Posted on 03/31/2015 9:20:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Iraqi forces battling to wrest Tikrit from ISIS are now in control of the city, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Tuesday on Iraqiya TV.
Al-Abadi, who is also the top military commander, said on state television that the city was liberated.
Tikrit had been under ISIS control since June.
The push into Tikrit comes days after a series of U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS targets around the city.
The airstrikes made it possible for the Iraqi forces to move through the city. Troops reported finding dozens of roadside bombs and booby-trapped buildings as they combed the city.
At a Cabinet meeting before declaring Tikrit liberated, al-Abadi was already calling the operation a success.
"The success of the Tikrit experiment will be repeated in other areas because of the results it has achieved on the battlefield, on a humanitarian level, protecting civilians as much as possible, in addition to the low casualties amongst our security forces," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
I think it is useful to look at all sources for news. One must consider who each source depends on while judging the opinions given. Thus I read or look at WSJ, Barrons, Mother Jones, Al Jazeera, Commentary Daily, China and Japan TV news and RT, Free Republic, and Daily Kos, among others. I also count on having lived and noticed national and international news for 60 of my 76 years, as well as talking with people of many different views including my son in Special Forces. People in the Soviet Union learned to read Isvestia with a skeptical view, while also trying to tune into Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.
I have lots of friends with various opinions that are not always my own. However, I have been known to change my opinions over time with new and interesting information. There is nothing more boring than beeing with people who have a hive mind.
I hate to break it to you, but it was Bush who had the Army disbanded.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do NOT put words in my mouth, froggy thing.
I know a scad more history than you purport to have tattooed on your weiner, which you are now taking out to shake and wave around.
Obama purposefully did the rope a dope/bend over for the Shi-ites by refusing to unilaterally insist on American troops being left in Iraq as a security force ( Status of Forces Agreement). A deadline was set, a line in the sand was drawn, and the Iraqi Prime Minister did not budge as pre-planned, and Obama bugged out as pre-planned, taking away the gains in Iraq we had made through the sacrifice of American blood and treasure. George W. Bush liberated 57 million Iraqis. Obama refused to believe it. Ask your croaking brain why.( errrr..is there a connection between Iranian Valerie Jarrett, and Obama’s continued uninterupted pacific approach to Iran since 2008?......and he’s now giving them nukes without so much as a public twitch of his left gonad? Connect some dots, Horatio.)
BTW, America and her Allies did leave security forces in Post WWII Japan, Germany, Italy, and Obama did NOT in Iraq, breaking the traditional system that works so well in pacifying nations from fascist war into democracy.Why?
And then Obama destroyed the new Shiite Iraqi Army ( I was not referring to the earlier one G W Bush disbanded as you so vituperously expounded,like yelling “bomb” after the explosive went off)....by not sending them the ordinance they needed to keep Iraq independent( excuse: they were not trained enough, The Kurds might fight the Shiites and win, no arms for them! Result genocide...whoopee) and to who, pray tell, would they turn...HUH?
Well figure that out for yourself. Transgronify.
Croak a little on this article, Kermit:
Barrack Obama, The Quintessential Fascist
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
Iraq is now an occupied client state of Iran, and we used the USAF to bring it about, and thanks to the US Media’s silence on the issue.......NO ONE KNOWS.
Obama had better stay in country. There is a lead Matzo ball with his name on it, and its not going to be in just his soup.
First of all, I’m not sure I understand your frog insult. Secondly I am seriously reduced in my respect for anything you might say given your tattooed weiner, and shaking and waving comment. If you had read the subsequent back and forth you would have seen a reasonable exchange of views and information among several of us. Gross, obscene insults do not add to the discourse. You are upset about my “putting” words in your mouth, well I am insulted at you putting a weiner on me, given that my main experience with warfare is 44 years of marriage to a man with Korean War PTSD, and as mother to a son with 18 years of 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, one tour in Iraq and 2 in Afghanistan.
When I said Bush had the Army disbanded, I was speaking in terms of the Bush Administration. Subsequently Justa pointed out that it was done without Bush’s knowledge and he wanted to know who did it, a question I also wanted answered. Since you know scads more history than I apparently do, perhaps you can provide the answer. While we are seeking knowledge, do you happen to know whose idea it was after we won Gulf War I to immediately let Saddam Hussein have permission to fly helicopters which he used to murderous success/excess?
Here is an April 1 update on the Tikrit situation.
http://peak-oil.org/news/2015/04/isis-cleared-from-tikrit-says-iraq-pm/
And here is an April 2 update on Tikrit with reports from fighters inside the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/world/middleeast/isis-forces-pushed-out-of-tikrit.html
> many of the Shiite militiamen involved in the fight say the international coalition’s air campaign actually impeded their victory — even though beforehand they had spent weeks in a stalemate with militants holed up in Tikrit.
No insult.
I am a very contentious debater, besides , I love you.
:-)
While we are seeking knowledge, do you happen to know whose idea it was after we won Gulf War I to immediately let Saddam Hussein have permission to fly helicopters which he used to murderous success/excess?>>>>>>>>>>>>
When George One handed the reins over to BJ Clinton, George One’s policy was to protect the Kurds with an enforced no fly zone,, Bill the BJ did not, and instead
did not enforce the no fly zones for Saddam’s choppers..cutting back on US air supperiority over Irag ( flown out of Turkey),and was to busy sticking that Clinton rosey red proboscus up Saddam’s ass in the beginning years of his administration.
George One’s mistake was staying allied with the UN Iraq invasion policy and not going all the way to Bagdhdad, as well as assuming that BJ Clinton would continue to protect the Kurds and other minorities. The result was genocide via Sarin gassing of thousands of Kurds...men women and children....while BJ Clinton and the media ignored Clinton’s inhumane deriliction. (Clinton also did the same thing with the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Zambia while calling himself a white black man.)BJ was a merciless man
while George One was a trusting fool, who got into bed with the left far too often, resulting in sell out of allies and genocide rather than the traditional American protection of people like the Kurds.
Clinton, Obama...are vile, vile people. Both Bushes were a tad too idiotically trusting for the times they were in.We would have been better served by another Reagan or an Eisenhower. And so it is today.
Cheers and thanks!
I don’t know where you were or how old you were when all this was going on, but I was a very worried mother whose son was in Saudi Arabia about 8 days after Kuwait was invaded, and sighed with relief when he came home April, 1991. Bush had declared the war over in Feb. 1991. [I think he stopped because of the situation in Russia where Gorbachev was about to be overthrown. I think one more day of mopping up the main Iraq army would have been a good thing and probably not have changed the outcome of ending the Soviet regime in Russia.] Then I watched with horror as the Kurds were forced to flee through the mountains in winter weather, and further attrocities were committed because we had not forbidden use of helicopters by Saddam Hussein. I was paying close attention because my son had been directly at risk. This was 1991, and Clinton became president in Jan. 1993. Who was in charge when the horror described in the 1st link below began? Bush did not have to have to “assume that Clinton would continue to protect the Kurds and other minorities.” Bush was still in charge for the next 22 months.
http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/internationalhumanrights/p/saddam_hussein.htm See quote below:
Please remember Clinton took office in January 1993. Who was in charge when this happened?
“The Post-Uprising Massacres of 1991: In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the United States encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Hussein’s regime—then withdrew and refused to support them, leaving an unknown number to be slaughtered. At one point, Hussein’s regime killed as many as 2,000 suspected Kurdish rebels every day. Some two million Kurds hazarded the dangerous trek through the mountains to Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands dying in the process.The Riddle of Saddam Hussein:Although most of Hussein’s large-scale atrocities took place during the 1980s and early 1990s, his tenure was also characterized by day-to-day atrocities that attracted less notice. Wartime rhetoric regarding Hussein’s “rape rooms,” death by torture, decisions to slaughter the children of political enemies, and the casual machine-gunning of peaceful protesters accurately reflected the day-to-day policies of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Hussein was no misunderstood despotic “madman.” He was a monster, a butcher, a brutal tyrant, a genocidal racist—he was all of this, and more.
But what this rhetoric does not reflect is that, until 1991, Saddam Hussein was allowed to commit his atrocities with the full support of the U.S. government. The specifics of the al-Anfal Campaign were no mystery to the Reagan administration, but the decision was made to support the genocidal Iraqi government over the pro-Soviet theocracy of Iran, even to the point of making ourselves complicit in crimes against humanity.”
I guess we were lucky to have had presidents with the wisdom and guts to overlook all this in the interest of limiting Iran and the Soviet Union. Politics can be a cynical and ugly business and no party is immune.
As to Clinton and the “Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Zambia”, which actually took place in Ruanda, how many people in the US and especially here at FR would have favored sending our troops to fight and die in an African civil war. And, yes, if he had kept it in his pants, he might have actually had the political capital to push for such a humanitarian effort in spite of intense opposition.
Great review, thanks!
Bush had declared the war over in Feb. 1991. [I think he stopped because of the situation in Russia where Gorbachev was about to be overthrown. I think one more day of mopping up the main Iraq army would have been a good thing and probably not have changed the outcome of ending the Soviet regime in Russia.]Neither of the Presidents Bush ever declared war -- that's a congressional power. The reason GHWB stopped short of overthrowing Saddam was that it exceeded the scope of the agreements among the international coalition; the immediate PR reason given by some was the destruction of the fleeing Iraqi thugs along that road out of Kuwait, continuing to prosecute the war would have looked like a disproportionate response.
The push into Tikrit comes days after a series of U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS targets around the city.
Lots of reports out today, describing the situation in Tikrit the same:
Looting and Lynching.
Lots of pictures and video of atrocities. Doesn’t bode well for the future.
Is that because you discovered I don’t have a weiner? ;-)
No, you have a wiener and wave it well, Good job.
It takes work to write well, and the standard of FR simply rises with it.
I looked at your home page and see you had a lot to share, unlike people who are full of big or cute comments but don’t even create a home page.
I add a little every year or so, and it goes back to 2002, so its a bit boring.
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