At one time, back in the primordial mists of the pre-internet era, military operations were expected to comport with a generally accepted set of principles of war. They vary from nation to nation but the set used by the US military includes “security” and “surprise.” So imagine my shock when I read this in Reuters:

An Iraqi and Kurdish military force of some 20,000 to 25,000 troops is being prepared to recapture the city of Mosul from Islamic State fighters, probably in the April-May time frame, an official at the U.S. Central Command said on Thursday.

The official said Mosul was currently being held by 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters. No decision has been made on whether small numbers of U.S. military advisers might need to be on the ground close to Mosul to direct close air support, the official told a group of reporters on condition of anonymity.

Mosul, which had a population of over 1 million people, was captured by Islamic State fighters in June and is the largest city in the group’s self-declared caliphate, a stretch of territory that straddles the border between northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

The main attack force being assembled for the Mosul campaign would include five Iraqi army brigades, the official said. Three smaller brigades would act as a reserve force, and three brigades of Kurdish peshmerga troops would contain the city from the north and isolate it from Islamic State forces further west.

A so-called Mosul fighting force consisting mainly of former Mosul police officers and tribal fighters also is being assembled for the assault, the official said. About a brigade of counterterrorism troops also would be employed in the fight, he said. The total number of troops would be 20,000 to 25,000.

The aim of Iraqi and U.S. military leaders is to have all five Iraqi army brigades that comprise the main attack force participate in U.S.-led training currently going on in Iraq. That will begin once the present batch of 3,200 trainees rotate out of the five training sites, the official said.

From this, because this news story… which was not leaked but from a briefing provided by USCENTCOM… we have disclosed our objective, our strength, our order of battle, the fact that we will be relying on tribal auxiliaries, and the timing of the attack.

This. like Obama’s holding forth on Islamic theology, underscores the dangerous and lethally un-serious nature of the Obama regime. One has to assume that this offensive… which we can safely bet will never materialize outside some midnight masturbatory pizza party in the National Security Council’s offices… is being advertised as a way of showing Congress, “look, we can really kick ass with no US ground troops.”

Clawing our way back to international respectability after this bunch of assclowns leaves will be a multi-generational task on par with rebuilding Europe after World War II.