Saturday, March 05, 2016

Prelude to the Hammer?

Given the sight of NATO nations helping to fortify Tunisia against and spillover from a pending NATO military effort against ISIL in Libya, is Jordan's effort along their border with Syria a prelude to a Jordanian offensive against ISIL in Iraq's western Anbar province?

Jordan swept up some ISIL forces near Syria:

Jordan said Wednesday that it had thwarted planned attacks by the Islamic State group on its soil, killing seven suspected jihadists in a major security operation near the Syrian frontier. ...

The operation, which began late Tuesday in the northern city of Irbid, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Amman, was the most significant of its kind since Jordan joined the coalition in 2014.

And Jordan did get a big shipment of small arms ammo fairly recently and we just delivered 8 transport helicopters to Jordan.

I've long hoped for and expected such a Jordanian effort to act with Iraqi forces closer to Baghdad in a hammer and anvil type operation with American firepower in support.

And if we really are going forward with plans to shift Iraqi forces to Mosul, which really could use help just with securing the crumbling dam up there that needs protection from ISIL to avoid collapsing on its own and devastating a lot of Iraq downriver, Iraq's forces in Anbar will need help to keep pushing ISIL away from Baghdad where they continue to mount terror attacks.

I admit I keep seeing dots and painting a full picture with that. I've (apparently) been wrong for a long time now, I'll note.