Jihadists Seize Iraq's Nineveh Province!

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josie_L said:
Although I never agreed to an invasion of Iraq, the Middle East will implode if the U.S. does not interfere, I do not think I exaggerate when I say this.
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The U.S. wants the ME to implode and it wants terrorists in power there, so they can make dirty deals with them that an otherwise legit government would not make.
 
Coatimundi said:
Well… this isn’t good.

The first possible signs of sectarian killings of Sunnis appeared in Iraq on Tuesday, as 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and the bodies of four young men who had been shot were found dumped on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

A police source in Baquba said the prisoners were killed after militants who had been advancing on Baquba attacked the police station, where the men, who were suspected of having ties to the militants, were being held for questioning.
…
In eastern Baghdad, the bodies of four young men were found without identity documents on a street in the Benuk neighborhood on Tuesday morning… The victims were between 25 and 30 years old and had been shot numerous times, he said.

The killings fit the familiar pattern of death squads during the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. Bodies would be dumped in streets and empty lots after execution-style killings, often without identity documents. Many of the extrajudicial killings, as well as kidnappings, were the work of Shiite militias, often in cooperation with the Shiite-dominated police force, although Shiites living in Sunni neighborhoods were killed as well. At the peak of the violence, as many as 80 bodies a day were found in Baghdad and its immediate suburbs.
nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/middleeast/sectarian-violence-appears-to-spread-to-streets-of-baghdad.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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These kind of killings have been seen before as you say. The war ‘experts’ on every news channel these days simply act like they never existed and that ISIS is some totally new group who invented a never before seen brutality against its enemies. We had won the war in Iraq they say. Some win, when you have to PAY people to not kill each other. 😦
 
Ridgerunner said:
I am having difficulty understanding why the U.S. does not remove everybody from the embassy in Baghdad, unless, perhaps, the jihadis are visibly running out of steam or we have obtained protection from Iran. Either is possible, one supposes. Perhaps both.
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They removed some to the south others north. The rest are protected, the airport and the road to it are outside the green area. The road is a problem as it was when we had 100,000-troops there. Isis has Baghdad surrounded by 3-points. The president is considering his options, which seem to require boots on the ground and probably collateral damage.

“Already at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, dozens of Marines and Army troops have moved in to beef up security. Another 100 personnel are in the region to provide support if needed, the Pentagon said.” CNN

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2014%2F06%2F17%2Fworld%2Fmeast%2Firaq-crisis%2F&ei=IImgU4-wGMmOyAT084GABw&usg=AFQjCNHCbe3_SS3K2bIgHYed54JkaWXJ8Q
 
seekerz said:
These kind of killings have been seen before as you say. The war ‘experts’ on every news channel these days simply act like they never existed and that ISIS is some totally new group who invented a never before seen brutality against its enemies.
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I do not doubt that ISIS is unspeakably brutal. We shouldn’t downplay that. However, I am not sure they are unique among insurgent/terrorist groups in that regard.
seekerz said:
Some win, when you have to PAY people to not kill each other. 😦
Click to expand...
Here in the US, we know that the incidence of urban violence correlates with youth unemployment. I am not sure the situation in Iraq, where the US paid for the establishment of Sunni militias, is all that different. If people, particularly young men, have little constructive to do and they are disillusioned about a meaningful future, it tends to make them angry and reckless.

This current conflict is thriving because of the political situation. Resolving it will take more than military power. Unfortunately, the government in Baghdad does not seem to understand that.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has presented himself as the man who could bring Iraqis together, but with the collapse of his army before a Sunni militant assault, he has taken on only one role — that of commander in chief of Iraq.

He is spending much of his time on the military side of the presidential compound, while some of his close civilian aides have taken to wearing starched military fatigues. He spends the better part of his day running the war.
…
What he does not do, by all accounts, is spend much time on the political reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds that his international allies in Washington and Tehran have insisted is his country’s only possible salvation. Even his top aide in charge of reconciliation said Monday that he thinks it is all but hopeless at this point.
…
In a rare show of concord, Mr. Obama has been joined by President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in pleading with Mr. Maliki to work with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds. As the Iraqi leader continues to resist those calls, though, the outside powers and prominent Iraqi politicians are increasingly questioning whether he will ever take such steps and, if not, whether to jettison him in favor of someone who will.
nytimes.com/2014/06/17/world/middleeast/sunnis-and-kurds-on-sidelines-of-iraq-leaders-military-plans.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=photo-spot-region&region=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot&_r=0
 
Wesley Clark: ISIS gains a ‘launching pad against America’
Sunni militants have seized the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, officials and residents say, following the capture of Mosul and Tikrit last week.

Former General Wesley Clark tells the BBC’s Katty Kay, the gains by ISIS creates the possibility of a “terrorist-based government at the very heart of this region”.

And despite US forces leaving Iraq several years ago, Gen Clark says Americans should be concerned what happens in the country, as ISIS held land “provides a launching pad against America and American interests worldwide”.

bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27878912
 
GaryTaylor said:
The president is considering his options, which seem to require boots on the ground and probably collateral damage.
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I hate that phrase. It’s a euphemism for the killing of innocent people. It is an attempt to sanitise the killing of innocents. If you reasonably expect ‘collateral damage’ then you are committing murder by your action.
 
Coatimundi said:
Well… this isn’t good.

The first possible signs of sectarian killings of Sunnis appeared in Iraq on Tuesday, as 44 Sunni prisoners were killed in a government-controlled police station in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and the bodies of four young men who had been shot were found dumped on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.

A police source in Baquba said the prisoners were killed after militants who had been advancing on Baquba attacked the police station, where the men, who were suspected of having ties to the militants, were being held for questioning.
…
In eastern Baghdad, the bodies of four young men were found without identity documents on a street in the Benuk neighborhood on Tuesday morning… The victims were between 25 and 30 years old and had been shot numerous times, he said.

The killings fit the familiar pattern of death squads during the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. Bodies would be dumped in streets and empty lots after execution-style killings, often without identity documents. Many of the extrajudicial killings, as well as kidnappings, were the work of Shiite militias, often in cooperation with the Shiite-dominated police force, although Shiites living in Sunni neighborhoods were killed as well. At the peak of the violence, as many as 80 bodies a day were found in Baghdad and its immediate suburbs.
nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/middleeast/sectarian-violence-appears-to-spread-to-streets-of-baghdad.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSum&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Click to expand...
So, death squads on both sides? Shiites against Sunnis and Sunnis against Shiites? This is the result of the US expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of young Americans dead? After 10 years of US effort, things have gotten only worse?
 
Coatimundi said:
I do not doubt that ISIS is unspeakably brutal. We shouldn’t downplay that. However, I am not sure they are unique among insurgent/terrorist groups in that regard.

Here in the US, we know that the incidence of urban violence correlates with youth unemployment. I am not sure the situation in Iraq, where the US paid for the establishment of Sunni militias, is all that different. If people, particularly young men, have little constructive to do and they are disillusioned about a meaningful future, it tends to make them angry and reckless.

This current conflict is thriving because of the political situation. Resolving it will take more than military power. Unfortunately, the government in Baghdad does not seem to understand that.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has presented himself as the man who could bring Iraqis together, but with the collapse of his army before a Sunni militant assault, he has taken on only one role — that of commander in chief of Iraq.

He is spending much of his time on the military side of the presidential compound, while some of his close civilian aides have taken to wearing starched military fatigues. He spends the better part of his day running the war.
…
What he does not do, by all accounts, is spend much time on the political reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds that his international allies in Washington and Tehran have insisted is his country’s only possible salvation. Even his top aide in charge of reconciliation said Monday that he thinks it is all but hopeless at this point.
…
In a rare show of concord, Mr. Obama has been joined by President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in pleading with Mr. Maliki to work with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds. As the Iraqi leader continues to resist those calls, though, the outside powers and prominent Iraqi politicians are increasingly questioning whether he will ever take such steps and, if not, whether to jettison him in favor of someone who will.
nytimes.com/2014/06/17/world/middleeast/sunnis-and-kurds-on-sidelines-of-iraq-leaders-military-plans.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=photo-spot-region&region=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot&_r=0
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These young people are/were not brutally killing their countrymen primarily because of lack of financial/employment prospects (that would be what triggered the largely peaceful Arab Spring phenomenon seen in places like Tunisia and Egypt). Therefore paying them to to not torture/maim/kill is distinctly different from paying/employing urban youth to keep them on the right side of the law.

There is a deeper socio-cultural basis for this violence which can neither be solved by outsiders nor by force. What outsiders can conceivably do, is broker peace negotiations by first giving all parties a vision of what mutual assured destruction actually looks like. That’s the vision which stemmed the nuclear arms race - that’s what probably stands a chance of success in the ME.

Instead, we seem to choose the side most likely to direct its brutality domestically (as opposed to internationally) or rather, we allow one side to convince us that the other side is a greater threat to us. So instead of making peace, we sort of ‘fix’ the scales of war to give one side the advantage. Quite predictably, that leads to more brutal repression (by the winning side) and more reactionary radicalism (by the losing side) than what we started out with.
 
"‘The personnel will provide assistance to the Department of State,’ White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement, ‘in connection with the temporary relocation of some staff from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the U.S. Consulates General in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman [Jordan].’
‘The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remains open,’ Carney added, ‘and a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission.’

Obama said that their only purpose will be to protect U.S. personnel and the embassy in Baghdad – and not to join in the fierce fighting raging outside the Iraqi capital."

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2659025/BREAKING-NEWS-Obama-announces-275-US-troops-WILL-sent-Iraq-protect-American-embassy-days-saying-not-return.html#ixzz34vqWOh2B

Doesn’t appear as safe as some would suggest in the media.
 
Tomdstone said:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Cabinet accused Saudi Arabia of promoting “genocide” on Tuesday by backing Sunni militias tearing through their country.
nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/iraq-cabinet-accuses-saudi-arabia-spurring-genocide-n133091
I thought that Saudi Arabia was a key ally of the United States?
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Well, Saudis are Sunnis and I believe ISIS is made up of militants from varying countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia. There is a possibility that SA is supporting Sunni militias (I’ve heard it mentioned elsewhere).
 
Thorns said:
The U.S. wants the ME to implode and it wants terrorists in power there, so they can make dirty deals with them that an otherwise legit government would not make.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I don’t buy this, i.e., if the Middle East implodes and ISIS takes over we’re all going to be in deep dodo, including the U.S…
 
Tomdstone said:
I thought that Saudi Arabia was a key ally of the United States?
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t believe that for a second. The money used by the 9/11 hijackers during their stay here was funneled through the Saudi embassy in Washington DC and some transportation and living arrangements for two of the hijackers were coordinated by the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. So, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they are supporting ISIS.
 
GaryTaylor said:
"‘The personnel will provide assistance to the Department of State,’ White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement, ‘in connection with the temporary relocation of some staff from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the U.S. Consulates General in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman [Jordan].’
‘The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remains open,’ Carney added, ‘and a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission.’

Obama said that their only purpose will be to protect U.S. personnel and the embassy in Baghdad – and not to join in the fierce fighting raging outside the Iraqi capital."

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2659025/BREAKING-NEWS-Obama-announces-275-US-troops-WILL-sent-Iraq-protect-American-embassy-days-saying-not-return.html#ixzz34vqWOh2B

Doesn’t appear as safe as some would suggest in the media.
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Unless the jihadis are thinned out at the point of the spear, or Iran is going to protect Americans, this has a Dien Bien Phu aspect to it. SURELY this government knows better than to set up an undermanned island in a super-hostile environment. SURELY.
 
Tomdstone said:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Cabinet accused Saudi Arabia of promoting “genocide” on Tuesday by backing Sunni militias tearing through their country.
nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/iraq-cabinet-accuses-saudi-arabia-spurring-genocide-n133091
I thought that Saudi Arabia was a key ally of the United States?
Click to expand...
The royal Saudi family is an ally only to the Saudi royal family. it will do anything it can to keep its enemies at bay, largely with money. It’s true within Saudi society. It was true with Yasser Arafat. It’s true today with Fatah and Hamas. It’s undoubtedly true among the jihadis in Syria, and it’s probably true in Iraq as well. Buying off enemies and buying mercenaries has gone on forever in the Middle East, and not just in the Middle East. Does anyone seriously believe, for example, that our imbalance of trade with China is anything other than a “buy off” of a potential enemy?

The Saudi royals (there are tens of thousands of them) can’t fight their way to safety, and they know it. For the time being, they can buy it. Saudi Arabia fears Iran most of all, and will gladly pay anybody, including ISIS, that keeps Iran off its doorstep. Probably the Saudi royal family knows ISIS is an inconstant mercenary force that would turn on them someday as well. So, I’m sure they have plenty in Swiss banks against that day. They are allies of the U.S. so long as the U.S. is a strong force that can protect them. Otherwise, not. When we pulled out of Iraq, I am sure it gave Saudis a lot to think about. We all think about the threat of ISIS, and we should. I’m sure the Saudis do too. But the threat of Iran is much farther along the road than what ISIS represents, for the Saudis and for us as well. Iran can never be Saudi Arabia’s “friend”, nor ours, as long as the mullahs rule Iran.
 
Tomdstone said:
So, death squads on both sides? Shiites against Sunnis and Sunnis against Shiites? This is the result of the US expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of young Americans dead? After 10 years of US effort, things have gotten only worse?
Click to expand...
No, after we abandoned keeping the peace, things got worse, as anyone could have predicted if he had his eyes open. Iraq probably was something like a Korea situation, where our presence would have been required for a very long time; perhaps indefinitely. But it did keep the peace.

Call Maliki whatever one wants, and perhaps he was a fool for turning toward Iran when we left. But that’s exactly what he did, and the Sunnis knew it and know it now. Possibly he felt he had no choice when Al Sadr returned from Iran when we left and Iranian fighters started coming in, and he might have been right in thinking it. Maybe he could never have fought them successfully or resisted implementing their policies. Possibly he was right, but in any event, he didn’t.

I don’t think many people have a proper appreciation for the dread and hatred Arab Sunnis have for Iran or anybody under its influence. Maliki more and more fit the description of an Iranian pawn, at least in their eyes. And perhaps that’s exactly correct.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
I wouldn’t believe that for a second. The money used by the 9/11 hijackers during their stay here was funneled through the Saudi embassy in Washington DC and some transportation and living arrangements for two of the hijackers were coordinated by the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. So, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they are supporting ISIS.
Click to expand...
You don’t believe that the Saudis are a key ally of the USA? Then why is President Bush holding hands with the Saudi Prince, and actually kissing him?
google.com/search?q=President+Bush+holding+hands+with+Saudi+prince+photo&rlz=1T4GZAB_enUS456US456&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=N8igU4zGGq2M7AbozoGoCA&ved=0CB4QsAQ&biw=998&bih=595
 
Tomdstone said:
You don’t believe that the Saudis are a key ally of the USA? Then why is President Bush holding hands with the Saudi Prince, and actually kissing him?
google.com/search?q=President+Bush+holding+hands+with+Saudi+prince+photo&rlz=1T4GZAB_enUS456US456&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=N8igU4zGGq2M7AbozoGoCA&ved=0CB4QsAQ&biw=998&bih=595
Click to expand...
I couldn’t tell you why Bush did a lot of the things he did. Especially when it comes to trying to cover up the Saudi involvement in 9/11.
 
Quite a few people I’ve spoken with will give the Saudis a pass for no other reason than that there are US troops based there.
 
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