The military says Defense Secretary Ash Carter “misspoke” when he told a Senate committee Wednesday the northern Iraqi city of Mosul would be “enveloped” by Iraq and Kurdish forces within five weeks.
Initially, U.S. military officials were scratching their heads about Carter’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, in which he appeared to be offering an overly optimistic timetable for the liberation of the de facto Islamic State capital in Iraq.
The secretary did seem a bit tongue-tied during the exchange in which he confused the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with the Iraqi city of Ramadi. “Some of those are [Iraqi security] forces coming from the south, some of them are two brigades of Peshmerga coming from the north. We would like to complete that envelopment before Ramadi,” apparently referring to Ramadan.
What the secretary meant to say, according to a military spokesman, is that Iraqis will begin “positioning” forces for the future envelopment of Mosul before Ramadan, which begins June 6, not that the envelopment would be complete by then.
When Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, was asked if it was realistic to expect that Iraqi forces could surround Mosul in five weeks, he gave a flat, unequivocal, “no.”
“Mosul will not be isolated in the next five weeks,” Warren told Pentagon reporters on a teleconference from Baghdad. “What we hope to do is control that southern line of communication in the next five weeks, and I think that’s probably what the secretary was referring to.”
The timetable for the liberation of Mosul is a subject of some frustration for the U.S., which is constantly trying to get the Iraqis to speed up their plans, offering combat assistance from Apache helicopters, for instance, which the Iraqi government has so far turned down.
The U.S. military refers to “the Iraqi way of fighting,” which is to surround the city, and wait until the enemy forces are neutralized with airstrikes, before moving in.
But, as was the case in Ramadi, that can result in many civilians deaths, and widespread destruction of infrastructure.
“You know, Ramadi is now recaptured but it’s a mess,” Carter admitted in his Senate testimony.
Warren admitted the Iraqi way is not the way U.S. forces would retake the city, but he said the plan is an Iraqi plan, and will be carried out on Iraq’s timetable.
“We do not want to destroy cities, that’s not our goal. We don’t want to harm civilians. That’s not our goal. So we’re going to do everything we can to ensure that doesn’t happen,” Warren said.
“But at the end of the day we have to understand there is a reason they say ‘war is hell.’ ”
