Related: Obama Sending Troops Back Into Iraq
There are boots on the ground now!
Related(?): Obama's Foreign Policy Rating Plummets, Even Without Iraq
Also see: Insurgents attack police station northeast of Baghdad
Not stalled at all.
Of course, we know now that....
"US may send advisory troops to Iraq; 275 others will guard embassy in Baghdad; Effort with Iran eyed to contain Iraq crisis" by Rick Gladstone and Thomas Erdbrink | New York Times June 17, 2014
NEW YORK — The United States and Iran signaled on Monday increased willingness to work together to arrest the expanding Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and US officials said the White House also is considering sending a small number of special forces troops to Iraq to help the government slow the insurgency.
Although President Obama has ruled out putting American troops into direct combat in Iraq, he notified Congress that the United States will deploy up to 275 troops to protect the US Embassy in Baghdad and other American interests, and may also send special forces.
Now the parsing and nuances begin.
About 170 of the security troops have already arrived and another 100 soldiers will be on standby, probably in Kuwait, until they are needed.
Three US officials said the potential of sending in special forces is high on a list of military options being considered, and the troops would focus on training and advising Iraqi forces, the Associated Press reported. It is not clear how quickly the troops could arrive in Iraq or whether they would stay in the capital or be sent north.
I've seen this movie before.
Militant fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seized the strategic city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border Monday, part of its goal of linking areas under its control on both sides of the Iraq-Syria frontier.
West of Baghdad, an Iraqi army helicopter was shot down during clashes near the city of Fallujah, killing the two-man crew, security officials said.
General Ghasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force — an elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard— is in Iraq for consultations on how to roll back the ISIS, an Al Qaeda-breakaway group, according to Iraqi security officials.
Oh, they broke away from CIA-Duh control, huh?
Also see: Understanding Iraq Is Understanding That “Kurds Are True Friends of Israel”
NATO’S ISIS–Creating Justification for WWIII
There Is No “Al-Qaeda In Iraq,” Only An Official Cover Story for US Army Covert Actions
Some say it is a true people's revolt.
Secretary of State John Kerry openly suggested Monday that a collaboration between the United States and Iran could be constructive, and another US official said the subject could come up at talks this week on the Iranian nuclear dispute.
[You ever get the impression that we are witnessing a remake of the sick, demented US foreign policy initiatives of Reagan/Cheney/Rumsfeld, which helped to create the first Iran/Iraq war? Today's remaking of the first I/I War follows features a totally unanticipated script, with the US, Iran and Iraq openly fighting on the same side, against an impressive internal force of heavily-armed Sunni terrorists, who are semi-secret assets of Saudi Arabia (SEE: US airstrikes to support Iranian Revolutionary Guard's offensive in Iraq?). If this scenario unfolds (American airstrikes in support of Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces), then it will truly be unprecedented, perhaps (inadvertently) leading to a joint US/Iranian assault upon the terrorist-sponsoring Saudis and Qataris. One can only hope.] -- US airstrikes to support Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s offensive in Iraq?
Cooperation between the United States and Iran to contain the Iraqi crisis would represent the first time the two countries — estranged adversaries for more than three decades — have jointly undertaken a common security purpose since they shared military intelligence to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks 13 years ago.
Kerry, in an interview with Yahoo News, called the advance by insurgents under the ISIS banner during the past week an “existential threat” to Iraq and suggested US airstrikes were one possible answer.
Asked if the United States would cooperate with Iran to thwart the militants, Kerry said, “I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive.”
It's a trap!
Kerry said the United States is considering drone strikes in Iraq, along with possible airstrikes with fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles from American warships that have been deployed in the Persian Gulf off the Iraqi coast.
The Islamic State, which has taken control of key cities in northern Iraq, has vowed to march to Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf in the worst threat to the country’s stability since US troops left in 2011.
I was told they stalled.
*****************
The capture of Tal Afar was an important strategic move for the militants because it sits on a main highway between Syria and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which the Islamic State seized last week.
Iraqi officials said about 500 government troops and volunteers were flown Monday to Tal Afar and were preparing to try to retake the city.
Tal Afar, with a population of about 200,000, is about 260 miles northwest of Baghdad. Its residents are mostly ethnic Shi’ite and Sunni Turkomen, raising fears of atrocities by Islamic State fighters, who brand Shi’ites as heretics.
Meaning they won't be cooperating with each other, right?
Tal Afar’s mayor, Abdulal Abdoul, said the city was taken just before dawn Monday, the Associated Press reported.
The city is just south of the self-rule Kurdish region and many residents were fleeing to the relatively safe territory, joining refugees from Mosul and other areas that have been captured by the militants. Some 3,000 others from Tal Afar fled west to the neighboring town of Sinjar.
A senior Obama administration official said that Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns may talk to the Iranians about Iraq at the nuclear talks, which are to reconvene Wednesday in Vienna.
In Iran, which is a strong backer of the Shi’ite government in Iraq, top officials also signaled readiness to collaborate with the United States on containing a crisis in a neighbor that the Iranian government has partly blamed on the legacy of the US military’s eight-year war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Bliar says no.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has said he would welcome efforts by “all countries in combating terrorism.”
On Sunday, a key aide to Rouhani, Hamid Aboutalebi, wrote in a series of messages on his Persian Twitter account that only Iran and the United States are in a position to solve the Iraq crisis.
The conciliatory tone was noteworthy given that Aboutalebi, Rouhani’s choice to be Iran’s new UN ambassador, was rejected by the United States earlier this year because of his indirect role as a translator for the militants who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, setting off the break in Iranian-US ties that has shaped the relationship ever since.
U.S. really has egg on its face!
In the United States, the signs of US-Iranian cooperation on the Iraq crisis set off a new round of political debate over whether such a move was in Washington’s interest or a strategic mistake.
Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that has promoted diplomacy with Iran and a peaceful resolution to the nuclear dispute, welcomed such cooperation.
That's the Shah's old guard group and those that inherited it.
“The fact that Iran has signaled openness to US strikes in Iraq shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom in Washington, Iran is either not seeking hegemony in the region and/or is incapable of materializing such a desire,” Parsi said in an e-mail. “The scaremongering about Iran’s intents and capabilities are put in check by these recent events.”
Vocal US critics of Iran’s government, on the other hand, castigated the Obama administration for even considering a collaboration with Iran on the Iraq crisis, calling it a blunder that Iran would seek to exploit for its own ends in the nuclear talks.
Iran is negotiating with world powers, including the United States, which want guarantees that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful. A temporary accord in that dispute is set to expire on July 20.
“Iran helped turn both Syria and Iraq into a jihadist inferno, which threatens American security, and now is positioning itself as the firewall against the very violence it created,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group that has advocated strong sanctions against Iran over the nuclear issue....
I'm sick of neo-con Zionist outfits being turned to for expertise when there are so many other voices out there.
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Given all we have seen the last few years regarding staged and scripted hoaxes, as well as past claims of babies taken out of incubators and thrown on the cold floor, I'm viewing these reports with skepticism -- especially given the amount of coverage:
"Mass executions claimed in Iraq; Insurgents say they killed 1,700; ayatollah tempers call to arms" by Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin | New York Times June 16, 2014
BAGHDAD — Wielding the threat of sectarian slaughter against Iraq’s government, Sunni Islamist militants marching toward the capital Sunday claimed they had killed hundreds of Shi’ite members of the Iraqi security forces, posting pictures of a mass execution in Tikrit as proof, and warning of more such sectarian attacks.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Divide and Conquer
Everything going according to plan.
The militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant boasted on Twitter that its forces had executed 1,700 Iraqi government soldiers. The authenticity of the photographs and the insurgents’ claim could not be verified.
Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq’s chief military spokesman, said experts had confirmed that the photos were genuine and showed at least 170 soldiers being shot to death after their capture last week in Salahuddin province, which includes Tikrit, the Associated Press reported.
If the group’s claim about the number of men killed is true, it would be the worst mass atrocity in either Iraq or Syria in recent years, surpassing even the chemical weapons attacks in the suburbs of Damascus last year, which killed 1,400 people and were attributed to the Syrian government.
Wow! They are really trying to roll over you with the propaganda, and they just jumped the shark!
The attack could also raise the specter of the war in Iraq turning genocidal, particularly because the insurgents claimed that their victims were all Shi’ites.
Security at the US Embassy in Baghdad was strengthened Sunday and some staff members were sent elsewhere in Iraq and to neighboring Jordan. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said much of the 5,500-member embassy staff will remain.
A series of bomb explosions in Baghdad killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 40 Sunday, police and hospital officials said.
Let's not linger over the dead Iraqi bodies.
While the capital was not in any immediate danger of falling to the militants, food prices have risen because of transportation disruptions and the city is under a 10 p.m. curfew. Traffic was thin earlier Sunday and there were few shoppers in commercial areas.
WHAT!!?? I was told (same day) that Sunni insurgents were rumbling toward Baghdad!
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush from the northern Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf, as President Obama considered possible military options.
Hagel’s press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said the move will give Obama additional flexibility if military action were required to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq.
Excuse to bomb.
Accompanying the carrier was the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun.
The ships, which arrived in the gulf late Sunday, carry Tomahawk missiles that could reach Iraq. The Bush also has fighter jets that could easily reach Iraq.
In Washington, leading Republican lawmakers called on the Obama administration to take immediate action, in conjunction with allies in the Middle East and possibly even with Iran, to halt the surprisingly swift progress of extremist forces in Iraq.
They will be singing a different tune one day later, meaning they got a visit from Israeli lobbyists.
Neither Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, nor Representative Michael T. McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, suggested that Obama deploy ground troops.
He already has anyway. Add it to the list of impeachable offenses.
But Rogers and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that airstrikes might be necessary.
Speaking to volunteers south of Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed Sunday to regain territory captured last week by the militant group. ‘‘We will march and liberate every inch,’’ he said.
The office of the Shi'ites’ supreme spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, Saturday night issued what amounted to a revision of the ayatollah’s call to arms Friday, apparently out of concern that it was misinterpreted by many as a call for sectarian warfare....
Erin Evers, the Human Rights Watch researcher in Iraq, said her group was trying to verify the authenticity of the execution photos.
Who is Human Rights Watch anyway?
“It is unfortunately in keeping with their pattern of commission of atrocities, and obviously intended to further fuel sectarian war,” she said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Oooh!
News of the killings was slow to circulate in Iraq, since the government last week blocked social network sites, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
Colonel Suhail al-Samaraie, head of the Awakening Council in Samarra, a progovernment Sunni grouping, said officials in Salahuddin were aware of large-scale executions having taken place last week, but he did not know how many.
“They are targeting anyone working with the government side, anyplace, anywhere,” and not all the victims were Shi’ites, he said.
One of those executed by the insurgents was a police colonel named Ibrahim al-Jabouri, a Sunni official in charge of the criminal investigation division in Tikrit, Samaraie said.
A local journalist in Salahuddin province said the Fourth Iraqi Army Division had collapsed as the insurgents advanced last week, and 4,000 soldiers were believed to have been captured.
Or defected. I suppose it is possible given the demonization of the group that it is the Sunni area wanting to break free. Seems to be happening across the Globe; however, consider my source.
A New York Times employee in Tikrit said residents spoke of seeing hundreds of prisoners captured when they tried to flee Camp Speicher, a former US military base and airfield on the edge of Tikrit that was turned into an Iraqi training center.
Like I would believe anything they say, especially about Iraq.
Those who were Sunnis were given civilian clothes and sent home; the Shi'ites were taken to the grounds of Saddam Hussein’s old palace in Tikrit, where they were said to be executed, their bodies dumped in the Tigris River, which runs by the palace compound. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant photographs appeared to have been taken at that location.
The still photographs uploaded on Twitter were bloody and gruesome, showing the insurgents, many wearing black masks, lining up at the edges of what looked like hastily dug mass graves and apparently firing their weapons into groups of young men who were bound and packed closely together in large groups.
This is starting to feel like staged and scripted FAKERY!
The photographs showed at least five massacre sites, with the victims lying in shallow mass graves with their hands tied behind their backs. The number of victims that could be seen in any of the pictures numbered between 20 and 60 in each of the sites, although it was not clear whether the photographs showed the entire graves. Some appeared to be long ditches.
The photographs showed the executioners flying the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant black flag, with captions such as “the filthy Shi'ites are killed in the hundreds,” “The liquidation of the Shi'ites who ran away from their military bases,” and “This is the destiny of Maliki’s Shi'ites,” referring to the prime minister.
Many of the captions were viciously mocking toward the purported victims....
How divisive, chi bono?
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"UN says militants committed war crimes" by John Heilprin | Associated Press June 17, 2014
GENEVA — Evidence shows that the Islamic militants who massacred scores of captured Iraqi soldiers ‘‘almost certainly’’ committed war crimes, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said Monday.
It's a sales pitch, or this is an unapproved uprising.
Pillay condemned what she called the reported ‘‘cold-blooded executions of hundreds of Iraqi hors de combat soldiers, as well as civilians including religious leaders and people associated with the government’’ in recent days by forces allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
‘‘Based on corroborated reports from a number of sources, it appears that hundreds of noncombatant men were summarily executed over the past five days, including surrendered or captured soldiers, military conscripts, police, and others associated with the government,’’ Pillay said.
WMD.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed over the weekend that it had executed about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers. Pillay said the exact number of deaths cannot yet be verified but ‘‘this apparently systematic series of cold-blooded executions, mostly conducted in various locations in the Tikrit area, almost certainly amounts to war crimes.’’
Earlier in the day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called reports about the slayings ‘‘deeply disturbing’’ and said those responsible must be brought to justice. He warned against sectarian rhetoric in Iraq that could inflame the conflict and the entire region.
The UN chief said he welcomed the statement on the need for unity in Iraq made by Grand Ayatollah Sayed Ali Al-Sistani, who he said ‘‘represents a deeply influential voice of wisdom and reason.’’
This is not a people's revolt; this is a propaganda operation serving a preconceived agenda!
The United Nations said Monday that it had relocated 58 staff members from Baghdad and may move additional personnel out of the Iraqi capital in the coming days because of growing security concerns.
Something bad is coming soon.
‘‘The situation has changed on the ground in the last few days and we are adjusting our posture accordingly,’’ said Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman. He said the United Nations now has about 200 staff members in Baghdad.
The State Department has reinforced security at the US Embassy and sent some personnel out of town.
Much of the embassy staff will stay in place, the department said, without specifying numbers. The embassy, along the Tigris River in Baghdad’s Green Zone, has about 5,000 personnel and is the largest US diplomatic post in the world.
We never really left.
Some US Embassy staff members were being temporarily moved to more stable places at consulates in Basra, in the Shi’ite-dominated south of Iraq; and Irbil, in the Kurdish semiautonomous region in northeastern Iraq; and to Jordan, she said.
American travelers in the country were encouraged to exercise caution and limit travel to certain parts of Iraq.
The Islamic militants who overran cities and towns in Iraq last week have posted graphic photos on a militant website that appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria loading the captives onto flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives after being shot.
Why are those still allowed to operate, and why doesn't the NSA go get 'em?
Iraq’s chief military spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi, confirmed the authenticity of the photos on Sunday and said he was aware of cases of mass murder of captured Iraqi soldiers in areas held by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Ban said reports of mass summary executions by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “are deeply disturbing and underscore the urgency of bringing the perpetrators of such crimes to justice.’’ He called on Iraqi leaders to ensure their followers avoid acts of reprisal.
More agenda-pushing urgency!
Ban urged the international community to unite in showing solidarity with Iraq as it confronts ‘‘this serious security challenge’’ and urged all to respect international humanitarian and human rights law as they try to counter terrorism and violence in Iraq.
Setting the government up for failure so they can turn on it?
Pillay said that, according to information received by UN human rights employees on the ground, forces affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria also executed the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mosul on Thursday for refusing to pledge allegiance to the breakaway group.
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"Iraqi Christians flee homes amid militant push" by Diaa Hadid | Associated Press June 17, 2014
ALQOSH, Iraq — Over the past decade, Iraqi Christians have fled repeatedly to this ancient mountainside village, seeking refuge from violence, then returning home when the danger eased. Now they are doing it again as Islamic militants rampage across northern Iraq, but this time few say they ever want to go back to their homes.
The flight is a new blow to Iraq’s dwindling Christian community, which is almost as old as the religion itself but has been diminished since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Meaning Bush was the real anti-Christ.
During the past 11 years, at least half of the country’s Christian population has fled the country, according to some estimates, to escape frequent attacks by Sunni militants targeting them and their churches. Now many of those who held out and remained may be giving up completely after fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria swept over the city of Mosul and a broad swath of the country the past week.
‘‘I’m not going back,’’ said Lina, who fled Mosul with her family as the militants swept in and came to Alqosh, about 30 miles to the north.
‘‘Each day we went to bed in fear,’’ the 57-year-old woman said, sitting in a house for displaced people. ‘‘In our own houses we knew no rest.’’ Like other Christians who fled here, she spoke on condition she would be identified only by her first name for fear for her safety.
I'm so glad the U.S. liberated the place.
In leaving, the Christians are emptying out communities that date back to the first centuries of the religion, including Chaldean, Assyrian, and Armenian churches.
The past week, some 160 Christian families — mostly from Mosul — fled to Alqosh, mayor Sabri Boutani said, consulting first on the number with his wife by speaking in Chaldean, the ancient language spoken by many residents.
Alqosh, dating back at least to the first century BC, is a jumble of pastel-painted homes nestled at the base of a high craggy hill among rolling plains of wheat fields. The village’s population of 6,000 is about half Christian and half ethnic Kurds. Located just outside the autonomous Kurdish zone of northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga have moved into the town to protect it.
Many Christians are deciding that the comparatively liberal and prosperous Kurdish regions are their safest bet.
‘‘Every Christian prefers to stay in Kurdistan,’’ said Abu Zeid, an engineer. He too said he wouldn’t be going back to Mosul.
‘‘It’s a shame because Mosul is the most important city in Iraq for Christians,’’ he added. Mosul is said to be the site of the burial of Jonah, the prophet who tradition says was swallowed by a whale.
Iraq was estimated to have more than 1 million Christians before the 2003 invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein. Now church officials estimate only 450,000 remain within Iraq borders. Militants have targeted Christians in repeated waves in Baghdad and the north. The Chaldean Catholic cardinal was kidnapped in 2008 by extremists and killed. Churches around the country have been bombed repeatedly.
The exodus from Mosul has been even more dramatic. From a pre-2003 population of around 130,000 Christians, there were only about 10,000 left before the Islamic State fighters overran the city a week ago. Abu Zeid estimated that only 2,000 Christians remain in the city.
That's some sort of cleansing.
In Alqosh, the newcomers and the residents united in prayer at Sunday Mass in the Chaldean Church of the Virgin Mary of the Harvest, held by Friar Gabriel Tooma.
On the church floor was spread a mosaic made of beans, lentils, wheat, and other produce from the area, assembled to commemorate the upcoming harvest. Before the service, volunteers hurried to finish the images of Jesus and Mary, and were filling out the details of Pope Francis’ face, sketched out with white beans.
A church that has stood for centuries despite the sectarianism.
‘‘People are afraid of what’s coming next,’’ Tooma said. ‘‘I fear there will be a day when people will say: ‘There were once Christians in Iraq.’’’
Then the U.S. invaded.
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Sorry, but the divide and conquer strategy is no longer working.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Militants lay siege to Iraq’s largest oil refinery
Why not? What will it take for you, the American people, to approve of a reoccupation of the place (ignore that Green Zone footprint), huh, huh, huh??!!
Trying to DRAW TURKEY IN NOW!
"As Sunnis die in Iraq, a cycle is restarting" by Alissa J. Rubin and Rod Nordland | New York Times June 18, 2014
It does feel like 11 years ago, yeah!
BAGHDAD — As Sunni militants rampaged across northern Iraq last week, executing Iraqi soldiers and government workers and threatening to demolish Shi’ism’s most sacred shrines, Iraq’s Shi’ites suffered mostly in silence, maintaining a patience urged on them by their religious leaders through months of deadly bombings.
When they threaten to demolish the shrines I know it's a contrived threat by intelligence agency assets. Those shrines stood for centuries despite the alleged sectarianism.
On Tuesday, however, there were signs that their patience had run out.
So is mine.
The bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners were found in a government-controlled police station in Baqouba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. They had all been shot Monday night in the head or chest. Then the remains of four young men who had been shot were found dumped Tuesday on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shi’ite militiamen.
By evening, it was Shi’ites who were the victims again, as a suicide bombing in a crowded market in Sadr City killed at least 14 people, local hospital officials said.
It is a darkly familiar cycle of violence, one that took hold in Iraq in 2006 and generated sectarian war over the next three years: Sunni extremists explode suicide bombs in Shi’ite neighborhoods, and Shi’ite militias retaliate by torturing and executing Sunnis. This time, though, without the presence of the US military, it has the potential to grow much worse.
That -- and the oil -- at the bottom -- and top -- of this agenda advancing propaganda, whatever it is.
That bloodletting was stopped in 2008 only after Iraqi tribal leaders in the pay of the US military rebelled against the Sunni extremists. With Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now encouraging what he says are hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites to rise to the defense of Iraq, and after years of sectarian government that has deeply alienated the tribes as well as the Sunnis, it is not clear that such a strategy, if tried, would meet with the same success.
But?
“If there is no fast solution to what is happening, the situation will go back to daily attacks and will return to what happened back in 2006,” said Masroor Aswad, a member of the Independent Human Rights Commission in Baghdad. He said the minority Sunnis were terrified that they would be blamed for any violence against Shi’ites, leaving them vulnerable to brutal retaliatory attacks from the Shi’ite militias.
In Baqouba, the killings took place after an assault in which militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria overran several neighborhoods, security officials said. A police source said the Sunni militants attacked the police station where the men, suspected of ties to the insurgents, were being held for questioning.
“Those people were detainees who were arrested in accordance with Article 4 terrorism offenses,” he said, referring to Iraqi antiterrorism legislation that gives security forces extraordinary arrest powers. “They were killed inside the jail by the policemen before they withdrew from the station last night.”
Brigadier General Jameel Kamal al-Shimmari, the police commander in Baqouba, said that officers had repulsed the militants from the city after a three-hour gun battle in the same area as the police station where the prisoners were killed.
“Everything in the city is now under control, and the groups of armed men are not seen in the city,” Shimmari said Tuesday.
Morgue officials in Baqouba said that two police officers had been killed in the fighting.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed in a Twitter post that the prisoners had been executed by the police.
An Iraqi military spokesman, General Qassim Atta, blamed the deaths in Baqouba on the militants, saying the prisoners died when the station was struck with hand grenades and mortars. However, a source at the morgue in Baqouba said that many of the victims had been shot to death at close range. Like many of the official sources in Iraq, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Throughout Baghdad, residents expressed fears that the violence was finding its way back into their neighborhoods. “You see gunmen in the street, you don’t know who is who,” said Ahmad al-Kharabai, who has a small hardware store in Al-Adil, a mixed neighborhood in southern Baghdad where Sunnis live mainly on one side of the main road and Shi’ites live mainly on the other.
“You don’t know who is with you, and who’s against you,” he said.
I was told the insurgents had stalled, but.... ????
Many militiamen have come into the neighborhood, and although they do not visibly carry guns, no one doubts they have them. Still, Kharabai said he was hopeful that Iraq would not devolve into a cycle of revenge killings. “I think Iraqis know the mistake they made in 2006 and will not repeat it,” he said.
Mohammed al-Gailani, who owns a grocery shop in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Dora, was more pessimistic.
“People are afraid, we are afraid of the militiamen around; I think things will go as badly as they did before,” he said, adding that he was desperate to leave with his family for Turkey but that flights were booked for weeks. A travel agent, he said, declined to estimate how long it would take to get his family on a plane.
More refugees for Turkey!
Enjoy 'em! Comes with being a member and enabler of NATO!
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"Extremist groups in Iraq threaten regional war, UN panel warns" by Nick Cumming-Bruce | New York Times June 18, 2014
GENEVA — The onslaught of extremist Sunni militants in Iraq will have violent repercussions in Syria and could bring wider war in the Middle East, a UN panel warned Tuesday.
The conflict in Syria “has reached a tipping point threatening the entire region,” the panel, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Gotcha. Message received loud and clear.
Attacks in northern Iraq by forces affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the militant group leading the offensive, have brought “unimaginable suffering” to civilians and are likely to cause greater regional involvement in the Syrian conflict, including an influx of more foreign fighters, the panel said.
“ISIS has shown itself willing to fan the flames of sectarianism both in Iraq and Syria,” the four-member panel warned. “Any strengthening of their position gives rise to great concern.”
Vitit Muntarbhorn, a member of the panel, told reporters: “We are possibly on the cusp of a regional war. That is something we are very worried about.”
The history shows 50 years from now -- if we survive this -- will begin by saying "in 2014 a new series of battles broke out. AmeriKan efforts to overthrow Syria had failed, and the resulting backlash led to trouble in Iraq. Obama was faced with a difficult choice. He needed a way(?!!!?) to be able to send reinforcements without alarming a war-weary public. The battle on foreign shores was not going well, with Libya in chaos and the latest foray into Russia bogged down in Ukraine."
I've been watching too much Military Channel, 'er, American Heroes Channel lately.
In Syria, after more than three years of a conflict that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and driven millions from their homes, the relentless pursuit of military victory has escalated violence to an unprecedented level, the panel said. “For perpetrators of crimes, there is no fear or thought of consequence,” it said.
Because the globe-kicking war-planners that staff government created institutions like the U.N.
Extremist opposition groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Nusra Front have diverted resources from fighting the Syrian government and are locked in open war with other opposition forces and tribal groups for control of resources in the oil- and gas-rich eastern and northeastern regions of Syria, the panel reported.
Throughout history, the narrative and rea$ons for all wars is the $ame.
Most civilians continue to be killed by Syrian government bombardments, particularly barrel bombs, which often target areas populated by civilians in what the panel described as a “strategy of terrorizing civilians by making opposition-controlled areas unlivable.”
“The most dangerous places in Syria for civilians are the markets, hospitals, and schools that continue to operate in desperate conditions and amid constant threat of attack,” the report said.
Remember Syria before the attempted overthrow?
Ironically, they were harboring millions of Iraqi refugees from 2003 on.
And this is the thanks they get.
But armed opposition groups have also increased attacks lethal to civilians, including multiple attacks on schools, and have increasingly tortured and mistreated civilians in areas under their control, the report said.
Against that background, the panel delivered blunt criticism of the weak response from the world powers on the UN Security Council. “Through their inaction, a space has been created for the worst of humanity to express itself,” it said.
Has that WWII feel to it, yeah!
“The international community has stumbled and fallen in seeking justice for the Syrian people,” the panel’s chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, told reporters in Geneva, pointing to a Security Council resolution referring Syria to the International Criminal Court for prosecution of war crimes, a measure that was blocked by Russia and China.
The "bad guys" of WWIII!
“We archive our evidence and nothing happened,” said another panel member, Carla Del Ponte. “That for me is a tragedy for international justice.”
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Who can they get help from to stabilize the situation?
"Britain says it is ready to reopen embassy in Iran" New York Times Syndicate June 18, 2014
LONDON — Underscoring its warming relations with Iran, Britain announced Tuesday that “the circumstances are right” to reopen the British Embassy in Tehran and that it would establish a small presence there as soon as is practical.
Has Israel heard about this, and if so, when't the next false flag in Britain?
First the Palestinian unity government, and now this!
Better take care, Cameron.
Full diplomatic ties were suspended in 2011 after attacks on Britain’s diplomatic compound in Tehran, but relations have been improving ever since a change in political leadership in Iran last year and progress in international talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
The pace of the thaw appears to have been intensified significantly by a shared interest in containing Sunni militants after their recent military successes in Iraq.
Does amazing things, doesn't it?
On Monday, the office of Prime Minister David Cameron said that Foreign Secretary William Hague had spoken about the crisis in Iraq to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, over the weekend.
“I have therefore now decided the circumstances are right to reopen our embassy in Tehran,” said a ministerial statement released on the website of the British Parliament before Hague was to speak there. “There are a range of practical issues that we will need to resolve first. However it is our intention to reopen the embassy in Tehran with a small initial presence as soon as these practical arrangements have been made.”
The British Foreign Office, which has in the past raised the possibility of reopening of the embassy in Tehran, declined to comment ahead of the statement to Parliament.
The improvement in relations with Tehran began well before the recent offensive by a Sunni militant group in Iraq, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
ISIS just gave it a push, huh?
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You know who I turn to for solutions?
"Until Iraqi government changes, US actions should be limited" June 18, 2014
The current crisis in Iraq says less about the military strength of Al Qaeda-inspired militants than it does about the depth of bitterness that ordinary Sunnis feel toward Iraq’s central government.
Okay then. It is a people's revolt, 'eh?
In the short term, the United States may need to offer intelligence support, advisers, and limited, targeted US airstrikes against militant leaders.
Knew that was coming.
But, as always, the only viable long-term solution in Iraq is a political one. The root of the problem in Iraq is not jihadism but the inability of Iraq’s various groups to share power with one another.
It is tragic that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stubbornly resisted nonviolent efforts by moderates among the minority Sunni Muslims to have a voice in his government.
Globe likes the Sunni protests, hmmmm.
That’s why Maliki bears the brunt of responsibility for the situation in Iraq today.
I'm thinking this is all about getting him out, whatever it is.
Had he treated Sunnis differently, and had his coalition allowed a residual force of US troops to remain in Iraq, the group known as ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, would not have gained so much ground.
Oh, STILL BITTER about THAT, are they?
At least we know what is the agenda now.
It is not too late for Iraq’s dysfunctional parliament, which is still struggling to come together in the wake of elections in April, to appoint a unity government that includes respected, moderate Sunnis who can help restore ties and trust with the central government in the Sunni heartland. In the unlikely event that this happens, the United States should be ready with a package of more vigorous support to Iraq.
Well, the Palestinians just tried that and were greeted with a false flag hoax, so.... ??
But as long as Maliki continues to act as though the central government belongs to his fellow Shiites alone, support for him must be cautious and limited.
The Shiite Saddam Hussein?
It would be foolish to back one side of an Iraqi civil war.
No, you back both sides so you can control the outcome and make a boodle.
C'mon, Globe, get up to speed.
We should stand ready to use limited airpower to prevent Baghdad from falling, to help Kurdish forces defend their successful cities in the Kurdish region, and to help Shiite and Kurdish forces keep ISIS out of their areas. Since the group has vowed to slaughter Shiites, a humanitarian disaster would ensue if it were able to take control of the Shiite regions of the south. The United States should also offer assistance to protect the ancient Shiite shrines in Samarra, Najaf, and Karbala, because their destruction would fuel a far wider Sunni-Shiite conflict. But helping Maliki retake Sunni lands by bombing the Sunnis into submission would be extremely unwise and unlikely to succeed.
ISIS could not have achieved its alarming string of military victories without the consent of a large number of mainstream Sunnis who have previously opposed Al Qaeda-inspired groups. Juan Cole, a University of Michigan history professor who specializes in Iraq, says recent events in Mosul seem less like “an ISIS military takeover and more like an urban revolt against the government.”
Finding such sentiments here causes me to doubt what I hear, sorry.
To be sure, Sunnis have plenty of reasons to revolt. Sunnis, who make up roughly 20 percent of the Iraqi population, had ruled for centuries until the US-led invasion. The American occupation dismissed the overwhelmingly Sunni army and civil service corps. Then Americans instituted elections, which brought the Shiite majority to power.
I was told they seized it!
But in 2007, a majority of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they didn’t want to live under the harsh rule of foreign Islamists, who were taking over the smuggling businesses that Iraqi Sunnis relied on for their livelihoods. The tribal leaders formed an “Awakening Council” that pledged to fight on the side of the United States, which gave Sunnis weapons, jobs, and a voice in their government again. For years, the deal worked. Fighting in their own backyard, the Sunni militiamen of the Awakening Council proved much more effective than the Iraqi army or US troops. If they ever confronted a serious challenge, US airpower backed them up.
Check, check. See where this is going.
Sunnis began to play by democratic rules. They voted in the 2010 election. Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni former army lieutenant, became the vice president. Rafi Hiyad al-Issawi, a Sunni orthopedic surgeon, became minister of finance. But Maliki never warmed to the idea of sharing power with Sunnis. He didn’t trust them, and feared arming them meant arming an enemy of a future war.
Maliki looks like a prophet.
Maliki saw Hashimi so rarely that US Ambassador Ryan Crocker reportedly urged the two to meet every week. Maliki grudgingly agreed. The day US troops left in 2011, Maliki issued a warrant for Hashimi’s arrest, forcing him to flee the country. Maliki also arrested, and reportedly tortured, one of Issawi’s bodyguards.
Which is condemnable, but AmeriKa and its mouthpiece media not the ones to be the condemner.
After the US departure, Maliki let agreements with the Awakening Council fall by the wayside. He incorporated about 40,000 Sunni militiamen into the army, but left many more jobless. They felt betrayed. Sunnis set up a protest camp to call for Maliki’s ouster. In December, Maliki sent soldiers to violently close the camp and arrested a prominent Sunni parliamentarian who supported it.
I know how they feel every morning when I open a Globe.
Now, moderate Sunnis are hunted, both by Maliki’s secret police and by ISIS, which wants to kill them for cooperating with Maliki and the Americans.
Hussein's secret police?
If true, what did this whole thing accomplish other than basically destroy a nation and murder millions?
Last year, a suicide bomb killed Sheikh Aifan Sadoun Aifan al-Issawi, one of the first Awakening Council leaders. Another Sunni tribal leader, Sheikh Zaydan al Jabiri, recently announced that his fighters would oppose ISIS if his people got weapons from the West, but that they would be forced to join ISIS without such support. Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, head of the Awakening Council, is one of the lone voices in recent days calling on Sunnis to resist ISIS, arguing that as bad as Maliki is, ISIS is worse. Indeed, Risha’s support is what allowed Maliki to recapture the area around Ramadi.
Even with US firepower, Maliki cannot retake and hold the Sunni heartland without the support of the Sunni population. ISIS was able to overrun northern Iraq because many Sunnis decided they preferred ISIS to Maliki.
If that is the conventional wisdom of the propaganda pre$$, I don't believe it.
Besides, the Globe's news pages have told me it is the terrorists, period, end of story.
They might change their minds after a few months of harsh leadership. But until they do, Maliki must live with the self-fulfilling prophecy he brought about.
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I need to fulfill myself and stop reading this nonsense.
See: Does ISIS Take its Orders from Saudi Arabia and the CIA?
I think so.
