ISIS Fighters Seize Government Headquarters in Ramadi

by Jack

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Mark Twain    June 6, 2014, a mere 500 ISIS forces in pick-up trucks routed over 5,000 National Guard troops in Mosul, Iraq.  Thus ISIS had free reign over the city to take whatever the wanted, money, women, hostages, huge stores of military equipment and thousands of small arms.  This moved ISIS into the big leagues - now a major player in terrorism.   But, they did not do it alone.   Mosul was a mostly Sunni city and they initially welcomes the ISIS forces as liberators, thanks to President Maliki’s oppression and corruption.  But, they were not liberators and soon the slaughter of innocents began.        

May 15th, 2015 – “BAGHDAD — The last Iraqi security forces fled the provincial capital of Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and carried out executions of people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

The fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the extremist group, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls. The fall of Ramadi also laid bare the failed strategy of the Iraqi government, which had announced last month a new offensive to retake Anbar Province, a vast desert region in the west of which Ramadi is the capital.

“The city has fallen,” said Muhannad Haimour, the spokesman for Anbar’s governor. Mr. Haimour said that at least 500 civilians and security personnel had been killed over the last two days in and around Ramadi, either from fighting or executions.   Among the dead, he said, was the 3-year-old daughter of a soldier. “NY TIMES.

Washington D.C. – White House Officials were still taking bows for the seemingly successful bombing mission in support of the Iraqi’s for the City of Tikrit when the shocking news that Ramadi had fallen to ISIS.   Ramadi was the last major Iraqi Army base in the Sunni triangle and the last stop before Baghdad.    Was Tikrit just a diversionary tactic?  If so, it worked pretty well.  For a time all eyes were on Obama as he and his minions touted their minor victory in Tikrit as a glorious  example of what could be achieved by the Iraqi militia forces backed up by limited US air power!   Wonder what the O man has to say about his limited air only strategy to turn back ISIS now?

Allow me to speak bluntly now, nobody in Iraq trusts the United States anymore!  Not after we suddenly pulled out and left a weak, corrupt Maliki regime that was tied to Iran.  They ran roughshod over Sunnis, they let the electrical power go out and the water lines dry up in Sunni dominated areas like Mosul.  He repeatedly failed to address Sunni grievances and the worst part is he broke the governments bargain for general reform and equal representation.

Tikrit was no big victory or even an example of anything to do with White House policy, but Ramadi sure was…only for ISIS!