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I must offer this premise. There is no easy way out nor an easy path to follow. But we are indeed down a path, one that attacks the Sunni backed ISIS. We now have picked sides in a religious war. What must be realized in this region of the world, the Mideast, is that borders drawn by westerners are of little matter to they who live in the region. And that is precisely what the national delineations are, lines drawn by westerners. From the Sykes–Picot Agreement which in a fatigued fog resulting from WW I drew up the borders of...

Ed Henry on Fox News just reported from the White House that word has been given Obama will speak sometime tonight on worsening situation in Iraq and the U.S. response which so far involves humanitarian aid airdrops in northern Iraq.

1) In 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced Iraq "self-reliant and democratic," and "a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process." In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called Iraq "one of the great achievements of this administration." Obama ignored pleas by top generals who advised against pulling out without leaving a residual force. 2) Nearly everybody assumed Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Of the newspaper editorials that opposed the war, not one challenged the assumption that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD. President George W. Bush...

President Barack Obama has tapped the vice chief of the Army to take over the U.S. command in Afghanistan later this year as America pulls out its combat troops and leaves a force of about 10,000 to train and advise the Afghan military. …

Republicans are sounding the warning that the next 9/11-like terror plot could emerge from the regions of Iraq and Syria that are currently dominated by an extremist group bearing down on Baghdad. As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) - which has already captured the cities of Tikrit and Mosul and is threatening to take the capital city as well - grows in strength and numbers, will it pose an immediate threat to the United States homeland as well? Experts say the group's increasing power and reach is concerning, though it's not entirely clear when they might be...

Who Lost Iraq?Posted By Arnold Ahlert On June 13, 2014 @ 12:58 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 339 Comments Iraq’s disintegration may be imminent, as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appears incapable of stopping the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The terrorist offshoot of al Qaeda now has its sights set on the capital city of Baghdad. Adding to the chaos, the city of Kirkuk was overtaken by Kurdish soldiers absent any resistance by government forces. After having ignored the prescient warnings of Iraq’s fragility post-U.S. abandonment, the Obama administration and Democratic Party’s determination...

The U.S. since last year has been secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft in small numbers over Iraq to collect intelligence on insurgents, according to U.S. officials. Officials wouldn't say what types of drones were being used but said the flights were conducted only for surveillance purposes. The program was launched with the consent of the Iraqi government.

At a closed-door gathering of Gulf states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in May, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Arab counterparts all signaled agreement on one thing for the first time: Islamist forces seizing territory in Syria and Iraq had become a regionwide menace that can't be ignored. What they didn't agree on was what to do about it, U.S. officials said.The fall this week of the Iraqi cities Mosul and Tikrit to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham rebel group shows how the insurgent threat is outpacing the response and posing a challenge to President Barack Obama's approach...

Two and a half years after the last U.S. soldier departed, an al Qaeda offshoot is in control of Mosul and headed for Baghdad—and Iraq’s prime minister is requesting U.S. air strikes. It seems like only yesterday that Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was celebrating as the last American soldiers left Iraq. Now, with an al Qaeda offshoot threatening to take Baghdad, Maliki’s government is quietly asking at least some troops—specifically airmen and drone pilots—to return. While Iraq’s government is not requesting a surge in U.S. ground forces like the one President Bush ordered in 2007, Maliki’s government has been...

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials. But Iraq’s appeals for military assistance have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was closed when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s...

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is preparing contingency plans to evacuate its employees if necessary now that one of the deadliest Islamic militant groups in the region has taken control of large swaths of Iraq, a U.S. official told TheBlaze. The State Department also warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Iraq, following several days of bloody clashes between insurgents with the Al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Iraqi military forces. ISIL has taken control of Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah and aims to create an Islamic state across the Iraq-Syria border. The U.S. official told TheBlaze that...

Secretary of state John Kerry has indicated that five Guantánamo Bay detainees released in exchange for an American soldier could be killed by drone strike if they return to the battlefield in Afghanistan. Kerry’s implied threat to the five Taliban fighters came as Republicans ramped-up their criticism of the deal to release Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner of the Taliban for five years until he was freed last week. The 28-year-old soldier has reportedly told medical staff at a base in Germany he was tortured and beaten by his captors, and once locked in a metal cage in total darkness...

President Obama finally completed the prisoner swap he has been pleading with the Taliban for years to accept. While the president draws down American forces in Afghanistan and hamstrings our remaining troops with unconscionable combat rules of engagement that make both offensive operations and self-defense extremely difficult, the Taliban get back five of their most experienced, most virulently anti-American commanders. In return, thanks to the president’s negotiations with the terrorists, we receive U.S. Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl — who, according to several of his fellow soldiers, walked off his post in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. (For more...

There is nothing more awesome than knowing that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been released by the Taliban after serving in captivity for five years. Bergdahl represents the American fighting spirit. Has survived his ordeal. And he will return home to Idaho with honor. Having received training on how to survive captivity several times, I remember that we were always taught to maintain hope that no matter what our government would come get us. That we would never be forgotten. That, at some point, we would regain our freedom. That has happened today. However, has there been a cost with the...

With her memoir, Hard Choices set to be released in the coming weeks, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her publishing company have provided an excerpt in which she claims President Obama’s actions during the Bin Laden raid were “as crisp and courageous a display of leadership” that she had ever seen. Here are 7 reasons that Obama’s leadership during the raid was neither crisp or courageous...

Anybody can make a mistake, and that certainly appears to be what led to the Obama White House’s exposure of the top CIA official in Afghanistan this weekend. Unfortunately, as Roger Kimball details , this is not an isolated incident. In year six of the Obama administration, it speaks volumes about not just incompetence but immaturity and the skewed priorities that come with it. Exactly because anyone can make a mistake, large organizations — presidential administrations included — build layers of vetting into the disclosure of information to the public. In this instance, because the commander-in-chief made a surprise visit...

President Barack Obama slipped into Afghanistan for a surprise visit Sunday and made clear that the U.S. will likely maintain a limited role here even after its combat mission ends this year and America’s longest war comes to a close. “America’s commitment to the people of Afghanistan will endure,” he pledged. Speaking to troops gathered in an airplane hangar on this sprawling military base, Obama said the war had reached a pivotal point, with Afghan forces assuming primary responsibility for their country’s security. But while many of the 32,800 U.S. forces now in Afghanistan will leave in the coming months,...

President Obama made a surprise appearance in Afghanistan on Sunday. There is now buzz that the White House revealed the name of the CIA station chief in Kabul to a pool of reporters:

Iraq: Late reporting indicates that al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters have begun withdrawing from Fallujah to the suburbs. This report has not been confirmed. The government announced that it would not attack Fallujah for now in order to minimize civilian casualties. At least one source in Iraq, however, reported that government forces have low morale because they lack the supplies and equipment to mount an operation that has any prospect of success. Meanwhile in Ramadi, also west of Baghdad, a government and tribal night operation on 6 January failed to oust Islamists from southern Ramadi, according...

Just over two years since American troops entirely withdrew from Iraq, the black flag of Al Qaeda flies over the city of Fallujah’s government buildings in Iraq’s western Anbar Province. It was there that several American contractors were killed and strung up over a bridge in 2004 and American Marines fought the biggest battle of the Iraq War. “The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, the Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war,” reads...