An instant replay of a year ago: Same ISIS blitzkrieg, same Iraqi army disintegration and pell-mell retreat, same abandonment of U.S.-supplied military equipment to be added to the Islamic State's armory.
But I guess one thing is different: Last year, the Iraqis weren't "benefiting" from U.S. airborne "pinpricks" - and they've made all the difference, haven't they? <eyeroll>:
Iraqi security forces attempting to retake control of the western city of Ramadi were routed in heavy fighting Sunday, the worst defeat for Iraq’s central government since Islamic State militants stormed across the country last June.
In a replay of last year’s military debacle, elite units abandoned their U.S.-provided equipment to Islamic State fighters and fled the area, leaving several hundred soldiers surrounded in the last government-held enclave in the city.
Multiple security sources, none of whom agreed to be identified, speaking from both within the besieged Anbar Operations Center as well as with the units fleeing the city, described the fight for control of the capital of Iraq’s largest province as essentially over after reinforcements sent on Saturday to retake the city were crushed by Islamic State fighters.
Take a gander at the above map. Falluja is next [correction: ISIS took it previously], and then Baghdad itself. The "war" against ISIS does not, despite all the White House's furious propaganda efforts, go well.
But that's one area where Barack Obama is undeterrable:
U.S. officials are couching the loss of Ramadi as a setback rather than a blow, arguing they had always expected ups and downs and reversals mixed in with steady progress in the fight against the Islamic [fundamentalist]s and their Sunni allies in Iraq. Only on Friday, Brigadier-General Thomas Weidley, chief of staff of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, was describing to reporters how ISIS is “on the defensive throughout Iraq and Syria,” although he cautioned the terror army will still have “episodic successes” but they won’t “materialize into long-term gains.”
But there hasn't been any "progress," steady or otherwise. ISIS is on the offensive pretty much everywhere. And besieging Baghdad sure looks like a "long-term gain," if by that term we mean "winning the war".
This Obamagon spin is patently delusional and an insult to the public's intelligence, which means the following ice-cold shower of reality will be left to President Walker to dispense:
[E]pisodic successes can soon start mounting into a pattern of wins. Despite Friday’s successful U.S. commando raid deep into ISIS territory in Syria that left as many as forty militants dead, including three commanders, in the last few days ISIS has managed to mount powerful counter-punches more than sixty miles apart — in Iraq’s Ramadi and Syria’s Palmyra, the desert town that contains one of the world’s most important Roman heritage sites. …
Hasakah, Ramadi, Palmyra — they all illustrate how ISIS strikes back whenever the group takes a hit both to boost the morale of its own fighters and to give the sense it remains undefeated even when it does suffer defeats. “Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive,” was Harry Truman’s take on how to conduct warfare. And that is exactly how ISIS fights.
Ditto Barack Obama....domestically, where his true enemies reside. Against the Islamic State? Piffle, he's got his next tee time to meet.
And that is why a President Walker will probably never get the opportunity to salvage anything of President Bush's victory in Iraq, if any of it remains even today. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is calling for the redeployment of U.S. ground forces to come to the Iraqis' rescue, but Mrs. Clinton will pose for a Playboy centerfold before that ever happens.
But let's not forget that ISIS is effectively squatting on Iranian-annexed territory, and the mullahs' puppet in Baghdad is sending in another of Tehran's proxy armies:
Iranian-aligned Shiite militias headed Monday into Anbar province a day after its capital Ramadi fell to Islamic State militants and as hundreds of police personnel, soldiers and tribal fighters abandoned the Iraqi city in a chaotic exit.
An official from one of the Shiite militias, Kitaeb Hezbollah, confirmed by text message that the group’s militiamen had entered Anbar province by Monday morning.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi Sunday ordered the controversial Iranian-backed militias to join the fight to take back control of the city from the Islamic militants. U.S. officials have expressed concern over the divisive and increasingly powerful Iranian-backed Shiite groups.
Y'all may remember that I opposed an intervention in Syria a little under two years ago because we had no allies in-country; it was either the Iranian-stooge Bashar Assad regime, or the proto-Islamic State. If we were going to intervene, it would be to eradicate both and cleanse the entire country of Islamic Fundamentalism of all stripes. The equivalent is now becoming, or has already become, the case in Iraq, with Mr. Al-Abadi taking orders from the mullahs and ISIS being garishly conspicuous instead of embryonic. The only course of action that would be congruent with U.S. national security interests is the same as it was back in 2003: liberate (re-liberate in Iraq's case) both countries and use them as staging areas for the invasion and liberation of Iran.
And unlike twelve years ago, the mullahs have (or shortly will have) nuclear weapons.
I suppose Harry (G)Reid has finally been proven right. It just took eight years of Democrat sabotage and treachery to make it happen.
"Mission accomplished," indeed.
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