This video of Lindsey Graham being interviewed by Gloria Borger and Dana Bash is keyed to the eight minute mark. I like Graham a lot, and appreciate his Southern
sensibilities. He puts me in mind of Mark Twain. He is explaining to them why it is
important that the US, rather than Iran, be the one to save Baghdad. It is amazing how far the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS or IS] has gotten:
"...The fight for Jurf al-Sakhar within what U.S. forces in Iraq once called the "Triangle of Death"—a major combat zone during the American occupation—shows how Iraqi forces are struggling to stave off the insurgents encroaching on the capital.
While in the north the government has blunted the Islamic State's drive toward the capital beyond Tikrit, the militants are pushing the frontline toward Baghdad from the south.
Jurf al-Sakhar is a case in point. Iraqi military officials say majority Sunni towns in the province bordering Baghdad in the south, such as Jurf-al-Sakhar, have become command posts for the Islamic State, an al Qaeda spinoff that used to call itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham ['Syria'].
...Iraqi forces are focused on repelling a militant advance south from Tikrit to Samarra, which lies on the highway to Baghdad. "We are trying our best not to have civilian casualties," the official said.
The Islamic State is now targeting roads and installations in Samarra, in Salehddine province, where the bombing of a Shiite shrine in 2006 started the country's violent descent into sectarian bloodshed. The government is hitting back with airstrikes, the official said. Military officials believe Samarra is the Islamic State's next big target in their attempt to push southward toward Baghdad.
A new Islamic State [graphic] video that circulated online on Monday purportedly showed scenes of execution of Iraqi soldiers in an apparent warning to the forces of what awaits them if they press on their fight. One commander in the video tells fighters the takeover of Samarra would be part of a successful campaign at the end of which heaven in paradise awaits them.
Islamic State militants on Tuesday blew up a bridge over a Tirgris River tributary that connects Samarra to Tikrit in what a local security official described as a spectacular operation started under the cover of dark a day earlier. Militants swam up to the bridge and wove explosives all along one outer side of the bridge, the official said. When the bridge exploded, a manned army checkpoint positioned there plunged into the water."
-WSJ
-LWJ
21 comments:
From that WSJ linked article:
Now, a report on the state-owned Iraqi Media Network...quoted a security official as saying that [Iraqi] forces this month had to adopt a "scorched earth" policy in the town [Jurf-al-Sakha].
The airstrikes on Monday reflected that policy. It is not clear how many among the dead were militants, but local media reported at least one child was killed. Human rights groups have begun to criticize the Iraqi government for bombing civilian areas in its campaign against insurgents.
Human Rights Watch last week said it documented at least 75 civilians killed and hundreds wounded in government airstrikes—at times using the crude improvised explosives known as barrel bombs—on the cities of Fallujah, Beiji, Mosul, and Tikrit since June 6.
So, when do the anti-Iraq demonstrations start in Europe?
Is there any stupider creature on the Earth than a an Iraqi Sunni?
They think that after they shut down the present government in Baghdad, that they will kick out the ISIS militants and run the show themselves. How did that idea work out least time, when the Iraqi Sunnis allied with Al Qaeda? That's what brought about the "Anbar Awakening", when the Sunnis discovered just how awful & brutal Al Qaeda was to them, not just to the Shia.
Just imagine how badly a group like ISIS, who seeks the revival of the caliphate wants to capture Baghdad, the center of the Abbasid caliphate. To free Baghdad from the hands of ISIS, it'll take killing every single one of them.
I'm sorry if this upsets people's sensibilities, but Islam's successes is not good for the world.
MICHAEL CORLEONE: I saw an interesting thing happen today. A rebel was being arrested by the military police, and rather than be taken alive, he exploded a grenade he had hidden in his jacket. He killed himself and took a captain of the command with him.
JOHNNY OLA: Those rebels, you know, they're lunatics.
MICHAEL CORLEONE: Maybe so. But it occurred to me; the soldiers are paid to fight, the rebels aren't.
HYMAN ROTH: What does that tell you?
MICHAEL CORLEONE: They can win.
The scenes remind me of photos of Nazis shooting Polish Jews except that the ISIS guys are more cowardly, wearing hoods and masks like the KKK. What I'm saying is that ISIS make the KKK and Nazi look good by comparison. One day, ISIS will pay a heavy heavy price for these atrocities -- but not with the present pansified Western leadership.
If Iraq were allowed to succeed as a democracy, it would counter the narrative that the Bush invasion was a bad idea.
Of course letting Iraq fail would also mean the soldiers that died there gave their lives in vain.
But, what is more important?
Preserving a politically advantageous narrative or preserving what our soldiers gave their lives to build?
Obama made his choice.
YoungHegelian said...
Is there any stupider creature on the Earth than a an Iraqi Sunni?
Not a geneticist here, but I wonder that too. I wonder if it's inbreeding.
@chicklit,
Is there any stupider creature on the Earth than a an Iraqi Sunni?
I guess my point would be a bit more convincing if I had only used one indefinite article rather than two, huh? Damn bad edits!
Chicky, you could have been a sweetheart & edited that out on re-posting, you know.
I have the sense that Saddam still has the highest body count. It will be a tough record to break, but that's what they said about WWI....Maimed bodies have no moral significance unless they were maimed by US or Israeli forces. Not only no significance, but they barely exist....The left cared rather more about the three documented cases of water boarding than the one hundred thousand plus corpses Saddam created in the post Kuwait rebellion.
On tv the other night I saw some Chaldean woman airing her grievances. There have been over five hundred thousand of them who were forced to flee their homes. The Chaldeans are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. Their Aramaic language is the root tongue of both Hebrew and Arabic so they're the original inhabitants--or so that woman claimed. They are being forced to flee their homes because they're Christian and they have the bad luck to live in an area controlled by ISIS. So there you have it: a religious minority and a native people forced into refugee status. The left have long had paroxysms of rage about this kind of persecution, but this affront doesn't seem to generate much coverage.. The Chaldeans are the right kind of victim, but they don't have the right kind of oppressor.
Curiously no statement from Deborah on how Graham is screwing up our interests on this one. Just good old fashioned respect for his "Southern sensibilities", whatever that means.
Fiddle dee dee, Ritmo. I thought you were going to bed.
William, it's interesting that the I/P thread went over 200, but the dire situation of ISIS closing in on Baghdad seems of little interest.
Was it you who said the Shia were more advanced or able to be reasoned with than the Sunni?
When ISIS hits Baghdad, bye-bye to all structures Shia.
YH, I was under the impression the Iraqi Sunni want to be under the new Caliphate. I don't think they're naive enough to believe they could push these crazed Jihadis out.
Allen, I think Jihadi Islam is a coding error in the brain that was switched on because of outside influences.
In the ME the Koran can be reasonably or psychotically interpreted depending on how stressed-out and poor the populations are kept.
Before the Syrian uprising the majority Sunni population lived in poverty. Before the uprising in Egypt, a large segment of the populations was very poor.
It should not come as a surprise that dirt poor, desperate people turn to a salvationist religion.
Isis just doesn't 't have the fan girls that Hamas does.
They are killing Christians you see. That's different for some people.
They're killing even more Shia.
Trooper York said...
Isis just doesn't 't have the fan girls that Hamas does.
This is true. No Hollywood shout-outs (yet). ISIS lacks representation in American colleges and secondary schools too but give it time.
"In Iraq, to gain the cover [IS] needs to expand its control, the group took advantage of the ongoing clashes between the armed groups there, with their different affiliations (Baathist, Naqshbandi-affiliated and tribal) and the government. From the start, it was clear that there were serious conflicts on both ideological and social levels between IS and these elements, which prompted many to say that there is no escape from a clash between these “temporary allies.”
It has now become clear that the acts perpetrated by IS fighters in the Iraqi cities they control are violent, including the campaign to destroy the prophets’ shrines, displace Christians and attack cadres of the dissolved Baath Party and the Naqshbandi group. All these factors are pushing toward a social and political uprising that has started in the past few days."
Okay, sorry, YH is correct. Also I had forgotten that the Wahhabi or Salafist jihadis who believe in a primitive form of Islam, do not believe in the veneration of the saints or their memorials.
I think Jihadi Islam is a coding error in the brain that was switched on because of outside influences. In the ME the Koran can be reasonably or psychotically interpreted depending on how stressed-out and poor the populations are kept.
So, bin Laden did what he did on account of being deprived.
Sheesh. Maybe you should try reading a little Paul Berman or Bernard Lewis.
Trooper, William said they are displacing the Chaldean Christians, "over five hundred thousand of them who were forced to flee their homes."
Why they're being delicate on that front, I do not know. Probably because they are 'people of the book.'
Good pick up, Lydia. More to do with Wahabbist bad encoding and his displeasure at his government being in bed with the Great Satan. Saudi Arabia did not want him back when Sudan wanted to send him there. But all that doesn't lessen the plight of millions of poor Sunnis.
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