Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly faulted the United States for its long delays in delivering ordered F-16 fighter jets today, saying if Iraq had the warplanes the recent ISIS takeovers never would have happened.
Maliki says Iraq should never have relied exclusively on the US to provide planes, and announced the purchase of fighter jets from Russia and Belarus today, saying Russia will have the used planes on the ground in Iraq in 2-3 days.
Maliki wasn’t clear exactly what kind of warplanes were bought from Russia, but predicted that within a week the Iraqi military would be destroying ISIS dens across the nation’s west.
US shipments of F-16s had been delayed as opposition factions, notably the Kurds, had objected to further arming Maliki, envisioning Maliki using the planes primarily against internal opponents. At present Iraq’s Air Force has no active planes other than trainers and transport planes.
IRAN………….RUSSIA……….. who next CHINA……………
America is awaiting regime change, has a seriously bad habit of picking the wrong Dictator!
Without air force war tactics have to go back to second generation warfare of WW1 combined with 4th generation tactics of urban engagement. Even with air raids against them the cities could still be taken though if the uprising would keep gaining popular support. All those wounds in Iraq haven't been healing at all. First thing they did was track and kill the judge who sentenced Saddam. And I suppose there's a long list still there. Hard to imagine for modern generations who cannot think beyond five years. Here we have people who are motivated by what happened 10, 50 or 100 years ago just as strongly.
If Obama is smart…serious doubt there…he'll remove all the "advisors" and all the embassy staff…and wash the American hands of Iraq for good because the lid is being removed from that snake pit and the Scheisse is about to hit the fan. Maliki is not going down without a fight and he's pissed enough to take shots at the American "advisors" for telling him he has to give up power.
As for the newly confirmed Ambassador Stuart Jones, you might want to rethink taking this job…just sayin…
The idea that you can buy second-hand jet aircraft today and have them in service two days later is absurd. If the planes were up for sale, they were probably mothballed and it would take more than a few days to get them ready to fly again. Equally, Iraqi pilots will have to be trained to fly them. That is a question of weeks, if not months. And, of course, they will have to be delivered and military aircraft do not have the same overfly rights as civilian aircraft. Thus, they can only be delivered via the Black Sea, with Turkey's consent, or via the Caspian, with Iran's consent. So if these planes actually do arrive and go into service at once, we can be fairly sure that they were taken directly from service and are not being flown by Iraqis. That could mean that Putin is doing America's dirty work for it, probably as part of his climbdown in Ukraine and is being allowed to save his face by posing, Kadaffi-style, as a "world statesman" and Maliki's saviour. That Lukashenko is involved shows that he too is feeling shaky. Whether it will do Maliki any good remains to be seen, but it certainly looks good for Ukraine.
Maliki better OPT for TRANSFORMERS, after all it killing the whole humanity, then why not SPEED it up.
I read somewhere on the net that Iran was returning a 130 fighter jets that were transfered to Iran during the Iraq war So why would they need planes from Russia???