Al Quaeda splinter group sweeping through Iraq

Yes, running around shouting The sky is falling! is always a good idea in difficult situations. And then they wonder why the Iraqi army ran away....

Incredible legacy we are leaving.........

Should I be getting worried about this? Only I've got this nagging feeling that I should be.

No, not really, Sabot. Provided no-one in the west decides to 'help', it will be yet another chapter in a war that's been going on for hundreds of years.

Interestingly, I just watched an interview with a retired RAF wing commander (female) and an Arabic journalist (also female).

Both said, FFS, don't 'help', it's 'helping' that's caused all this in the first place.

Oh, and I am none too sure that the figure being quoted in western media of there only being 10,000 ISIS on the loose is accurate; Russian sources put it far higher than that.

And Russian intelligence is generally far more accurate, due to them, ironically, not being obsessed with spying on their own citizens, just on potential bad guys.

Is Blair to blame for this? I do so hope so. Not that I actually wanted it to happen, but I suspect that I loath that man.

Yes, he is indeed, it was the toppling of Saddam that has led to all this. If the west wants to 'help', then Blair should be first in to negotiate, what with him being a Middle East Peace Envoy. He should get an interested audience, at least until ISIS remove his head from his shoulders.

bb1 wrote:Yes, he is indeed, it was the toppling of Saddam that has led to all this. If the west wants to 'help', then Blair should be first in to negotiate, what with him being a Middle East Peace Envoy. He should get an interested audience, at least until ISIS remove his head from his shoulders.

I don't think I want to go quite that far, Bonny. Just try him for War Crimes. That'll do me.

That would cost us money, Sabot, and he would probably wriggle his way out, oily toad that he is.

No, I think he should put his peace envoying skills to work on the ISIS lot. Poetic justice.   

http://rt.com/news/165544-iraq-militants-qaeda-offensive/

Thursday, June 12
23:58 GMT:
Since last year, the US has secretly flown unmanned drones over Iraq to gather intelligence on insurgents, anonymous officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Intelligence gathered in the limited program was supplied to the Iraqi government, which consented to the flights and is now locked in fierce battles across the nation with Al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS.

"It's not like it did any good,” a senior US official said about the data collected on Islamist fighters who have captured Mosul and Tikrit, among other areas, in recent days

Probably too busy spying on gun owners in Texas to notice tens of thousands of Muslim rebels on the move.

AJ is pretty up to date, too:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/two-more-towns-fall-armed-fighters-iraq-201461365442813358.html

But do bear in mind THEIR bias - ISIS have become 'unidentified fighters'. This may be because AJ's backers are Sunni....

Oh dear. From:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/13/world/meast/iraq-violence/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

"It's going to need more help from us, and it's going to need more help from the international community," Obama said Thursday. "I don't rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria."

Obungle said the 'help' word.

And why is he bleating now? He's been arming these people in Syria.

“I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s gonna be one of the great achievements of this administration........You’re gonna see a stable government in Iraq that is actually movin’ toward a representative government."

-Joe Biden Feb. 2010

So said the US vice president. Incidentally, the very same VP whose son has helped himself to a large chunk of the Ukrainian oil business, along with one of Kerry's chums.

It's hard to beat the Obama administration for their lethal combination of arrogance, corruption and incompetence.

As they surged towards the capital, one faction from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant staged a jubilant parade of American Humvee patrol cars seized from the collapsing Iraqi army complete with a flypast in captured former U.S. helicopters.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2656905/ISIS-jihadists-seize-two-towns-bear-Baghdad-U-S-tanks-helicopters-stolen-fleeing-western-trained-Iraqi-forces.html#ixzz34W73hZQX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Looks like they've found pilots for the Black Hawks and now have an airforce.

Hahahahahahah.

Whoops, sorry, sorry. I don't really think it's funny.

It isn't at all funny....more like predictable? Ironic? Inevitable? I don't know what ordinary Iraqis would do - the poor people, not the ones that have grown fat on all this.

Will they decide its the lesser of two evils to grin and bear all the restrictions the religious fanatics will impose, because at least it will stop the anarchy and bombings? It's not as if 'democracy' has done anything for ordinary people there; from being one of the most literate, organised states in the area, it's been turned into a sh*t-house anarchic state, while the invaders hide in the Green Zone and corrupt politicians enrich themselves.

Saddam was a bad, bad man, but what has followed is even worse, IMO.

I am deeply sorry for all the Iraqis - estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands - who were killed to 'liberate' them.

I am also deeply sorry for all the US and UK, and other, troops who were killed and maimed for nothing except corruption and greed. I can't imagine how their families feel, watching this.

I knew it was all going to go wrong when I accidentally saw the phone video of Saddam's hanging. I don't care what he did, that was disgusting, although I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

He's having the last laugh now, wherever he is. It appears there aren't just religious maniacs in ISIS, a lot of them are former Saddam troops.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10892299/Iraq-crisis-ISIS-militants-push-towards-Baghdad-live.html

The daughter of the toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has said she is "very happy" with the takeover of several Iraqi cities by Sunni Islamist fighters
Speaking to Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based Arabic newspaper, Raghad Saddam Hussein credited the fall of Mosul to Izzat al Douri, an aide to her late father who has been linked with a band of former Iraqi army officers and Ba'athists who joined ISIS militants in their assault on the city.
"I am very happy with the victories (which) were achieved by my father’s men," she said.

Tariq Aziz is still alive, though in poor health and semi-jailed. And Comical Ali is still with us, living fairly comfortably in the UAE,

If they hang on long enough, they may get their old jobs back.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/13/militants-vow-to-march-on-baghdad-as-obama-administration-mulls-response/

The development signals the worsening security environment in the northern part of the country. One senior official told Fox News that the focus for evacuation at this point is on people outside of Baghdad.

Two senior intelligence sources, though, told Fox News there is serious concern about how to evacuate other Americans out of Iraq if the situation further deteriorates.

"We need places to land, we need safe and secure airfields," one source said, noting that the militants are "seizing airfields and they have surface-to-air missiles, which very clearly threatens our pilots and planes if we do go into evacuation mode."

Sources said "all western diplomats in Iraq are in trouble," and American allies are scrambling to put together an evacuation plan. Military officials said there are "not a lot of good options."

And which country supplied the 'nice rebels' with them? I do believe it's the people who are now running round shouting Don't Panic! as chickens - or MANPADS - come home to roost.

I wish I could explain why I saw this all coming, and why I think that America and Britain deserve this, except it isn't the powers that be who will suffer.
It occurred to me a very long time ago that certain regimes, albeit not saintly, know a bloody sight more about what is going on and what is being held in check than some poncy politician in the West or America ever will.
Russia knew about it's satellite states, and look what happened there when Russia couldn't contain them any more. Millions were slaughtered.
And so it goes on.

Nothing I can do about it because even if I had said that America and Britain were on collision course for disaster, no one would have listened to me.

Nostradamus said that after the second world war there would be many minor and isolated wars amongst the arab and muslim countries that would cause much misery, but only to them.

I must confess to cynical laughter when I see the US complaining about Russia 'meddling' in Ukraine, and now Iran 'meddling' in Iraq. Excuse me, but which nations have these US-created messes on their doorstep, and which country is thousands of miles from said mess, but seems to think it's entitled to tell everyone what to do?

The best thing the US - and UK - can do, IMO, is STAY OUT OF IT. Otherwise, they will only get even more civilians killed, and more troops killed and maimed, and all the warring factions will unite against them.

They seem to have made the fatal mistake of only thinking of the next day's headlines, instead of looking at the tide of history, and how people react when outsiders start 'helping' them whether they like it or not.

The world didn't end when Saigon fell, did it? Vietnam is now another of those strange, socialist/capitalist states, and merrily squabbling with China. And let us not forget that thanks to some twisted foreign policy relating to idiotic Domino Theories, the US actually supported the vile Khmer Rouge.

The death toll when communism collapsed in Europe wouldn't have been nearly as high if NATO, led by the US and UK, hadn't involved itself in events in the Balkans and bombed sh*t out of the place.

We haven't been the Good Guys for a very long time.

Nothing to add here. You have been very astute.

What happened in The Balkans really upset me. It was bloody obvious that Russia knew what it was doing with these people. But oh no, The West knew best.

Will they not ever learn? Unleash a sleeping tiger and it will bite. But I suppose that there is some comfort in knowing that they were all killing each other.
Mayhap that was the whole idea. Rid the world of large numbers of society. It always takes a war of some kind to do that.
Unless you live in Britain and might need The National Health Service.

Which is why I am staying here.

Oh Lord, Obama's going to make a Statement shortly. May God protect us.