Posted by Jack
CNN) — A day after taking over Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, militants nearly gained nearly complete control of the northern city of Tikrit, witnesses in the city and police officials in neighboring Samarra told CNN.
Heavy fighting erupted inside Tikrit — the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein — as the military tried to regain control, the sources and a police official in Baghdad said.
According to the witnesses in Tikrit and the Samarra police officials, two police stations in Tikrit were on fire and a military base was taken over by militants, believed to be from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an al Qaeda splinter group also known as ISIS and ISIL.
The governor of Salaheddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, was missing, according to the Tikrit and Samarra sources.
Suspected ISIS militants raided the Turkish Consulate in Mosul on Wednesday, capturing 48 people, including diplomats. They also seized parts of Baiji, the site of Iraq’s largest oil refinery, police officials in Tikrit told CNN earlier.
Meanwhile, explosions struck three Shiite areas in Baghdad, killing 25 people and injuring 56, police officials told CNN. The deadliest attack was in Sadr City, where a car bomb exploded near a funeral tent, killing 15 people, police said.
The clashes come on the heels of a sudden and danger-fraught exodus from the fighting in Mosul, which fell to militants Tuesday.
More than 500,000 people have fled the fighting there, the International Organization for Migration said Wednesday.
The group said there were many civilian casualties. The city’s four main hospitals are inaccessible because of fighting, and some mosques have been converted for use as clinics, the IOM said.
Thanks to the administration we have lost Iraq to the terrorists and allowed the establishment of a powerful base of operations in the heart of the ME. The Prez has outdone Jimmy Carter who gave us Iran. Gosh those lefties are good…at harming the free world!
Hmmm. Anyone care to speculate on what Iran might (or might not) do?
I think Iran would give them (Maliki’s regime) some military support and so will some of Iraq’s other Muslim neighbors, because nobody in the middle east is particularly fond of ISIS. But, I’m not sure Maliki will go for it. Maliki is a stupid little man.
Chances are he will find a way to turn this into an all our civil war between Sunni and Shiite with radical militias slaughtering anyone in their sights. If it comes to that it will be fought to a bloody conclusion, unless the USA suddenly barges in for peacekeeping.
Keep in mind that Sunni are 80% of the total population in the Middle East, so guess who’s going to win? Maliki is pro-Shiite…bye, bye Maliki hello radical Sunni/al Qaeda/ ISSIS/Taliban. And good bye peace in the Middle East.
There is no way that I can see Maliki doing the right thing now, he’s an Obama Jr. Full of BS, out of touch and grossly over-estimating his power and importance.
I am 80% sure it’s going to be civil war, just give ISIS another 3-6 months to shore up their gains then Baghdad is going down in flames and so is everything we did for them for the last decade.
This was widely predicted and it’s happening right on schedule. Obama’s military advisers are probably giving him a big “I Told You So!” right about now.
If Iraq blows up as it appears it is, the Syrian refugee problem will be small compared to Iraq’s and so will the carnage. ISIS radicals are armed to the teeth with the deadliest weaponry the USA could supply. This could get real bad…real quick and it could spread. Isis in now one powerful, wealthy terrorist organization thanks in no small measure to US money. Obama is probably wishing he was not President about now, because history is going to lay a lot of what happens next at his feet. He has very few good options now and there is no practical diplomatic way the US can stop what’s coming and we absolutely don’t want to get involved militarily again in Iraq.
I’d say they are already doing it in Iraq.
I’m reading Iran will be nuclear weapons capable/ready in July.
Hagel has been over there trying to assure Netanyaho that America still has a pair and Israel can count on us. I’m sure the Iranians are shaking in their boots.
Israel will take ’em out if we don’t…the nukes.
All of the gains we made, and they were significant, have been trashed and overturned. Those who were are allies are down on America and turning to Russia. At least Egypt, for now, is honoring its treaty with Israel.
And hey, at least India elected a good guy! We have to count our blessing as we can.
Washington Post:
“I think Iran would give them (Maliki’s regime) some military support and so will some of Iraq’s other Muslim neighbors, because nobody in the middle east is particularly fond of ISIS. But, I’m not sure Maliki will go for it. Maliki is a stupid little man.”
Indeed, yes. But, lest we forget, he is BushCo’s Chosen One”
“Chances are he will find a way to turn this into an all our civil war between Sunni and Shiite with radical militias slaughtering anyone in their sights.”
Jack, it is civil war … of a particularly corrupt and venal sort.
“Keep in mind that Sunni are 80% of the total population in the Middle East, ….”
But not of Iraq. Iraq is majority Shia. It is Maliki, of the Shia, and his unwillingness to include the Sunni in civic life, which has cultivated a fertile field for ISIS to plow … and, in all probability, sown civil war.
There is no way that I can see Maliki doing the right thing now, he’s an Obama Jr. ….”
No, darling … Cheney, Jr. You will not be allowed to “revise” recent history. I will never let you forget it.
Libby: “Indeed, yes. But, lest we forget, he is BushCo’s Chosen One” ”
No Libs, the Iraqi people chose delegates and formed their own government and then held elections.
Huffpo wrote about the last one and the next.
George Bush worked with Maliki because he was Iraq’s leader. He worked with many of the leaders in the ME.
My how you lefties love to talk down to people. Your version smacks of hatred more than history. Iraq is also lost due to the colossal incompetence of the Obama administration over the last almost six years. That isn’t just me or Dick Cheney talking it’s also, more and more voices on the left. You guys look like boobs and your nasty, pathetic criticism of the Bush efforts only highlight the level of incompetence.
“No Libs, the Iraqi people chose delegates and formed their own government and then held elections.”
Don’t be dense. He was brokered into his position, chiefly by us. He has proved a very great disappointment.
And the information we’re actually getting here is mysterious, incomplete, contradictory. They’re saying that the Iraqi Parliment is refusing or unable to take any action in the situation, which is weird.
The Kurds are happy campers. The routed Iraqi army has left them free to move their forces forward, and they won’t pull back unless somebody makes them.
The country is truly coming apart, and seemingly, wants to do so.
Libby don’t call me dense you voted for this incompetent naive turkey and now you are attempting to cover for your own inept position…liberals don’t do foreign policy well because they have the naive belief that they can, through the force of their fabulous personalities, tickle and transform dangerous evil people into peace loving models of civility.
The man your party promoted and elected like a rock star, deeming him brilliant, declared victory as he announced “end of America’s war in Iraq” and calling the exit a “moment of success.” He also said in December 2011:
I realize that Democrats like to choose the leaders of nations, JFK in Viet Nam and Carter when he facilitated the ousting of the Sha in Iran, an ally of America, and ushered in the Russian backed Ayatolla who immediately began to crush freedom and democracy and Islamize the whole country.
Bush had no such ambitions. His efforts focused on the Iraqi’s forming their own government and holding elections…and it was difficult and rocky but they did:
Sectarian violence broke out and lefitsts and lefty journalists in the US ratcheted up their criticism of Bush cheering for American defeat…encouraging the violence. In 2007 Bush announced the change in strategy called the surge. The new strategy worked and by 2008 the Iraqi government was stable, Iraq was relatively stable and Al Qaeda had been delivered a sizable blow. The mission at that point was to continue to show strength and supportive authority backed by a contingent of forces and presence. Maliki was being difficult but the room for negotiating our continued presence was included in the agreement about troop withdrawal. A competent committed leader could have negotiated our continued presence at the first sign of trouble. Indeed Maliki is asking (begging) for support now when it’s a bit late.
But the establishment of a democracy in the heartland of the ME was squandered and the people of Iraq abandoned by the ego driven self promoting narcissists who want to establish a legacy and who always #*@* up instead and leave a mess behind for some other president to deal with.
The country is coming apart. Yes it is, thank you Mr. President. /the entire world is so much better off now.
America either stands for freedom or it suffers along with the rest of the world living in chaos under tyrants. Why do progressives always back the tyrants?
You were qrong about Bush and you were wrong about Obama being the superior alternative. Your party just doesn’t have the integrity to admit you have been wrong and stupid.
I wonder how all of those Obama supporter feel about him now that they know he doesn’t walk on water and is drowning in the mess he’s created in the world and in his own country?
A caliphate is moving across the ME headed for north Africa, Europe, south American and north America. All because anyone who criticized Obama was called a racist instead of heading our concerns for what he was doing and his motives for his actions.
The world is under attack from Ukraine to the ME with the newly acquired powers of terrorist and Putin in command/control all because Obama put his politics first instead of the wellbeing of the people.
America is under attack because Obama refused to follow our laws and invited over 100,000 kids to cross our borders.
He’s followed Alinsky’s rule to overwhelm the system to bring a crash where those in power will assume total command. Working with George Soros they just may pull it off. Soros has been successful in collapsing the economy of other countries proving he could do the same to the US.
“… Carter when he facilitated the ousting of the Sha in Iran, an ally of America, and ushered in the Russian backed Ayatolla who immediately began to crush freedom and democracy and Islamize the whole country.”
Tina, you do recall that the Shah was our creature? … installed by the Eisenhower administration, I believe. Thirty years later, when our creature ceased to follow orders, we did some very stupid things, resulting is the Islamic state of Iran.
Forty years after that, in response to the insubordination of yet another creature, we did yet another really stupid thing. And it does look like, for our pains, we’re going to wind up with an Islamic state of Iraq.
However, there is hope. Peggy’s bugger-boo of a “Caliphate” is not in any way monolithic. All those sects and factions and whatnot, they just loath each other. There is commentary abroad that posits … if we can just keep our inept little fingers out of this, let the situation evolve a bit, Assad on the west and Khomheni on the east will deal with this one for us.
Libby, finally something we can agree on. If the ME wants to have a civil-type war, I have no problem with it. But, when they start beheading people who won’t convert to their religion and attacking the US by sending airplanes into buildings to kill our citizens and workers from other countries I believe we need to stop them.
The question is are we proactive or reactive? Do we prevent the attack on their soil or wait until we’re attacked again on our soil and respond like we did with Osama bin Laden and take out their next leader?
If the Caliphate is for a new leader of the Muslim countries/territories, have at it. Just don’t expect me to agree to letting the Caliphate happen in America.
Libby: “you do recall that the Shah was our creature? … installed by the Eisenhower administration, I believe.”
Following a world war hard won! The “creature” was at least a guy interested in living peacefully and joining the rest of us the modern world.
“when our creature ceased to follow orders”
Follow orders? I thought you lefties weren’t people who would order people/nations around?Even if that’s what happened Carter picked a real loser to replace him.
“Just don’t expect me to agree to letting the Caliphate happen in America.”
I’ll believe that when I see it. So far you are more interested in eliminating republicans.