Free Republic

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) told Fox News Sunday that she worried President Barack Obama was only confronting ISIS to help Democrats in the upcoming midterms, and that he would ease up on the Sunni militants after the election. “I think we have a problem where the president’s foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric,” Ayotte said. “I’m very fearful as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections, and he won’t have the resolve to follow through with what needs to be done in a sustained effort to destroy ISIS.”

Sunni militants on Tuesday seized control of military bases and the provincial governor’s building in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as police officers and army soldiers abandoned the town and left weapons, vehicles and even their uniforms to the gunmen. By midday, the militants, believed to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group, were in control of much of central and southern Mosul, according to witnesses and local officials. Soldiers who fled the city said the militants had seized a jail, freeing the inmates. “They took control of everything, and they are everywhere,” said one soldier...