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Officials: U.S. knew 3 days before Mosul fell that Islamic State was moving forces
McGurk said the United States warned the Iraqi government on June 7 that American intelligence had received "early indications that ISIL was moving in force from Syria into Iraq and staging forces in western Mosul." He said U.S. officials had sought the urgent deployment of Kurdish peshmerga militia forces to eastern Mosul to stop the extremists' advance, but that the idea was blocked by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's administration."The government of Baghdad did not share the same sense of urgency and did not approve the deployments," McGurk said. "Iraqi military commanders promised to send nine brigades of force to Mosul in response to our warnings and we stressed, however, that the forces would not arrive in time." McGurk described the resulting events as "catastrophic." Yeah, I guess. Posted by: Uncle Phester 2014-07-24 |
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