Hoo yah.

Gut those goat-fuckers

It's about time.

Iraq has pledged not to allow any ISIS soldiers flee Mosul to regroup in Raqqa.

Go! Go! Go!

holy shit

Obama fears Mosul becoming a vacuum for terrorists to rule once the coalition runs to take out Raqqa.

@TrPrado the government or the militias?

I believe you mean that in response to terrorists running Mosul?

No I mean that did the government say it won't allow ISIS to flee to Syria, or was it the Shia militias?

Okay, I wasn't fully aware of the details. It's the PMF

Great, a city with a long and storied history stretching back to antiquity, home to over a million people, is about to be reduced to rubble and ashes. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people - most of them completely innocent civilians - are going to die. And what do people here do? Cheer like it's some stupid football game. You people are sick.

Tolstoy, are you really Russian; or just taking your time;) ?

Citizens were asked to evacuate, but there's still the fear for what will happen to stragglers, and even still an absurd amount of people will lose their homes.

So the alternative is to leave Mosul under ISIL control and let them do what they want with the citizens.

Tolstoy, we could easily counter that by saying that you're all for the killing of innocents...because NOT going in there to eliminate ISIS will allow them to continue to murder, rape, destroy for years and years to come.

It's not a football game - it's a shit situation with no good answers. Going in there is potentially the least shitty.

What Randomizer said.

this has been going on since the Hittites came down from the Anatolin plain

well good night everyone, my cat is yawning and its time to rest up to join the battle anew.

Damn Hittites.

Later, dood.

@red-lion, are you also For killin because you don't advocate overthrow of the US? I mean apart from the death oenalty, and letting people off for rape with no time spent in jail (and electing a potential rapist as president) They also have a histor if killing people with drone strikes who are US citizens but haven't had a chance to go to a court trial...

But then i guess you wouldn't admit to be in favour of over throwing the US since the you might becone a target for those same drone assassination attempts.

Facebook is livestreaming this...

@orathaic, I have no idea what your real point is, so I'm not going to get super involved. If you are suggesting that the US is just as bad, and maybe worse, than ISIS, then there is no purpose in talking with you because there is no comparison.

No, i'm saying that you can't make simple reductive arguements like 'you're either with us or against us' when it comes to complex issues.

You could be against the US because they kill their own citizens (in drone strikes and desth penalty) and support rape culture.

But to reduce that to 'therefore we must overthrow the state' is ridiculous. My arguement is reductio ad absurdium.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly escaped Mosul in the nick of time. Militants have begun to move to fortify Raqqa. Some fear the American coalition desired that in order to have an influx in Syria to increase the possibility of an overthrow of Assad. Certain sources allege the possibility that Shia militia forces might take Tal Afar to prevent a mad dash to Raqqa, and Daesh would have to face Syrian forces, Iranian allied forces, and Hezbollah afterwards.

@ orathaic Alright, now I know where you are coming from.

Of course this shitty situation is complex. I'm not going to disagree with that. Tolstoy is the one who seems to believe that going into Mosul is just plain bad (black and white situation). Or maybe he doesn't - I'm just going by what he said earlier.

My response (that you didn't like for some reason) was solely directed at his comment, it's not at an over-arching belief that I hold. In fact, I even said that going into Mosul is the least shitty of a bunch of shitty solutions...fully recognizing that this is not simply white or black.

Some civilians are killed by Daesh for trying to flee, other civilians intend to arm themselves. Iraq has forbade US soldiers from setting foot within Mosul, and some want to keep Shia militia forces from participating in the fight as well.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/battle-mosul-frontline-suicide-bombers-9066730

The horrors of the battle, described by a journalist.

@red-lion i was annoyed by this ' eliminate ISIS will allow them to continue to murder, rape, destroy for years and years to come.' as if ISIS are the most evil.

That was the only black you painted that annoyed me. And doubtless if i knew more i suspect i would hare them more than anyone; but i also know the US degraded prisoners in Iraq with some of the worst treatment imaginable. If you recall Abu Ghraib. ISIS does not have a monopoly on evil.

We do this thing in our media... No in all human culture, where we paint them as bad and us as good. And then we justify our crimes while amplifying theirs.

And then we find the worst villians and paint them as Satan himself. Think ISIS or Hitler. Worst we can't see another fascist rising because comparing (say) Trump to Hitler is seen as a massive exageration. I mean Trump may be an asshole, there are lots of americans who might agree with this, but pure evil incarnate? No that is too extreme.

I don't like defending ISIS - thoug my 'defence', if you can call it that will do them no aid - but i also don't think painting them as pure evil will help either. We need to understand how they came to be in order to stop history repeaing itself, and for that we need to understand them as humans.

We know how the US prison guards (? I presume) in Abu Ghraib, we have the psychological experiments to prove that an average bunch of students become horrible fucking monsters when you put them in the right circumstances (see the stanford prison experiment) So what are the circumstances the lead to ISIS? Is it a general trend that the most vicious group will always rise to power? Do you just have to be sligthly more vicious than the next group vying for power?

In modern terms, i'm pretty sure ISIS are the worst we've ever seen. But there were medieval groups which did aweful things... I can only think of the Spainnish Inquistion, the Aztecs sacrifices and Vlad the Impailer... But i'm sure there are more excellent examples. The difference is, we can do something about ISIS today. And we should, Iraq has not asked for a UN peacekeeping force to be deployed, but they have asked for US armed support, so i guess this action is legitimate under international law. (Like how the Russians could send troops to Syria if they want because Bassar Al-Assad has invited them) But i'm sure Tolstoy would still criticise the Imperialism of both IS and Russia in propping up illegitimate governments as their puppets...

If we had a different political culture, maybe we could do things better, but we don't have that culture, so this is the shittiest option available. (Fyi, banning the sale of weapons to ISIS might help... You know, if you want to imagine alternatives where invasion isn't the chosen solution)

Iraqi media is reporting that a large convoy that was attempting to escape from Mosul to Raqqa was destroyed in an aerial bombing. President Erdogan of Turkey also says he is in discussion with the US about taking Raqqa out of Daesh hands, though Erdogan is critical of the US for its stance on who should be in the fight to take Mosul.

The EU fears that this battle will result in fighters abandoning Mosul to head to Europe. Also, Iraqi news reports that there was allegedly a coup attempt within Daesh against al-Baghdadi, however if failed and the man in charge of the coup has been killed.

Boy....for the war in Iraq that Obama ended, people are sure excited about all this war talk!!! More amazing still is that, even though we have no ground troops in Iraq, the US-Led ground troops are engaged in the battle.

Simply fucking amazing.

simply fucking AMAZING the Code Pink has vanished form the face of the earth, and all the Dove Democrats that hare war and called US generals baby-killers, etc, are hiding in their quiet fucking closets ignoring the fact that our barbarian warlord president has continued the endless war policy of the US.

Even more pathetic is this false fucking narrative that once we take mosul ISIS's "stronghold" will be captured, blah blah blah suggesting that we will have defeated ISIS. What an utter load of bullshit.

it is easy to be anti-military unless you control the military

wait until Hitllary has her hand on the button.

@Krellin's rant.

As a true pacifist, i was in this thread criticising the Obama narrative. (E that ISIS are pure evil) i may have said it here (or in another thread, can't find it here) that a blanket ban on selling/sending weapons to ISIS controlled territory and maybe Syria, is the only way this 'war' can be resolved peacefull. And neither the US nor Russia seems to be onboard with this... BUT Krellir-poo has me muted, so he'll never see. (And probably doesn't agree with my 'solution' anyway.

@Capt Brad, indeed. She may be worse than Obama for militarism.

Especially because she is the first woman, in several similar cultures we have seen women take on extremely masculine characteristics to 'prove' they have the balls to run a country. I've seen some good stuff on Australia and the UK (Margaret Thatcher, not the Iron Queen)

indeed. women who rise to that level are not shrinking violets.

The ground troops may be directed by Americans, but the soldiers are essentially all either Iraqi militia members or soldiers of the Iraqi government. Kurds and Turks have some significant involvement in this battle. Some media sources talk about this battle as a test of Obama's policy of sticking with local soldiers instead of heavy interventionism.

"Even more pathetic is this false fucking narrative that once we take mosul ISIS's "stronghold" will be captured, blah blah blah suggesting that we will have defeated ISIS"
No, ISIS won't be defeated after Mosul. No one who understands the situation even a smidge thinks ISIS will fall. But it is a huge step forward in bringing Daesh down as an organized entity.

Daesh is using civilians as human shields.

One Peshmerga general believes this battle could take 2 months.

Obama's policy sounds like a great plan, if it ends up with an Iraqi army with a few victories under its belt, confidence plus experience.

The prime minister of Iraq is now also saying the plan is advancing more quickly than expected.

Daesh rounded up hundreds of families and scattered them in certain parts of Mosul for future use as human shields. As Iraqi forces advanced, Daesh has now taken hundreds of men and boys and executed them. The bodies were dumped in a mass grave at Mosul's College of Agriculture. This is the enemy. These are their horrors.

Daesh is burning sulfur stocks to slow the advance of Iraqi forces.