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Today was yet another day from hell in Baghdad. All in all, three car bombs went off in the capital of Iraq. The bloodiest of them all, in Sadr city, was claimed by ISIS. In that attack, at least 55 people were murdered. 60 others were injured. TWEET Below a photo of the carnage: PHOTO Most inhabitants of Sadr City are Shiite Muslims, which is why they're targeted by ISIS, a radical Sunni terror group. ISIS considers Shiites fake Muslims or even apostates, which makes it -- according to the hateful theology of the Islamist group -- fair to kill...

The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone. The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

The ancient city of Mosul, in Iraq, is currently experiencing an agonizing struggle between regular forces of the Iraqi Government, allied with the Kurdish Peshmurga , local Iraqi militias and supported by US and international coalition forces, seeking to wrest the city from the forces of the recently formed ISIS army. The joint operation is called in Arabic, Qadimun Ya Naynawa, translated “Oh Ninewa,Here We come!”. Can you see in the Arabic translation the name of an ancient Biblical city? Ninewa is the Arabic way of saying, “Ninevah”, the city which Jonah had once preached repentance unto, in spite of...

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became leader in 2010 of what was then known as Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). By 2013, the terrorist organization was carrying out dozens of attacks a month in Iraq. In April 2013, Baghdadi announced the merger of his forces in Iraq and Syria and the creation of the now feared “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL). The end of 2013 brought the opportunity to take control of the central city of Falluja, aided by tribesmen and former Saddam Hussein loyalists. In June 2014, Isis overran the northern city of Mosul, and then advanced southwards...

Allied troops and ISIS are set to battle for a collapsing dam that would spew nearly 600 times the water of the River Thames onto Mosul if it breaches. Engineers from an Italian company have been tasked with fixing the Mosul Dam's foundations to stop more than 11 trillion litres of water (11.11billion cubic metres) from flooding Mosul. Experts are warning their work could be in vain, and should the catastrophe happen, it is estimated 1.5million people could be killed by the floods in an impact described as 'worse than a nuclear bomb'. Waves of up to 45ft would be...

The general commanding coalition forces in Iraq predicts it will take two years of hard fighting to clear the so-called Islamic State from its twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, and then to burn out the remnants that will likely flee to the vast empty desert between Syria and Iraq. In a Christmas Day sit-down with The Daily Beast at his headquarters, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend would not put specific timelines on the battle. But he mapped out a grinding campaign that he thinks is going slowly but as well as can be expected, considering how much time ISIS had...

Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors used perjured testimony to secure guilty verdicts for four decorated veterans accused of indiscriminately shooting into a crowd of Iraqi civilians in September 2007 while working as private contractors for Blackwater, argue some of the defendants’ family members. Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, TN, one of the former Blackwater guards, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in April. The other three — Paul Slough of Keller, TX, Evan Liberty of Rochester, NH, and Dustin Heard of Maryville, TN — were convicted of numerous counts of voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter,...

BARTELLA, Iraq – Just 24 kilometres from Mosul where Iraqi forces are fighting ISIS, the Christian town of Bartella celebrated Christmas on Saturday for the first time after it was overran by the militants two years ago.   “Today is an historical day for Bartella. A day when Christians can return to their homes and families,” said Nofel Hamadi, Nineveh governor, speaking during celebration of a Christmas mass in the town.   A large number of Christians flocked to Bartella to attend the celebration in the town that fell to ISIS in August 2014.   Bartella was liberated two months ago, on October 20....

[full title]:The Saddam interrogation: Ten years after the tyrant's execution, the CIA agent who grilled him reveals the shattering truth... that everything the US thought it knew was WRONG CIA analyst John Nixon grilled the ruthless dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein In the course of interrogations, Saddam 'turned our assumptions upside down' In his 2010 memoir, Bush wrote: ‘I decided I would not criticise the hardworking patriots of the CIA for the faulty intelligence on Iraq.’ But that is exactly what he did. He blamed the agency for everything that went wrong and called its analysis ‘guesswork’ while hearing only...

Turkey and Iran’s Dangerous Collision Course By ALI VAEZ DEC. 18, 2016 Today’s competition between Turkey and Iran is the latest iteration of an old power game: a struggle their progenitors, the Byzantine and Persian empires, started over the control of Mesopotamia ? today’s Iraq and Syria. While the rivalry outlived their transformation from empires to nation-states, they have managed to keep the peace between themselves for nearly 200 years. Yet Turkey and Iran are now on a collision course, mostly because of their involvement as the region’s major Sunni and Shiite powers in the deepening sectarian conflicts in Iraq...

Iraqi Christians are holding on to their faith in God as they plan to revive a town that was ravaged by the Islamic State. Around 60,000 people fled from the Christian town of Qaraqosh when ISIS took over the region in August 2014. Some of the Iraqi Christians are now seeing the devastation left by the terrorist group after the town was liberated by the Kurdish militia a few weeks ago. Sister Diana, a Dominican nun, recently paid a visit to the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and saw how the Islamic radicals desecrated the building. "This is considered the largest church...

QARAQOSH, Northern Iraq – On August 6, 2014, nearly 60,000 people fled the Christian town of Qaraqosh just hours before ISIS overran the area. A few weeks ago, the Kurdish military liberated the city, uncovering a trail of destruction and devastation left behind by the occupiers. CBN News joined Sister Diana, a Dominican nun, and her team who showed us what ISIS did to their city. We visited her home church, the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, first. "This is considered the largest church for us in the Middle East," Sister Diana said. "We do all our worship in here. I would...

A dam is on the verge of collapse and just a partial breach could create a wave 82ft high, experts have warned. The Mosul dam is slowly sinking, sparking fears that 7 million lives are at risk if it breaks. Even if just 26 per cent of the dam collapsed there would be floods on a catastrophic scale with the equivalent of 4,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools gushing down stream. It would hit Mosul at 82ft high 100 minutes after breaching the wall and then three and a half days later it would destroy Baghdad with a 26ft wave. Cities, towns,...

Paul D. Miller, associate director at the University of Texas-Austin’s Clements Center for National Security, spoke at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation to discuss his book, American Power and Liberal Order: A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy. Americans, and historians in general, "overthink" and "overlearn" the past and apply those interpretations of history lessons to the present, he argued "The problem in trying to learn lessons from history… We have a tendency to overlearn from history and swing the pendulum too far in the other direction,” Miller said. Rand Paul, he avers, exemplifies this tendency. Similarly, President Obama, said Miller,...

At least 90 Iraqi soldiers have lost their lives when fighter jets from the United States Air Force (USAF) mistakenly struck their position in Mosul as government forces and allied fighters are trying to flush Daesh terrorists out of the strategic northern city. An Iraqi army source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Saturday that the airstrike had targeted soldiers from the 9th Armored Division of the Iraqi army the previous day, destroying eight infantry fighting vehicles as well as four Humvee military trucks. Some 100 soldiers were also wounded as...

In January 2014 President Obama referred to ISIS, one of the most vicious terror armies to ever exist, of being a "JV team." “The analogy we use around here sometimes,and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama told the New Yorker at the time. After that comment the group marched from Syria to Iraq, taking large swaths of territory, pillaging and raping along the way and slaughtering thousands. Now with just a month left in his presidency, President Obama is saying he was surprised by the capability of...

Full Title: Everybody should read General John Kelly’s speech about two Marines in the path of a truck bomb Eight years ago, two Marines from two different walks of life who had literally just met were told to stand guard in front of their outpost’s entry-control point. Minutes later, they were staring down a big blue truck packed with explosives. With this particular shred of hell bearing down on them, they stood their ground. Heck, they even leaned in. I had heard the story many times, personally. But until today I had never heard Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly’s telling...

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a “mistake,” according to a recording obtained by The Intercept. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mattis said, “we will probably look back on the invasion of Iraq as a mistake — as a strategic mistake.” Mattis was one of the Iraq campaign’s most important ground commanders. He led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion and later oversaw the bloody retaking of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004. As for the Pentagon’s view on the Iraq invasion at the time, Mattis said this: “I think people were pretty much...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) issued a report on Monday responding to allegations by the US State Department that ranged from press violations to torture in the Kurdistan Region. The report by the KRG’s High Committee to Evaluate and Respond to International Reports comes after nearly a year of investigations that examined various points addressed in the 2015 US Department of State’s annual report on Human Rights Practices in Iraq, which also examined the rights situation in Kurdistan. Among other things, the US report contained allegations that the Peshmerga were systematically destroying Arab homes in towns...

Over 1,900 Iraqi security forces killed by ISIS as fight for Mosul rages ? December 3, 2016 ? Middle East & World Erbil ? At least 1,959 members of the Iraqi security forces have been killed since the launch of the anti-ISIS Mosul operation on 17 October, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). “The number of civilians killed in November was 926, and the number of civilians injured was 930. Fifty-two foreign civilians were killed and 31 injured in November,” UNAMI said. “A total of 1,959 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed, including police...