, but he certainly didn't say it.
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May 15, 2015 20:03
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Sunni muslims in Iraq are still firmly expanding ISIS everyday, thus trolling the web for foreign wives to corrupt and enslave.
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May 15, 2015 20:22
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 YES WE CAN. I'd like to see what statement he's pointing to when he claims the OPCW supports his "Assad has no chemical weapons" line when OPCW findings suggested that there was undeclared sarin precursors at a production facility in like, January. And that's just one of many instances of Assad violating that deal.
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May 15, 2015 21:01
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spacetoaster posted:He probably meant that, but he certainly didn't say it. The idea we didn't get rid of Assad's chemical weapons because he still has access to Chlorine is basically nonsensical. Chlorine si a absic building block for a modern nation and removing it leads you to the Iraqi sanction issue where you're functionally murdereing a populace that has grown too large for a purely natural water supply, not to mention the purely non military uses like PVC that account for basic infrastructure.
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May 15, 2015 22:41
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farraday posted:The idea we didn't get rid of Assad's chemical weapons because he still has access to Chlorine is basically nonsensical. Chlorine si a absic building block for a modern nation and removing it leads you to the Iraqi sanction issue where you're functionally murdereing a populace that has grown too large for a purely natural water supply, not to mention the purely non military uses like PVC that account for basic infrastructure. The idea that we did get rid of Assad's chemical weapons is equally nonsensical. The reality of the situation is that the US was not politically capable of disarming Assad, preventing the use of chemical weapons, or holding those who did use such weapons accountable through diplomatic means. That is not a thing they could do. Yet Obama and Co specifically made these issues the core of their Syria policy, and attempted to resolve them diplomatically anyway after the Ghouta attack. Now, after the predictable failure, they try to trump it up as this great diplomatic success and pretend that all their objectives were accomplished, which will never not take an absurd amount of delusion and white-washing. "Chlorine isn't really a chemical weapon tho" and "the OPCW totally said the regimes stockpiles were all declared or something" are just feeble attempts to try and glance off the reality that they utterly failed, that they slapped wheels on the red line and rolled it back rather than sticking by it when pressed, and that Syrians are paying the price for the half assed response, both in relation to chemical weapons, and overall. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 01:41 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 01:37
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmfsYYbv6G4 ISIS gopro footage of an assault on a YPG position. This is really the gopro war. as usual it is NSFL Edit: YPG shooting people somewhere, a bomb on a hill. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a4_1431731126 YPG films are always so family friendly! 
Torpor fucked around with this message at 03:10 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 01:53
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This opinion is based on nothing, but The fact that ISIS is fast approaching it's 1st year anniversary and not already crushed to bits makes me entirely convinced that there is some kind of intelligence service bullshit going on, I mean, they haven't even been put on the backfoot in any majorly significant way other than tikrit, and now they've got loving Ramadi, there's no way they should have any kind of offensive ability anymore given the forces allayed against them, I am kind of suspecting that something is up, either something like the Pakistani ISI's equivalent of backing the Taliban is going on, or someone is keeping ISIS alive somehow to put pressure on the Iraqi government.
Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 04:52 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 04:50
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Al-Saqr posted:This opinion is based on nothing, but The fact that ISIS is fast approaching it's 1st year anniversary and not already crushed to bits makes me entirely convinced that there is some kind of intelligence service bullshit going on, I mean, they haven't even been put on the backfoot in any majorly significant way other than tikrit, and now they've got loving Ramadi, there's no way they should have any kind of offensive ability anymore given the forces allayed against them, I am kind of suspecting that something is up, either something like the Pakistani ISI's equivalent of backing the Taliban is going on, but someone is keeping ISIS alive somehow. Ok Al-Saqr, why don't you tell us all which foreign intelligence service is secretly supporting ISIS 
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May 16, 2015 04:53
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The Insect Court posted:Ok Al-Saqr, why don't you tell us all which foreign intelligence service is secretly supporting ISIS I dont know, I'm not even going to pretend that I have any idea, but I'm speculating that someone somewhere in other countries must be funelling money and help to ISIS outside of the organization itself. of course this is just far flung speculative nonsense on my part, just some kind of way to rationalize how they're still able to press forward despite everything. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 04:59 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 04:55
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Al-Saqr posted:I dont know, I'm not even going to pretend that I have any idea, but I'm speculating that someone somewhere in other countries must be funelling money and help to ISIS outside of the organization itself. of course this is just far flung speculative nonsense on my part, just some kind of way to rationalize how they're still able to press forward despite everything. Or there's the simpler alternative; the Iraqi military is hilariously incompetent, the SAA is fighting for its life against every other rebel group dogpiling it, and the USAF isn't an omniscient, vengeful god.
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May 16, 2015 06:30
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Vernii posted:Or there's the simpler alternative; the Iraqi military is hilariously incompetent, the SAA is fighting for its life against every other rebel group dogpiling it, and the USAF isn't an omniscient, vengeful god. yeah I guess.
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May 16, 2015 06:32
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