Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated on Tuesday that air attacks on the Medina Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard would be followed by a full-scale tank assault aimed at destroying the capital's outer ring of defenses.
Isaac, a Category 1 storm with surges of 10 to 14 feet, presented challenges less severe than the new ring of defenses around the city were designed to meet.
Elimination of the outer ring of defenses may be costly and time consuming, because they would receive artillery and rocket support from more heavily armed forces arrayed near Baghdad's center.
The brigade is the keystone of the so-called ring of steel defense line about 17 miles west of Tripoli, and for months NATO forces had identified it as the main obstacle to an advance to the capital.
But they were in rings of static defense.
The outer rings of this defense are what the U.S. military calls disruption zones, where Islamic State fighters are expected to counter the Iraqi advance through the use of mortars and rockets, suicide bombers, road obstacles and car bombs.
The Army's Third Infantry Division plunged deep into Iraq today, skirmishing with the Iraqi Army and militia forces along the Euphrates River as it neared the outer ring of Baghdad's defenses.
One idea is to attack an outer ring of enemy air defenses with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, opening an alley for an F-22 stealth jet carrying sensitive surveillance pods to fly deeper into contested territory, where it could, for example, guide a powerful sea-launched cruise missile to a mobile or hidden target.
He reminds his hip-hop-elder-statesmen peers that "Tupac had a nose ring"—a defense of the flamboyant sartorial choices of today's youth.
The remarks had the ring of a pre-emptive defense to criticism from Republicans nationwide should Mrs. Clinton win this high-profile election.
