| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Focus on Obama’s Terrible Iraq Blunder |
| 2015-05-17 |
| It is all the more heartbreaking, therefore, to read now that the Islamic State—AQI’s successor organization—has seized the government center in Ramadi. Islamic State extremists detonated a series of suicide car bombs on Thursday to punch their way through fortifications protecting the government headquarters. Reports were that, after the headquarters fell, black-clad fanatics were going to door-to-door, executing tribal fighters who opposed their onslaught. Government security forces and many civilians were fleeing in panic. As Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute points out, it’s as if the Marines, having taken Iwo Jima, had abandoned it and the Japanese had lowered the stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi. Just a month ago, when the ISIS offensive against Ramadi began in earnest, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tried to reassure the world that it was no big deal. Ramadi, he claimed, “is not symbolic in any way…. I would much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall.” We can only watch and wait to hear what spin General Dempsey—who has increasingly defined his role as telling the president what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear—will put on this latest catastrophe. It is, in fact, unspinnable. The fall of Ramadi is a sign of the abysmal failure of the misnamed Operation Inherent Resolve launched by President Obama in August 2014 to “degrade” and ultimately to “destroy” ISIS. Operation Uncertain Resolve is more like it. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #8 Dempsey, you've lost *another* city? he claimed, “is not symbolic in any way… No, it's not symbolic at all. It's harsh facts on the ground - the enemy has taken a city. Spin it however you want, but the enemy controls more territory and you just lost a node in your network. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-05-17 22:22 |
| #7 USN Ret - see: "Dust Storm" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-05-17 20:24 |
| #6 CF: thanks for that mental picture; 'Andrea Mitchell' and 'orgasm' in the same sentence..... (my puke cup runneth over) |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2015-05-17 18:44 |
| #5 For Obama and Democrats - this is Victory. The DEMOCRATS have always wanted to Iraq to be the new 'Vietnam'. They have had wet dreams of reliving their glory days of the Fall of Saigon. From Reid's "The War is Lost" to M-F Murtha to Pelosi to Obama and Hillary; from the Media's refusal to report any good news, to Andrea Mitchell's orgasmic glee while reporting on Americans killed in Iraq. They have been working for this ever since they went into the war in Iraq. And the RINO's in congress aren't any better. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2015-05-17 16:18 |
| #4 Some would argue defeat was always his goal. His difficulty was making it look like he cared. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2015-05-17 08:35 |
| #3 Obama managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2015-05-17 08:09 |
| #2 "We knew this day would come. We've known it for some time. But still there is something profound about the end of a war that has lasted so long. It's harder to end a war than begin one. Everything that American troops have done in Iraq - all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has landed to this moment of success." |
| Posted by: mossomo 2015-05-17 02:10 |
| #1 These guys are the JV,remember. |
| Posted by: gorb 2015-05-17 01:19 |