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Iraq Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 07, 2014 41 Comments
While over 700 journalists were covering the Gaza conflict, few paid attention to the mass slaughter in Iraq of the Yazidi, who are on the verge of a true genocide at the hands of ISIS. Finally the impending massacre is getting coverage, but it may be too late. The Washington Post reported two days ago:
Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst. Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians remain trapped on Mount Sinjar since being driven out of surrounding villages and the town of Sinjar two days earlier. But the mountain that had looked like a refuge is becoming a graveyard for their children. Unable to dig deep into the rocky mountainside, displaced families said they have buried young and elderly victims of the harsh conditions in shallow graves, their bodies covered with stones. Iraqi government planes attempted to airdrop bottled water to the mountain on Monday night but reached few of those marooned.... Most of those who fled Sinjar are from the minority Yazidi sect, which melds parts of ancient Zoroastrianism with Christianity and Islam. They are considered by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State to be devil worshippers and apostates.
WaPo updates today:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 25, 2014 3 Comments
Every morning for most of 2014, it seems we wake up in dreaded anticipation of what horrible news has happened overnight and around the world. There are so many things going on -- Israel/Hamas, Ukraine/Russia, passenger jets falling from the sky (or vanishing), the U.S. border crisis -- that it is sometimes hard to fathom. Let's not forget the battle for Iraq is still in the mix. We covered the eradication of the Christian population in the territory held by the Islamic State on Monday. But the news of Iraq's overall situation seems to have faded from the American news media's short attention span the past couple of weeks. Quick update: things aren't getting better. There is a bit of good news on the political reconciliation front in Baghdad. The Iraqi Parliament elected a new President for the nation yesterday.
Iraqi MPs have elected Kurdish politician Fouad Massoum as president, succeeding Jalal Talabani. Mr Massoum, 76, is a founding member of Mr Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party. Since 2003 Iraq's president has always been a Kurd, while the prime minister is a Shia and the parliamentary speaker drawn from the Sunni Arab bloc. Iraq is facing a radical Sunni insurgency and is struggling to agree on a new coalition government. The presidency is the second major government post to be filled, after Salim al-Jabouri was elected as parliament speaker last week.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 10, 2014 32 Comments
The breaking news via Twitter on Wednesday night was quite alarming. The United Nations seems to be playing down the significance of the threat, but the Iraqi government's warning was specific that this material could be used in creating weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq has notified the United Nations that Sunni militants seized nuclear material from a university in the northern city of Mosul last month as they advanced toward Baghdad, the nuclear regulatory body of the United Nations said on Thursday. Gill Tudor, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna, said in a statement that the organization’s experts believed the material — thought to be uranium — was “low-grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk.” Word of the seizure first emerged in a letter to the United Nations dated July 8 and seen by reporters from Reuters, which quoted it as saying that “terrorists” from the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, had taken control of the materials. The letter said that almost 90 pounds of uranium compounds had been kept at the university and that the materials “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction,” Reuters said.
The first question that comes to many Americans' minds is: How can there be uranium material left in Iraq? After all, the Bush Administration was skewered by the media (and continues to be) when they presented the "yellowcake" evidence at the United Nations prior to the 2003 Iraq War. And, as that TIME article pointed out, even the Bush Administration admitted in 2003 that they messed up on the yellowcake evidence.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 05, 2014 3 Comments
The self-proclaimed leader of the united Islamic State, or Caliphate, appeared for the first time in public on Saturday since his military organization took large parts of territory in northern Iraq. Before being named "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (known as ISIS).
In a sign of [ISIS] confidence, the hitherto secretive Baghdadi made an unprecedented public appearance in the militant-held north Iraq city of Mosul, ordering Muslims to obey him, according to a video distributed online on Saturday.
Baghdadi addressed followers in a mosque in Mosul and delivered a Ramadan prayer and call to arms. According to @Francois_Gatete -- here are several excerpts of the video translated into English.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 22, 2014 16 Comments
Secretary of State John Kerry was in Egypt on Sunday at the start of his trip to the Middle East and Europe this week, during which the situation in Iraq is expected to be a major discussion point. Kerry met in Cairo with newly elected Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, followed by a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri. When asked during that news conference if U.S. policy was the cause of recent violence in Iraq and Libya, Kerry said, "The United States of America was not responsible for what happened in Libya, and nor is it responsible for what is happening in Iraq today," reported Newsweek. More on Kerry's comments from NPR:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 21, 2014 6 Comments
Militants led by ISIS have reportedly seized a border post at one of the border points between Iraq and Syria, as the situation in Iraq continues to remain unstable. From Reuters, Iraq militants take Syria-border post in drive for caliphate:
Sunni fighters seized a border post on the Iraq-Syria frontier, security sources said on Saturday, smashing a line drawn by colonial powers almost a century ago with the aim of creating an Islamic Caliphate stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran. The militants, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), first moved into the nearby town of al-Qaim on Friday, pushing out security forces, the sources said. Once border guards heard that al-Qaim had fallen, they left their posts and militants moved in, the sources said. Sameer al-Shwiali, media adviser to the commander of Iraq's anti-terrorist squad, told Reuters that the Iraqi army was still in control of al-Qaim.
A senior Iraqi official also said the towns of Rawa, Ana and Huseiba were under the control of militants, according to CNN. The border crossing of Al-Qaim is significant because of its location, as it would allow militants easier access between Syria and Iraq. arwa-damon-cnn-tweet-iraq

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 19, 2014 17 Comments
In a press conference today, President Obama announced that the U.S. was relocating some personnel out of Iraq, and sending reinforcements for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Obama also stated that there would be increased monitoring and surveillance of ISIL insurgents, and increased military support for Iraq, including joint operations centers in Baghdad. Additional equipment also would be sent, in addition to a "small number of American military advisors, up to 300." But, he emphasized, "American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq" The U.S. is prepared, though, to take "precise" military action if circumstances warranted, but not to support "one sect" against another. As to failure to leave residual forces, Obama said "that was a decision made by the Iraqi government."

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 17, 2014 15 Comments
President Obama notified Congress on Monday that starting Sunday, June 15th, approximately 275 U.S. Armed Forces personnel were deploying to Iraq to provide security for the U.S. Embassy and its staff in Baghdad. (Read the full text of the letter). From USA Today:
President Obama notified Congress on Monday that about 275 U.S. military personnel are deploying to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Obama also said the troops are equipped for combat and will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that they are no longer needed. These forces are entering Iraq with the consent of the government there, White House press secretary Jay Carney said. He said the report to Congress is consistent with the War Powers Resolution. The Pentagon said 170 of the troops arrived over the weekend in Baghdad and another 100 were moved into the region to help with embassy security as some of the staff was being relocated in the area. The embassy remains open and operating.
While the US embassy remains operating, the State Department announced on Sunday that additional security personnel would be added to the staff in Baghdad, though some of its other staff would be temporarily relocated. The United Nations also announced Monday that it has relocated nearly 60 of its staff from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, according to Thomson Reuters.  A spokesman for the UN indicated that additional relocations could be possible in the next few days. The news comes after insurgents have advanced in Iraq in recent days, and on Monday reportedly seized the northern city of Tal Afar, according to the NY Times.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 14, 2014 12 Comments
This inconvenient flashback is brought to you by the Washington Free Beacon:
Vice President Joe Biden predicted in 2010 that Iraq would be “one of the greatest achievements” of the Obama administration. Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live, Biden told King “It [Iraq] could be one of the greatest achievements of this administration.” He continued, “You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Here's the video: Paul Waldman of the Washington Post has a rather unique take on what's happening in Iraq:

Posted by New Neo on June 14, 2014 13 Comments
To refresh your memory in light of recent events in Iraq, this is how it went down in there in 2011:
The U.S. had tried to extend the presence of our troops past Dec. 31 [2011]. Why did we fail? 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... But Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi political figures expressed exactly the same reservations about immunity in 2008...Indeed those concerns were more acute at the time...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...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.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 13, 2014 24 Comments
Media and civilian reports throughout northern and central Iraq on Friday suggest that the situation on the ground has become increasingly violent and unstable to the point that the Iraqi government is crumbling:
Heavily armed Islamist militants flush with $450 million in stolen cash pushed toward Baghdad on Friday, sending thousands fleeing in fear from the Iraqi capital. Al Qaeda-linked insurgents who overran large parts of the north of the country earlier this week also seized about $450 million during a bank heist, Mosul Mayor Athier Nujaifi told NBC News. That makes the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) the world's richest terrorist group.
The ISIS troops are led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (or Abu Dua) was once held by the US in Camp Bucca Iraq. al-Baghdadi was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, but released by the Obama Administration in 2009. On his way to a visit to North Dakota, President Barack Obama held a brief statement and exchange with reporters on The White House lawn. Unfortunately for the President, events are deteriorating so fast around Baghdad, it may be too late for the United States to do anything before the ISIS/Sunni insurgents take the Iraqi capital. Reporters didn't ask specific questions about the failure of Obama to leave U.S. combat troops in Iraq after 2011 or his failure to complete a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 12, 2014 18 Comments
We've been writing about the lack of a free and independent Kurdistan for years, It’s time for a free and independent Kurdistan. While the Palestinian agenda has dominated every international forum, the much more populous and ethnically distinct Kurds have been mostly ignored.  In part, this is because the Kurds span several nation states created by colonial powers after the implosion of the Ottomon Empire.  Turkey particularly has threatened war if a Kurdish nation emerges. In part it is because creating an independent Kurdistan does do not serve a political purpose of snuffing out the only Jewish state in the region. Developments are moving fast that could change everything. Syria lost control of its Kurd territory during the ongoing civil war, and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan has operated independently for years. With Iraq losing control of vast territory, and the U.S. not anxious to do anything to help, the Kurds have claimed Kirkuk for their own, as the BBC reports, Iraqi Kurds 'fully control Kirkuk' as army flees:
Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby. "The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga," Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. "No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now." Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 11, 2014 35 Comments
Al-Qaeda aligned terror groups have made major land gains from the Syrian civil war into the heartland of Iraq over the last several days. Despite the herculean efforts of the United States military with the Multi-National Force in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, Iraq appears to be sliding into violent chaos across much of its territory between Baghdad and the border with Syria. Fueled by training in the Syrian civil war and allowed by the vacuum of no major U.S. forces in Iraq, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), is poised to take control of the most land mass since al-Qaeda formed in the late 1980s. According to videos posted by ISIS on social media, the militants also captured U.S. Humvees and Blackhawk helicopters from the Iraqi forces. So far this week, ISIS forces have captured Tikrit -- the former home of Saddam Hussein and his political movement -- and Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.  As ISIS forces converged on Mosul on Tuesday, U.S.-trained Iraqi forces collapsed and fled the city.  Tikrit is less than 100 miles from Iraq's capital of Baghdad, while Mosul is just 225 miles to the northwest from Baghdad.
"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an interior ministry official told the Agence France Presse news agency, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms. Several residents told the Associated Press that the militants were now touring the city with loudspeakers, announcing that they had "come to liberate Mosul and would fight only those who attack them."
Reports from Mosul detail mass beheadings of residents by the ISIS terrorists and a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of the city. The al-Qaeda aligned ISIS organization now effectively controls a region from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq and less than 100 miles from Baghdad.

Posted by New Neo on June 10, 2014 14 Comments
As soon as Obama was elected it became a foregone conclusion that this would be the result in Iraq---that the country would be taken over by the worst forces in the area. Since then, it's been a slow denouement:
Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants... The collapse of government forces in Mosul echoed the takeover earlier this year of the town of Fallujah in western Anbar province, where U.S. troops fought some of their fiercest battles of the Iraq war...
The Iraqi government is asking for international and/or US help, "by virtue of the Joint Cooperation agreement between the two countries." But that horse left the barn a long time ago. As a result of Obama's decisions regarding the Iraq pullout, there are not even any residual US forces left in the country, as remain in so many other places where Americans have fought and died:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 08, 2014 29 Comments
Expect former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to quickly be turned from hero of the Democratic Party for being a Republican willing to work for Barack Obama, into just more trailer trash because of his tell-all book about that service which reinforces an accurate meme about Hillary Clinton: She has no core, and will say anything to win. From Chris Cillizza at WaPo, How Bob Gates’s memoir could haunt Hillary in 2016:
In a new memoir of his time as secretary of defense in the Obama administration, Gates writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.” Oomph. Just to jog your memory, Clinton announced that she opposed the Iraq surge being pushed by President George W. Bush in the days leading up to the announcement of her presidential bid. She instead proposed a freeze in troop levels in the country and advocated for a troop increase in Afghanistan.... At one level, Gates's allegation is not at all surprising. Politicians factor in politics when making decisions? Gasp! .... But, remember this is Hillary Clinton we are talking about. And, the criticism that has always haunted her is that everything she does is infused with politics -- that there is no core set of beliefs within her but rather just political calculation massed upon political calculation. Remember that she began slipping in the 2008 Democratic primary when her opponents seized on an overly political answer on giving drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants during a debate in late 2007.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 08, 2014 12 Comments
At the end of October the New York Times hailed President Obama's foreign policy as "pragmatic," while largely ignoring the consequences. The two month old article was written by the White House reporter, but a recent article written from Beirut, Power Vacuum in Middle East Lifts Militants paints a somewhat less flattering picture of the administration's foreign policy.
For the first time since the American troop withdrawal of 2011, fighters from a Qaeda affiliate have recaptured Iraqi territory. In the past few days they have seized parts of the two biggest cities in Anbar Province, where the government, which the fighters revile as a tool of Shiite Iran, struggles to maintain a semblance of authority. Lebanon has seen two deadly car bombs, including one that killed a senior political figure and American ally.
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