Jihadists Seize Iraq's Nineveh Province!

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JimR-OCDS said:
Agreed ! 👍

Jim
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So what do you think the Pentagon and our military advisers have learned from our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Are any of the military leaders that got us into this mess being interviewed right now?
 
Turkeys alignment is here. What a mess.

“The Iraqi government has been holding the Kurds hostage, and it’s not reasonable for them to expect the Kurds to give them any help in this situation without compromising to Kurdish demands,” said an adviser to the Kurdish government, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/amid-turmoil-iraqs-kurdish-region-is-laying-foundation-for-independent-state/2014/06/12/c1f22d7c-f26a-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html
 
7_Sorrows said:
So what do you think the Pentagon and our military advisers have learned from our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Are any of the military leaders that got us into this mess being interviewed right now?
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Well, here’s an opinion piece that will have you thinking about your question.
Don’t Walk Away From War
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The United States has been at war — major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts and covert actions — nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.
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billmoyers.com/2014/06/12/dont-walk-away-from-war/
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Jim
 
Hey, how about some good news for a change?

Sadiyah and Jalawla. Security officials in Baghdad said government troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and forced the insurgents to withdraw, a rare success.
nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world/middleeast/iraq.html?hp
:clapping:

The NYT said it can not confirm reports of Iranian troops being deployed. However, the paper did say that the commander of the Quds Force arrived in Baghdad yesterday so he could inspect the tactical situation.

The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, arrived in Baghdad on Thursday and has been reviewing how Iraq’s Shiite militias are prepared to defend Baghdad and other areas, according to a report on Iranwire, a website run by expatriate Iranian journalists.

“The mobilization of the Shia militias, and Qassem Suleimani’s presence, is a very good indication of how seriously they’re taking this,” Hayder al-Khoei, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House research group, said in an interview with Iranwire from Baghdad.
 
As an Iraqi Freedom (oxymoron) veteran, I don’t know what to think. It just makes me sick. I know of people that gave their lives for nothing. Some of my buddies are not the same and never will be. I know good people in Iraq that deserve for violence to end and to live peacefully. They trusted us and we screwed up.

Vietnam vets, how did you come to terms with a similar situation? I can’t even read about it.
 
lutheran_farmer said:
As an Iraqi Freedom (oxymoron) veteran, I don’t know what to think. It just makes me sick. I know of people that gave their lives for nothing. Some of my buddies are not the same and never will be. I know good people in Iraq that deserve for violence to end and to live peacefully. They trusted us and we screwed up.

Vietnam vets, how did you come to terms with a similar situation? I can’t even read about it.
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We didn’t learn anything from Vietnam.

Jim
 
lutheran_farmer said:
As an Iraqi Freedom (oxymoron) veteran, I don’t know what to think. It just makes me sick. I know of people that gave their lives for nothing. Some of my buddies are not the same and never will be. I know good people in Iraq that deserve for violence to end and to live peacefully. They trusted us and we screwed up.

Vietnam vets, how did you come to terms with a similar situation? I can’t even read about it.
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Not really a time to despair. Your generation removed a mass murderer and tried to get bickering tribes to live peacefully together. That was not a waste and you should never think it was.

This war with Islamic terrorism isn’t over, and Obama can’t declare it over and run away. He is just now finding that out… and so are a lot of people in the USA and UK.
 
lutheran_farmer said:
As an Iraqi Freedom (oxymoron) veteran, I don’t know what to think. It just makes me sick. I know of people that gave their lives for nothing. Some of my buddies are not the same and never will be. I know good people in Iraq that deserve for violence to end and to live peacefully. They trusted us and we screwed up.

Vietnam vets, how did you come to terms with a similar situation? I can’t even read about it.
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God bless you lutheranfarmer and thank you for your service over there. I can’t begin to imagine the feelings you are experiencing. I an so sad for the soldiers who lost their lives to and for the iraqi people who were freed from saddam hussein but are still facing violence and fleeing their cities and homes.

The viet nam vets probably feel the same way you do.
 
gilliam said:
ISIS is known for having the biggest guns and paying the highest salaries, National Public Radio reports. It quotes analysts as saying that while kidnapping, oil smuggling and donations from sympathizers are well-known sources of money, the group also runs complex and brutal protection rackets.

npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/21/304542370/for-extremists-in-syria-extortion-brings-piles-of-cash-from-iraq

Thugs are the same the world over
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This group is so extreme that al Qeda wants nothing to do with them. If Obama doesn’t want to sent troops into Iraq, here is a chance to do something useful with drones.
 
lutheran_farmer said:
As an Iraqi Freedom (oxymoron) veteran, I don’t know what to think. It just makes me sick. I know of people that gave their lives for nothing. Some of my buddies are not the same and never will be. I know good people in Iraq that deserve for violence to end and to live peacefully. They trusted us and we screwed up.

Vietnam vets, how did you come to terms with a similar situation? I can’t even read about it.
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I thank you for your service. This has got to be a horrible nightmare for you and your fellow troops who served in Iraq.
 
So there is no misunderstanding. I was not a soldier, but a sailor. The Iraqis I worked with were in the Iraqi Navy. Good people and they took extremely good care of the patrol boats we gave them. I did two tours off the coast of Iraq and our ship transported prisoners as well. I went through training at college with USMC officers and met up with some classmates overseas. It tore me up to hear them talk about not wanting to go back and how awful it was. My cousin was an HM with the USMC and did not adjust to civilian life. He committed suicide.
 
7_Sorrows said:
So what do you think the Pentagon and our military advisers have learned from our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq?
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Nothing, it would seem.

Arrogance, a sense of invincibility, moral superiority and a false belief that deep down all nations of the world would love the type of society we have, coupled with personal political benefits of winning a war, seems to have blinded our political leaders to the real consequences of their actions. Then again war is good for business (arms exports are worth ÂŁ80 billion per year to the USA).
 
“ISIS have tweeted the decapitated head of what appears to be an Iraqi policeman with the sentence ‘This is our football, it’s made of skin #World Cup’, followed by a boast of having slaughtered 1,700 soldiers.”

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.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworldnews%2Fmiddleeast%2Firaq%2F10892299%2FIraq-crisis-ISIS-militants-push-towards-Baghdad-live.html&ei=F2KbU8HjCIGfyATz_IHwAQ&usg=AFQjCNHvG0NE-3ERPDXtYnzfBV-_M9Y2xQ
 
Coatimundi said:
Yes, that is really what it came down to. The US insisted that its troops not be subject to the courts of Iraq for any crimes they may commit there. Maliki insisted that such immunity be taken away. This was an impasse that neither Bush nor Obama were able to overcome.
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But Bush did. Obama didn’t try. He made it impossible, in fact. “Extraterriality” is always a sensitive issue. Maliki wanted to do it by executive decision just as he did with Bush. Obama wouldn’t do that, knowing that was the only way. He put Maliki in an impossible position.

longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2012/11/iraqi_politicians_backed_into.php

The popular explanation is that the Iraqis refused to provide legal immunity for U.S. troops if they are accused of breaking Iraq’s laws. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself said: “When the Americans asked for immunity, the Iraqi side answered that it was not possible. The discussions over the number of trainers and the place of training stopped. Now that the issue of immunity was decided and that no immunity to be given, the withdrawal has started.”
  1. But Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi political figures expressed exactly the same reservations about immunity in 2008 during the negotiation of the last Status of Forces Agreement. Indeed those concerns were more acute at the time because there were so many more U.S. personnel in Iraq—nearly 150,000, compared with fewer than 50,000 today. So why was it possible for the Bush administration to reach a deal with the Iraqis but not for the Obama administration?
    Quite simply it was a matter of will: President Bush really wanted to get a deal done, whereas Mr. Obama did not. Mr. Bush spoke weekly with Mr. Maliki by video teleconference. Mr. Obama had not spoken with Mr. Maliki for months before calling him in late October to announce the end of negotiations. Mr. Obama and his senior aides did not even bother to meet with Iraqi officials at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
    The administration didn’t even open talks on renewing the Status of Forces Agreement until this summer, a few months before U.S. troops would have to start shuttering their remaining bases to pull out by Dec. 31. The previous agreement, in 2008, took a year to negotiate.
The recent negotiations were jinxed from the start by the insistence of State Department and Pentagon lawyers that any immunity provisions be ratified by the Iraqi parliament—something that the U.S. hadn’t insisted on in 2008 and that would be almost impossible to get today. In many other countries, including throughout the Arab world, U.S. personnel operate under a Memorandum of Understanding that doesn’t require parliamentary ratification. Why not in Iraq? Mr. Obama could have chosen to override the lawyers’ excessive demands, but he didn’t.
 
Brendan_64 said:
Nothing, it would seem.

Arrogance, a sense of invincibility, moral superiority and a false belief that deep down all nations of the world would love the type of society we have, coupled with personal political benefits of winning a war, seems to have blinded our political leaders to the real consequences of their actions. Then again war is good for business (arms exports are worth ÂŁ80 billion per year to the USA).
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Arrogance?

Which of the alternatives do you prefer to American involvement.
  1. Rule by Saddam Hussein.
  2. Rule by ISIS.
  3. Rule by Iran.
  4. Protracted war between ISIS and Iran in Iraq, with each periodically going into the territority of the other to torture and kill.
Do you truly not believe America has any moral superiority to those? Really, do you not?
 
garn9173 said:
If Obama doesn’t want to sent troops into Iraq, here is a chance to do something useful with drones.
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To use drones effectively, we need very good intelligence about who is who, and where they are at any given moment. I am not sure the US would have reliable information of that kind and setting up a network will likely take time.

While drones can kill a few select individuals, they don’t change the military power of the situation.
 
Seamus_L said:
Hurriyet Daily News of Turkey is claiming ISIL have executed 1700 captured Shia soldiers hurriyetdailynews.com/isil-militants-executed-1700-shiite-soldiers-un-alarmed.aspx?pageID=238&nID=67754&NewsCatID=352
Code: 
                          The Jihadists have gotten within 30 miles of Baghdad now, but I believe they are going to be defeated if they continue to advance. Iraq can handle this without help from the US government.
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I am not sure Iraq’s government can boot ISIS out of Iraq. I doubt it very much, in fact. With Iranian help, it will probably keep them from taking over Baghdad. I would expect that because the whole Al Sadr network is located there, and they’ll fight to the death.

So, we have Sunni Islamists likely to hold one part of the country, Shia Islamists under the dominion of Iran holding another part. That is not a good outcome. But the division of Iraq between two radical Islamic powers might become permanent. It didn’t have to be, though.
 
gilliam said:
Not really a time to despair. Your generation removed a mass murderer and tried to get bickering tribes to live peacefully together. That was not a waste and you should never think it was.

This war with Islamic terrorism isn’t over, and Obama can’t declare it over and run away. He is just now finding that out… and so are a lot of people in the USA and UK.
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It is far from over. It has just moved closer, and with the enemy having far greater resources in terms of men and money than it did before Obama abandoned Iraq.
 
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