At least half a million people are on the move in Iraq after insurgent force the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), continued its offensive towards Baghdad, reportedly taking the city of Tikrit – home town of former leader Saddam Hussein – overnight. The assault comes on the heels of Wednesday’s takeover of Mosul and surrounding regions, where a reported 30,000 Iraqi troops fled from just 800 insurgents after three days of sporadic fighting.
In the insurgents' most significant gain so far, Isis fighters entered Mosul and stripped the main army base, released hundreds of prisoners from jails and may have seized up to $480m in cash from Mosul banks. Fighters also seized the Turkish consulate, kidnapping 25 staff including the diplomatic head of the mission.
The swift capitulation of Iraq army forces in the city prompted condemnation and suspicion from the government.
"The army and police and the security organisations are much stronger than they [Isis] are, but there was a trick and a conspiracy," said Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. "We will deal with it, but after we end their presence."Tikrit, believed to have been taken by the insurgents overnight, lies less than 200km from capital Baghdad.
In July of last year Isis freed hundreds of convicted terrorists when it overran Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, and in December the group retook parts of former al-Qaida strongholds Fallujah and Ramadi.,,
This is the whirlwind which was sown by Bush, Blair and their Neo-con cronies in 2003, as the civil war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the result of the failure of their invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The whole PNAC strategy was doomed to failure from the beginning, and its principal outcome has been to strengthen enormously the hand of Islamists whose fanaticism is the mirror-image of that of the American supremacists.One can only feel the most profound pity for the millions of innocent civilians whose fates are now in the hands of brutal forces unleashed as a result of our meddling.
4 comments:
Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld definitely made a huge mistake intervening but the group they hurt was us here in the U.S. in terms of money and lives. The situation in these Islamic countries is no better, no worse. Many die but equal numbers would have died, or been severely repressed, either way! They will fight each other on and on. Eventually they will get tired of killing but it may take another 50-100 years. Our best strategy is to limit the damage, ie. retaliatory bombing if they cause trouble with us or our allies. We can't change or mold them into Democratic people.
Charles Larkin
12 June 2014 5:13am
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I hate to say it, but if just 800 rebels can route 35K Iraqi soldiers, the Iraqi government doesn't deserve to be ruling in Iraq.
Sometimes I hate being right. We, on the left, predicted in 2003 than the Iraq war would lead to troubles such as this. All too often extremism exploits the fall out from war, especially one as mismanaged as the Iraq War, or should I simply say, Invasion of Iraq. The term, "war" implies there were two sides to the engagement.
The similarities here are with Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Russians.
Then, a civil war followed which in turn was followed by the sweep of the Taliban, often without resistance.
Here, the invasion by the US fundamentally unbalanced Iraq, gave power to a sectarian Shia regime which foolishly alienated the Sunni minority and drove them into the hands of Islamists. Now we are witnessing the results of the very forces that were set in motion in 2003.
Ultimately the blame for this lies with the criminal decision to invade Iraq. Tony Blair and George Bush unleashed forces they simply didn't understand or care to understand. The childish and simplistic narrative they followed in which the invasion would be followed by an era of democracy and freedom was always a chimera., They planted a poisoned tree which is now bearing poisoned fruit.
I fully expect Tony Blair to appear sometime over the next few days to spout more deluded nonsense the gist of which will be a call for more Western interference as well as disovowing all responsibility for this fiasco. The man should be in a court room for what he has done
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