The Fall

Fortunately their military and civil service was U.S. trained... oh... wait...

Mr Abadi is dismissing senior officers appointed by Mr Maliki, but this has yet to make a noticeable difference in the effectiveness of the armed forces, which are notoriously corrupt. During the battle for Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June, Iraqi government forces nominally numbered 60,000 in the army, federal police and local police, but only one third were actually on duty. A common source of additional income for officers is for soldiers to kickback half their salaries to their officers in return for staying at home or doing another job.

The same system is universal in civilian ministries, which have far more people on their payroll than are actually employed.

A World Bank report just published reveals that out of 8,206 guards employed by one ministry only 603 were actually working. Some 132 senior officers have recently been sacked by Mr Abadi, but there is as yet no sign of the army being able to make a successful counter-attack against Isis. Worse, in Baghdad it has been unable to stop a wave of car bombs and suicide bombers, which continue to cause a heavy loss of civilian life.

And more...

An example of the continued inability of the Iraqi army to remedy the failings, which led to its loss of Mosul and Tikrit, came on 21 September when Isis overran a base at Saqlawiya, near Fallujah, west of Baghdad after besieging it for a week.

The final assault was preceded, as is customary with Isis attacks, by multiple suicide bombing attacks. A bomber driving a captured American Humvee packed with explosives was able to penetrate the base before blowing himself up.

This was followed up by an Isis assault team dressed in Iraqi army uniforms. Some 820 government soldiers stationed at the base broke up into small groups and fled by backroads but were ambushed.

What is striking about the loss of Saqlawiya is that during a siege lasting a week the Iraqi army was unable to help a garrison only 40 miles west of Baghdad.

All they needed was more time to get those game-changing M-1 tanks and F-16s good-to-go.

And...how are those air-strikes working out at several million U.S. tax-dollars per day?