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By all indications, the battle for Mosul will happen in stages. As in the recapture of Ramadi in December, Iraqi forces will first surround and cordon off the city, then gradually tighten the circle in a process that could take months. In a similar situation, American forces would maneuver into the heart of the city, much as they did in their assault on Baghdad in 2003. But Iraqi forces who do not have the same kind of battlefield support, particularly high-quality medical care have been far more risk-averse and deliberate in their operations.

A dozen Iraqi Army brigades, each of which includes anywhere from 800 to 1,600 troops, have been gathering at Qaiyara Airfield West, an Iraqi base 40 miles south of Mosul. Kurdish pesh merga fighters, who are positioned to the north and east, will also help isolate the city.

The eventual assault into Mosul will be carried out by Iraqs counterterrorism service, whose commandos have been trained by American Special Forces and are the countrys most reliable and proficient fighting force. Iraqs federal police and some Army units will also join the push into the city.

The United States military is poised to influence the battle in potentially decisive ways. Apache attack helicopters equipped with Hellfire missiles have been striking targets in northern Iraq, and American and French artillery can be positioned to provide support. American Special Operations commandos have also been active in northern Iraq.

American intelligence analysts estimate that 3,000 to 4,500 fighters remain in Mosul, a mixture of Iraqi militants and foreign recruits who have been steadily dropping under a barrage of coalition airstrikes over the past several months. One notable loss for the Islamic State was Omar al-Shishani, a Chechen and one of the groups top field commanders, who was killed in an airstrike in March in a town south of Mosul.

Their backs are against the wall, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who recently stepped down as the overall commander for the United States operations in Iraq and Syria, said in a telephone interview. He added that the militants were having trouble drawing new recruits to Syria and Iraq because of tougher border checks by Turkey. Theyre not the ISIS that drove there a couple of years ago, he said.

Even so, the Pentagon and its allies in the American-led coalition are bracing for a tough fight against an enemy that has burrowed a network of tunnels throughout Mosul, dug trenches and filled them with oil, and planted improvised explosives so densely they resemble minefields.

Mr. Obamas aides say he would like to be able to hand the Islamic State issue to the next president with the Iraq portion at least on the right trajectory, if not solved.

The presidents supporters say he does not want to pass to his successor a terrorism threat as bad as or worse than the menace Mr. Obama faced from Al Qaeda when he became commander in chief.

He talks about being a relay swimmer, about the idea that hes got this moment where he has to turn things over, said Derek Chollet, a former assistant defense secretary in the Obama administration.

But Iraq has a way of confounding even the best-laid plans, and the presidents critics see it differently. Suppose there are a million refugees from Mosul. What are they going to do? said Eliot A. Cohen, who was a State Department counselor in the Bush administration. Id like to see Mosul retaken, but one thing we all learned from Iraq is that things never simply break your way.

American military officials acknowledge that retaking Mosul will not defeat the Islamic State, because Raqqa, Syria, the groups de facto capital, is the heart of its self-declared caliphate.

It is not the end of the caliphate if Mosul falls, General MacFarland said. But if Raqqa falls, the caliphate as we know it really begins to unfold.

For all its complexity, however, Mosul presents an opportunity for the White House that may not be readily at hand in Syria. After nearly eight years in Iraq during the Bush and Obama administrations, the American military knows the terrain well and has a network of large and well-secured Iraqi bases it can use to assist in the fight. It also has a sizable proxy force: the thousands of Iraqi and Kurdish troops the Americans have trained.

Some officials expect the militants to pull back from the eastern side of Mosul, which is divided by the Tigris River, and instead defend the west bank, where the government center is. The west bank has many narrow streets, making it difficult for tanks and artillery to operate.

A key question is who will secure the city once the Islamic State is driven out.

Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which are a politically powerful movement in Iraq, have been accused of detaining and killing hundreds of men who fled the fighting in and around Falluja this year. To guard against human rights abuses, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is expected to give those militias a role well outside the city.

The Kurds have already said they will not send their forces into Mosul once it has been secured. Nor does the United States want Iraq to keep its largely Shiite army inside the city any longer than it needs to.

As a result, security will have to be provided by thousands of local police officers, including many who have yet to be trained, as well as former officers who joined the Iraqi Army after the Islamic State attacked and now need to be recalled to their police units. More than 20,000 tribal fighters, whom the Iraqis and Kurds are vetting, will also help with security.

This plan has the virtue of giving the lead to local security forces, but it also means that one of the most delicate phases of the operation is being entrusted to fighters who are lightly equipped and whom the United States will not be directly advising.

A main concern for critics is that there is no plan in Iraq for how to govern Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Province. This has prompted fear that retaking the city could aggravate the tensions between the predominantly Sunni population of Mosul and the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that fueled the rise of the Islamic State in the first place.

There is no agreement about anything after the liberation, said Atheel al-Nujaifi, who was the governor of Nineveh Province when the militants charged into Mosul in 2014. It is very dangerous.

Mr. Nujaifi is promoting a plan to give the region around Mosul far greater autonomy. But there are no indications that the Iraqi government will go along with that degree of decentralization.

While some Pentagon aides are worried, others in the Obama administration say that help from the United States will enable the Iraqis, Kurds and various other groups in Nineveh to figure out a political plan, in part by connecting the disparate factions, including Mr. Nujaifis successor as governor, Nofal Agoob.

But carving up the political spoils is not the only challenge.

Of the two million people who resided in Mosul before it was seized by the Islamic State, aid organizations estimate that about 1.2 million remain. Humanitarian assistance groups are already stretched thin from dealing with operations to recapture towns outside Mosul.

Though residents are being urged to stay in their homes, civilians fleeing the fighting could number in the hundreds of thousands. Some aid groups estimate that as many as a million people could be displaced by fighting to recapture the city, creating a daunting humanitarian task that the United Nations and other organizations say they are not yet ready to deal with.

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A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. to Open Battle to Retake Iraqi City From ISIS.

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U.S. Set to Open a Climactic Battle Against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq

It's a race against time: this will be an improvised base for troops from Iraq's 9th Armored Division amid final preparations for the assault to end ISIS' control of Iraq's second largest city and the group's last major stronghold in the country.

Iraqi troops were last in this part of northern Iraq in summer 2014, when they were fleeing the rampant advance of ISIS fighters.

Now, as part of an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government and the United States, they are preparing to reverse that humiliating loss.

"Today, you are closer than any time in the past to get rid of Daesh's injustice and tyranny," Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi told the people of Mosul on Tuesday, in the first live official telecast of state media to Mosul from Baghdad.

Some 4,000 troops of the Iraqi Security Forces are expected to arrive in this sector within days. Among the advance party of some 160 soldiers, relations with local Kurdish Peshmerga officers appear cordial and the mood relaxed.

There are regular meetings between the two sides and a Joint Operations Room has been set up. The Kurds -- who have played a key role in the fightback against ISIS -- say their role will be to support the ISF when the offensive gets underway, but they won't enter Mosul itself, a largely Sunni-Arab city.

At newly established front lines, bulldozers carve deep trenches out of the flinty soil to deter the most feared of ISIS' weapons: large suicide truck bombs. The villages immediately behind the front lines, occupied by ISIS until recent months, are still empty, some of their buildings obliterated by airstrikes.

When asked when the attack will begin, Iraqi and Peshmerga officers have the same one-word answer: "Soon." It's widely thought that the multipronged offensive will begin in the second half of this month. In the meantime, there's been an uptick in coalition airstrikes -- mainly by US, French and British aircraft -- in and around Mosul.

By day there is scant evidence of movement or an ISIS presence among the ruined villages they still control to the east of Mosul. But Kurdish fighters say the enemy uses the cover of night to approach their positions with mortars and snipers.

Everyone expects a tough battle ahead. In the two years it has held Mosul, ISIS has built an elaborate network of defenses, including moats filled with oil that stretch around the outskirts of the city, ready to be set ablaze to obscure the vision of coalition air power.

US military officials estimate there are 3,500-5,000 ISIS fighters, a mixture of Iraqis and foreign fighters, in Mosul. ISIS supporters claim there are at least 7,000 fighters there.

But there are many other unknowns as the battle for Mosul looms:

How many ISIS fighters will stay to fight -- and how many will try to escape to fight another day? If not captured or killed, they could splinter into terror cells across a wide swath of Iraq.

How much support does ISIS retain in the city, if any, and where is it concentrated?

How many among the approximately 1 million civilians still thought to be trapped in the city will try to leave, and how many will hunker down?

And will there be an uprising against the ISIS presence among the city's people as the offensive nears the gates of Mosul? There has already been sporadic resistance, according to reports from inside Mosul.

Some Peshmerga commanders expect it will take at least three months to clear the city as ISIS leaves sleeper cells behind. Others expect a quicker victory, with ISIS leaders choosing to retreat to the vast desert west of Mosul.

There are also plenty of questions about the forces ranged against ISIS in Mosul. The offensive will be led by the Iraqi Security Forces. Some, such as the Golden Division, have had plenty of battle experience -- in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere. But some contingents have only just finished training. Their relationship with the Peshmerga is untested.

Prime Minister al-Abadi and KRG President Masoud Barzani have agreed that only the ISF and Peshmerga will take part in the operation, but a variety of other militia also want to be involved.

They include Yazidi, Turkmen and Christian battalions trained and armed since the fall of Mosul, as well as a contingent of former Mosul military and police trained by Turkey and under the command of the city's former governor, Atheel al Nujaifi.

"We will raise the Iraqi flag in the center of the city of Mosul as we have raised it in Qayyara and Shirqat, and before it in Baiji, Tikrit, Ramadi, and Falluja and many other towns and villages that have been returned to the people of Iraq," al-Abadi said in his radio address.

The Turkish trainers -- and heavy artillery -- remain on Mount Bashiqa some 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Mosul. CNN has witnessed Turkish guns opening up against ISIS positions on the plains below.

The Iraqi government has told Turkey its presence is unwelcome, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Turkish parliament on Saturday: "We will play a role in the Mosul liberation operation and no-one can prevent us from participating."

But the powerful Shia militia, known as the Hashd al Shabi, is not expected to have a direct role in the offensive to take Mosul, an overwhelmingly Sunni city. Human rights groups have accused the Hashd of widespread abuses during assaults on other largely Sunni areas.

The longer the offensive continues and the worse the destruction gets, the more likely that a tide of civilians will try to escape.

The UN refugee agency's Iraq representative, Bruno Geddo, said last week that the exodus from Mosul could be "one of the largest man-made displacement crises of recent times." They will need transport and basic necessities; and the Peshmerga and ISF will need to screen those leaving.

There is anxiety about suicide bombers -- especially teenage boys -- infiltrating the outflow. The ISF has already stated it won't allow civilians to leave in cars for fear of vehicle bombs.

Frantic preparations are being made to prepare camps for as many as 700,000 people leaving Mosul -- but aid agencies can only guess how many will flee and in which directions.

The 11 camps completed or planned will only accommodate 120,000 people, according to the UNHCR. Geddo says that only a third of the $196 million budget required has been funded.

Relief agencies are also dealing with people displaced by recent fighting south of Mosul, and expect as many as 100,000 to flee their homes as Iraqi and Kurdish forces close in on another ISIS pocket around the town of Hawija. There are already 3.3 million internally displaced people in Iraq.

There's also great concern among diplomats and Kurdish officials about plans for securing, stabilizing and governing Mosul once ISIS is evicted. US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Senate committee last week that some 15,000 Sunni tribal elements are being trained and equipped to be the holding force once Mosul is liberated. "We're well on track" to meet that goal, he said.

In the longer run, integrating the various militia that have sprouted since Mosul fell to ISIS, devising better governance for the city, and making it liveable again, are challenges as great as liberating it in the first place.

US and Iraqi officials have spoken of creating eight self-governing areas in and around Mosul. Ever since Iraq's new constitution was passed, there's been much talk of local autonomy, but it's rarely been delivered. To many observers, Mosul will be the acid test of Iraq's viability -- and whether its complex mosaic of sectarian, tribal and ethnic groups can live in peace, if not harmony.

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Stakes high for Iraq as Mosul offensive looms - CNN.com

After all the clamor for moderators to fact-check the candidates during Monday night's presidential debate, Donald Trump flipped the script on Lester Holt by rejecting his assertion Trump backed the war in Iraq - and history backs The Donald.

Holt began one question by stating that Republican nominee Trump had supported the war in Iraq before the invasion, a frequent claim from critics that Trump has adamantly disputed during the primary and general election seasons. Holt on Monday, and many in the media before him, pointed to a September 2002 interview Trump gave to Howard Stern in which he said Yeah, I guess so in response to a question about whether President Bush should go to war.

When Trump pushed back on Holt, saying I was against the war in Iraq, Holt countered: The record does not show that.

Then Trump laid out his case.

The record shows that Im right, he said. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyones asked me that, I said, very lightly, I dont know, maybe, who knows? essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about the economy is more important [than going to war].

Holt repeated that his reference was to 2002 and then tried to move the discussion along.

But Cavuto himself picked up the thread post-debate on Fox Business Network, unearthing the clip Trump referenced, from January 28, 2003 Nearly two months before the Iraq War began on March 20. In the video, Cavuto asks Trump how much time President Bush should spend on the economy vs. on Iraq.

Well, Im starting to think that people are much more focused now on the economy, Trump said. Theyre getting a little bit tired of hearing Were going in, were not going in. Whatever happened to the days of Douglas MacArthur? Either do it or dont do it.

Trump continued: Perhaps he shouldnt be doing it yet. And perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations.

After the invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent fallout, Trump became a much stronger and far more vocal critic of the war.

Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that were in, he said in an August 2004 issue of Esquire. I would never have handled it that wayTwo minutes after we leave, theres going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And hell have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam [Hussein] didnt have.

Yet despite the Cavuto clip, and the ambivalence of Trumps own on-the-fence answer during the 2002 Stern interview, post-debate fact-checkers nearly universally wrote that Trump had lied during the exchange with Holt.

Politifact rated the claim False. The website even noted the Cavuto exchange, while remarking At most he suggested waiting for the United Nations to do something.

Politico blared: Trump [again] says he opposed the Iraq War. Thats still false.

Trump seemingly launched his own preemptive strike against the fact-checkers, however, complaining to Holt that the prevailing Trump/Iraq narrative was nonsense.

That is a mainstream media nonsense put out by [Hillary Clinton], Trump said during Mondays debate. Because she Frankly, I think the best person in her campaign is mainstream media.

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2003 clip backs up Trump on Iraq War opposition | Fox News

By Stephen Kalin and Yeganeh Torbati | BAGHDAD/ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

BAGHDAD/ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. The United States will send around 600 new troops to Iraq to assist local forces in the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State that is expected later this year, U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.

The new deployment is the third such boost in U.S. troop levels in Iraq since April, underscoring the difficulties President Barack Obama has had in extracting the U.S. military from the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement that his government asked for more U.S. military trainers and advisers. Obama called it a "somber decision."

"I've always been very mindful that when I send any of our outstanding men and women in uniform into a war theater, they're taking a risk that they might not come back," Obama said during a town hall event at a military base in Fort Lee, Virginia, televised on CNN.

The new troops will train and advise Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga forces, primarily in the Mosul fight, but also serve "to protect and expand Iraqi security forces' gains elsewhere in Iraq," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

"We've said all along - whenever we see opportunities to accelerate the campaign, we want to seize them," Carter said.

Though Iraqi forces will be in the combat role, "American forces combating ISIL in Iraq are in harm's way," Carter said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Some of the 615 new service members will be based at Qayara air base, about 40 miles (60 km) from Mosul, Carter said. Iraqi forces recaptured the base from Islamic State militants in July and have been building it into a logistics hub to support their offensive into the northern city.

Other U.S. troops will go to Ain al Asad air base in western Iraq, where hundreds of U.S. personnel have been training Iraqi army forces.

Carter, who spoke to reporters while traveling in New Mexico, declined to name other locations where the new U.S. forces will be based.

However, he said some of the forces would help enhance intelligence gathering efforts, particularly related to Islamic State's plans to conduct attacks outside its own territory.

"We are prepared to continue to help the Iraqi security forces consolidate their control over the country," Carter said.

"Mosul will be the last of the very large cities that needs to be recaptured, but theyll need to continue to consolidate control over the whole city, he added, leaving the door open for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq after the fall of Mosul.

Mosul is Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the troops would be deployed to Iraq in the coming weeks.

Three U.S. service members have been killed in direct combat since the launch of the U.S. campaign against Islamic State.

Abadi met with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden last week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, though it was not clear whether the agreement was sealed there.

The United States currently has 4,565 troops in Iraq as part of a U.S.-led coalition providing extensive air support, training and advice to the Iraqi military, which collapsed in 2014 in the face of Islamic State's territorial gains and lightning advance toward Baghdad.

Iraqi forces, including Kurdish peshmerga forces and mostly Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, have retaken around half of that territory over the past two years, but Mosul, the largest city under the ultra-hardline group's control anywhere across its self-proclaimed caliphate, is likely to be the biggest battle yet.

The United States has gradually increased the number of U.S. troops in Iraq this year, and moved them closer to the front lines of battle. Obama approved sending 560 more troops to Iraq in July, three months after the United States said it would dispatch about 200 more troops there.

To send the new troops, the White House will raise its cap on U.S. forces in Iraq from 4,647, to 5,262 troops, a senior U.S. defense official said.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders say the push on Mosul could begin by the second half of October. Carter said the campaign to expel Islamic State from Mosul would intensify "in the coming weeks."

The recapture of Mosul would be a major boost for plans by Abadi and the United States to weaken the militant group.

Current U.S. troop levels in Iraq are still a fraction of the 170,000 deployed at the height of the nine-year occupation that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, sparking an al Qaeda-backed insurgency and throwing the country into a sectarian civil war.

Loath to become mired in another conflict overseas, the White House has insisted there would be no American "boots on the ground." While coalition troops were initially confined to a few military bases, Americans have inched closer to the action as the campaign progresses.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Ahmed Rasheed; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington and Roberta Rampton in Fort Lee, Virginia; Editing by Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)

ISTANBUL/ANKARA Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggested on Thursday that emergency rule could be extended beyond a year and rounded on rating agencies after Moody's cut Turkey to "junk" status, helping send the lira to its weakest in almost two months.

JERUSALEM Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to pay a rare visit to Jerusalem on Friday to attend the funeral of former Israeli leader Shimon Peres, a Palestinian official said on Thursday.

GENEVA The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday declined to set up an independent inquiry into abuses in Yemen, instead calling on a national inquiry to investigate by violations by all sides, including the killing of civilians and attacks on hospitals.

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U.S. to send more troops to Iraq ahead of Mosul battle

35 Photos

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces vehicle down a main road inthe northern city of Mosul, Iraq.

AP

The Iraqi government appeared to be gearing up for the long-anticipated offensive to reclaim Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, with the Prime Minister announcing a request for more U.S. troops to help in the battle.

A U.S. government official confirmed to CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan that the American military was prepared to meet the request.

In consultation with the Government of Iraq, the United States is prepared to provide additional U.S. military personnel to train and advise the Iraqis as the planning for the Mosul campaign intensifies, said the official.

Mosul is the biggest urban area controlled by ISIS in Iraq -- the countrys second-largest city. It sits about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. ISIS has controlled the metropolis since the summer of 2014.

Iraqi officials have said they plan to retake the city by the end of the year.

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There is a fierce battle occurring outside of Mosul, the largest ISIS-controlled city in Iraq. U.S.-trained Iraqi army and Kurdish forces have ke...

If the U.S. does send additional military advisers into Iraq, it wont be the first time this year it has done so.

The government said in July that 560 more troops would be deployed to help establish a newly retaken air base as a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement himself during an unannounced visit to the country.

Most of those troops were to be devoted to the build-up of the Qayara air base, about 40 miles south of Mosul, and include engineers, logistics personnel and other forces, Carter said in Baghdad. They were to help Iraqi security forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the key city.

These additional U.S. forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight, Carter said in July.

American advisers have been working at brigade level with Iraqi special operations forces for months.

Mr. Obama, in April,allowed U.S. troops to assist Iraqi forces at brigade and battalion levels, where they could be at greater risk closer to the battle. They remain behind front lines. They previously had been limited to advising at headquarters and division levels, further from the battle.

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ISIS still controls about a third of Syria and Iraq, including Mosul. The Iraqi city is isolated from the world since ISIS took it over in 2014. ...

For months, Iraqi Kurdish militias working with the U.S. have been pushing into ISIS territory north of Mosul.

In March this year, CBS News Holly Williams met some of the Mosul residents who had managed aterrifyingescape fromthe ISIS-controlled city, and they told her people in Mosul were growing angry with the militants, and that could make retaking the city a little easier when Iraqi forces eventually begin their offensive.

Williams met one man who showed her the marks of torture; burns from electric wires on his back and arms. His only crime was smoking, illegal under ISIS rule and its harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

Another man said he had seen another Mosul resident beheaded after being caught with a cell phone SIM card. Another told us three men were caught escaping recently, and ISIS hanged them in the street.

Theyre a criminal gang, cried one man. Weve been surviving on water and bread.

When they first came they were tough, said another. But now they can see that Mosul is turning against them.

2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Iraq asks for more US troops for Mosul offensive and America ...