Iraqi policemen raise their weapons during a training session at a camp in the Bardarash district in January The Pentagon took the unusual step on Thursday of disclosing plans for an Iraqi-led attempt to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from Islamist militants with a ground offensive this spring. A senior US official said that a force of 20,000 Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers was being prepared to conduct the battle against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant , known as Isis, which took control of the northern Iraqi city last year. The US has been publicly signalling an impending assault to retake Mosul for months, in part as an attempt to frighten Isis fighters or convince non-Isis insurgent groups that have worked with it to drift away While the broad objective of launching a ground campaign to retake Mosul in the late spring or early summer has been widely […]