--- title: ISIS, Mosul: The Pentagon Spills the Beans: Stupidity, or Strategy? description: TIME's Mark Thompson on the controversy over the Pentagon's talking Iraqi troop estimates in spring bid to retake Mosul from ISIS canonical: https://time.com/3717914/pentagon-mosul-isis/ author: Mark Thompson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-22T23:10:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:21.366Z article:section: Politics og:title: The Pentagon Spills the Beans: Stupidity, or Strategy? og:description: Lawmakers pounce on disclosures, which have been known for months og:url: https://time.com/3717914/pentagon-mosul-isis/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbc0530a0ef759ac7/6987806f0b72e331d36ddce1/464118872.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: Dozens of ISIL militants killed in Iraq's Mosul og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Pentagon Spills the Beans: Stupidity, or Strategy? twitter:description: Lawmakers pounce on disclosures, which have been known for months twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbc0530a0ef759ac7/6987806f0b72e331d36ddce1/464118872.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Pentagon Spills the Beans: Stupidity, or Strategy? > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=e19aecad-4898-4dd8-93bf-0e3b1be90d0c&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet ISIS' Leader, The Most Successful Terrorist Leader Since Osama Bin Laden [Watch (HLS stream): Meet ISIS' Leader, The Most Successful Terrorist Leader Since Osama Bin Laden](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BChA50n2.m3u8) (4:28)  _Published 2014-06-12. There's a name that you should remember: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the commander of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whose fighters now control large swaths of Iraq._ by [Mark Thompson](https://time.com/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Feb 22, 2015 11:10 PM UTC  ISIS members set fire to tires Sunday to mask their escape after clashing with Kurdish peshmerga forces outside Mosul. ISIS members set fire to tires Sunday to mask their escape after clashing with Kurdish peshmerga forces outside Mosul. Emrah Yorulmaz / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images by [Mark Thompson](https://time.com/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Feb 22, 2015 11:10 PM UTC Back on Dec. 10, lawmakers wanted to know how many Iraqi troops would be needed to drive the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Brett McGurk, the State Department’s special presidential envoy for defeating the militant group, said a force of 20,000 to 25,000 would be a “reasonable” estimate of its size. Spring was the goal for the timing of the counteroffensive, assuming the Iraqi army and their Kurdish peshmerga allies had enough troops and training by then. That timetable was a target freely, if privately, expressed by Pentagon officials since late last year, and [surfaced](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/world/middleeast/iraqis-prepare-isis-offensive-with-us-help.html) in numerous press reports. So why did a pair of influential Republican senators explode when they heard that an anonymous Pentagon official had relayed those same two key facts to reporters during a background briefing last Thursday? “Never in our memory can we recall an instance in which our military has knowingly briefed our own war plans to our enemies,” John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, also a member of the panel, [wrote](http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=c4a46c17-76dd-421d-b23c-099212e010cf) President Barack Obama on Friday. “These disclosures not only risk the success of our mission, but could also cost the lives of U.S., Iraqi, and coalition forces.” Graham has served as an Air Force lawyer, so perhaps he can be forgiven for hyperbole. McCain, a onetime Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam and held as a prisoner for more than five years, surely knows better. There is only one way to take an enemy-held city: surround it with overwhelming force, and then attack it until the foe buckles, or choke it until he starves. Everyone paying attention, on both sides of the fight against ISIS, has known for months that the battle for Mosul is going to be the climactic clash. “Certainly, ISIS knows that Mosul is the center piece of any counteroffensive,” Jack Keane, a retired four-star Army general, [told](http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2015/02/22/jeh-johnson-talks-plan-defeat-isis-immigration-standoff-potential-2016-dark-horse) Fox News on Sunday. “They know that. We’ve been knocking off lines of communications and isolating Mosul now for weeks, with air power, too. They know we would like to do that probably before Ramadan or do it after. So, timing is something that they can figure out themselves.” Both sides also know that it’s better to launch a counteroffensive sooner rather than later, thereby limiting the defenses ISIS can dig and build, which narrows the timeframe down to the spring. The U.S. military knows that it cannot support its Iraqi allies in that fight without being confident they will prevail. Their training and outfitting will take at least several more weeks. The arrival of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan (June 17) and summer (June 21), pretty much shuts the window on the operation about that time, Pentagon officials say, citing religious sensitivities and heat. By default, that leaves the April-May timeframe cited by the Pentagon briefer Thursday as the soonest the counteroffensive to retake Mosul could be launched if it is to be attempted before fall. The official from the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, heavily caveated the timing of the Mosul operation in his [telephone Q&A](http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5591) with Pentagon reporters from Centcom headquarters in Tampa. “The mark on the wall that we are still shooting for is the April-May timeframe,” he said, implying the timing wasn’t new and wasn’t secret. Beyond that, he said more than once, the U.S. and its allies would delay the assault if the Iraqi forces are “not ready, if the conditions are not set, if all the equipment that they need is not physically there.” The fact is, the U.S. has routinely telegraphed offensive operations before launching them. There was a flurry of stories detailing the “shock and awe” bombardment that would open the 2003 invasion of Iraq before it began. “If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you’d like to do is have it be a short conflict,” Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in response to a question from TIME at a breakfast two weeks before it started. “The best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable.” The U.S. military also offered previews of coming destruction before the battle for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, and in advance of the offensive against the Taliban in Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010. Leaking word of such attacks in advance, Pentagon officials say, can convince enemy fighters to abandon the fight. But they concede it can also stiffen the backbone of others. Such a tactic can also encourage the non-ISIS population in Mosul to rebel against the occupiers. So just how many Iraqi troops will retaking Mosul require? “We think it’s going to take in the range between 20,000 and 25,000,” the Central Command official said Thursday. He wasn’t risking the success of the eventual mission. He was simply echoing what McGurk told Congress more than two months ago. ## Transcript Here's a name to remember: Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi. You'll be hearing a lot of that over the next few days and weeks, because this is the leader of the terrorist group that has been making huge advances in Iraq and in Syria. He's also known as Abu Dua. None of these are his real names. Nobody's quite sure what is real name is, how old he is. There are only a couple of photographs available of him, and the mystique around this man is part of his power. His group is called the Islamist State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. And they began life as an offshoot of al- Qaeda, but in the past couple of years, they've become a very, very large organization, involving thousands of fighters. Attracting fighters, young jihadis from all over the world, including some in the United States. [ NOISE ] What makes al- Baghdadi so, so different, what makes him the most successful terrorist in modern times, is that he's not simply content with mayhem. Unlike Bin Laden, and Al Zawahiri, and Zarqawi, he's not simply content to have people killed, or to express a vision of what the world should be like. He actually wants to hold territory, and he wants to rule. And, that's what we are seeing in Iraq now. A, a manifestation of this ambition. He's willing to attack and take over towns Mosul, which has got two million people. And he's appointing governors there, he's appointing people to run the local services in all the territories that he's taking. He's trying to create his own perverse vision of paradise on Earth. [ NOISE ] What makes him even more dangerous now that he has control over so much territory in Iraq, is that he's gotten his hands on some serious firepower, and a lot of money. When his people took Mosul, they looted the banks and, according to some reports, took as much as $ 500 million worth of currency from those banks. Now keep in mind, he doesn't run a conventional army that requires paying salaries and things like that. A lot of people are willing to come and fight for him for free. That money could buy guns, can buy ammunition, and that, also, is what his people have been able to successfully take from these cities in Iraq. They've gone into the military bases, they have taken American made Humvees and other transportation. They've taken, by some reports, some helicopters, some planes. It's not clear that they actually know how to fly them, but there's another point to be made here. These successes make him even more prestigious in the eyes of many jihadis everywhere. In the last few months, his group Isis has been fighting internal struggles with other jihadi groups in Syria. But now that he's shown that he can be successful and he can take territory, don't be surprised if some of these other groups now want to come make up and join up with him. All around the world, angry, young men who are thinking about going to jihad and, and, and want to go and fight in Syria and Iraq, his banner is the one that they will go to. For the moment it would appear that his ambitions are, are restricted to that area of the world, to Syria and Iraq, but as we've seen in the past from other jihadi groups, that never remains limited in that way. Already we've seen that, somebody associated with him, or who's drawn inspiration for him, tried to mount a terrorist attack in Paris. European security authorities are terribly worried about the hundreds of young European Muslims, who've traveled to Syria to fight against Assad's forces there. Some of those men have joined Al- Baghdadi. And in time some, of those men will come back. And some Americans too who are fighting alongside with him. And they too, someday may come back to the US, and bring with them these ideas of jihad, and these ideas of what the world should be like. We saw what happened with that in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s , when Afghanistan became the recruiting ground for a new generation of jihadis. Syria and Iraq are the new Afghanistan. And where this man, Al- Baghdadi is doing, makes the whole world a much more dangerous place. 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