Per a military source: "It is more than a little unnerving to see ISIS executing Iraqis with US weapons"
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) June 16, 2014
Jordan. They must be wondering when it is going to be their turn and who will help them. It really does look like they are next.
It’s a real headscratcher: Tanks, of Unknown Origin, Roll Into Ukraine
Iran has sent special forces and a unit of elite troops to Iraq to bolster floundering efforts by the Iraqi government to halt the advance of militants from an al-Qaeda splinter group.
Islamist insurgents in Iraq have seized the city of Tikrit, their second major gain after capturing Mosul on Tuesday, security officials say.
Tikrit, the hometown of former leader Saddam Hussein, lies just 150km (95 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.
Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has vowed to fight back against the jihadists and punish those in the security forces who have deserted.
The insurgents are from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
ISIS, which is also known as ISIL, is an offshoot of al-Qaeda.
Mass beheadings reported.
Mapping Al Qaeda’s Grand Ambitions In Iraq And Syria.
Related: War Gear Flows to Police Departments
“We have been through a long season of war. And I managed to lose them all. I just want you to remember, in case you feel like blaming me, that it’s Bush’s fault.” (h/t Steve)
'Michelle Obama: Twitter Activist': White House is serious about terrorism; but first, let them take a selfie. http://t.co/5t1V2yUkjZ
— National Review (@NRO) May 10, 2014
Mark Steyn – As Mr Payne notes, these days progressive “action” just requires “calling on government” to act. But it’s sobering to reflect that the urge to call on someone else to do something is now so reflexive and ingrained that even “the government” – or in this case the wife of “the government” – is now calling on someone else to do something.
If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.
But wait! There’s more!
Dailykos prev wrote about other leaders ref apartheid, but not mentioned in story
http://t.co/wTp85NC3MC
— Jen Psaki (@statedeptspox) April 28, 2014
In case you missed it, that’s a State Department spokesperson.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has been unable to get Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the phone…
Peace for Our Time – “President Obama and I want to make it clear to Russia and to everybody in the world, that we are not seeking confrontation.”
Now is the time at SDA for a little nostalgia.
Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor running for president, has told an audience in New Hampshire that the United States “won’t always have the strongest military,” an assertion that drew a strong rebuke today from one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination. […]
Dr. Dean rejected that characterization of his comment. “What serious presidential candidate would ever say such a thing?” he said. “How ridiculous!”
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) had a simple question Wednesday for three of the Obama administration’s top Afghanistan specialists: How many American troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year? None of the witnesses at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Afghanistan had an answer.
h/t Ed S.
“All too early in the [Obama] administration,” he writes, “suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander in chief and his military leaders.”
Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.”
He 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.”
Only man on the planet who needed to be told.
Al Qaeda seizes partial control of 2 cities in western Iraq
Over the past several days, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, has taken control of large sections of two western Iraqi cities that were once bastions for the terror group.
ISIS fighters entered the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, after the Iraqi military withdrew from them following clashes with tribes over a political standoff that resulted in the arrest of a Sunni member of parliament.
Statesmanship.
(Related*)
“Ideology required that the Iraq War be a failure, even if it needed a nunc pro tunc effort to make it so.”
So, it’s come to this – the only thing standing between the western world and World War III are the French.
Western and Iranian negotiators were putting the finishing touches on a far-reaching nuclear deal. Then, at virtually the last minute, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius joined in the talks. It didn’t take long for the negotiations to unravel — and for Fabius to publicly declare this round of the talks to be over. […]
Fabius, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is said to have had two serious concerns with the deal. First, the agreement failed to prevent Tehran from continuing construction on its nuclear reactor at Arak. Once the facility is operational, a key part of Iran’s nuclear program would be immune to airstrikes because bombing the plant would lead to massive, deadly, radiation leaks. Fabius was also upset that the deal didn’t require Iran to reduce its stockpiles of 20% enriched uranium, which is approaching weapons-grade. The Hollande government, Fabius told French radio, would not be part of a “fool’s game.”
Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice: Navy SEALs ordered to remove ‘don’t tread on me’ Navy Jack from uniforms