Mosul

Christopher A. Lawrence
March 24, 2016

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Well, they are finally going to re-take Mosul. I think we heard that before, but this time it is probably true.

Link: Mosul

They are saying they may take it by the end of 2016 or early 2017. That is a very long time, considering how close the Iraq Army is to it. They are 70 km (45 miles) away from Mosul! Mosul was taken by ISIL in early June 2014. So they are looking at 2 1/2 years before the second city of Iraq is reclaimed.

Just for comparison on 30 March 1972, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong started their large spring offensive (the Easter Offensive). On 1 May 1972, the South Vietnamese Army gave up Quang Tri in the most northern province in Vietnam. This was the provincial capital of Quang Tri province. They withdrew from the capital and the province at that time. In mid-September 1972, the South Vietnamese Army had retaken Quang Tri. This was 4 1/2 months later. They held it until the 1975 offensive, which ended South Vietnam.

Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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