There was an unintentionally funny article about the Iraqi army at Yahoo News.  The Iraqi army is slowly advancing on Mosul in Northern Iraq, but they are stymied by a handful of Islamic State bandits: It took up to 10 days for Iraqi troops to move a few hundred meters (yards) and retake the neighborhood of al-Barid, a district of grand, upscale homes where fruit trees grow in the gardens. There were only a few IS fighters in the neighborhood, but they were able to hold back the much larger Iraqi force because they were faster and more nimble than the slow-moving convoys of hundreds of troops, said Hatem al-Kurdi, one of the residents who remained in the district throughout the fight. The militants "cut holes in the walls between the homes so they could always be moving from one position to another," al-Kurdi said. For every few hundred meters of their territory, the IS militants allocate as few as four to five fighters, along with a handful of car bombs,...(Read Full Post)