Baghdad fights back: Thousands young and old answer government's call

The Daily Mail ^ | 12 June, 2014 | Jill Reilly

[Shery]

It’s taken a week, but the long-awaited fight back has finally come. Thousands of Iraqis young and old have answered the beleaguered Shia-led government’s call to arms and signed up to protect the capital, and country, from ISIS militants. As jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant march on Baghdad after capturing swathes of northern Iraq male supporters of the government turned out in droves today to enlist and fight back. The militants have already seized control of Iraq's second largest city Mosul and oil-rich Tikrit in less than 48 hours, but so far government forces have stalled the militants' remarkably rapid advance near Samarra, a city just 110km (68 miles) north of Baghdad.

Nevertheless ISIS is pushing ahead with its aim...

[Shery]

Doesn't look good, and after seeing the pictures at the site, what will the volunteers have to fight with? It states that they (Iraqi officials) are asking for the US to make air strikes and Iran is intervening, as well. This looks like a pretty desperate situation. Not only is AQ not on the run, but new groups are organizing as fast as they can, and a new leader has emerged that is more deadly than Osama bin Laden. The ME is exploding! The article states that the Iraqi forces have stalled this group, but I wonder. It would be hard to stall a group that fears no one and has made such strides in a couple days. It appears to me that the Iraqi government has been descending into chaos, itself, here recently so how effective will it be? And one has to ask the question...what happens if they capture Maliki and other top officials and publicly shoot them?

[Doctor 2Brains]

How many men do we have left in Iraq? Are they all in Baghdad?

Thanks.

[Westbrook]

Biblical prophecy being fulfilled before our eyes.

[Zhang Fei]

Iraq's government has indicated a willingness for the US military to conduct airstrikes against radical Islamist militants

I'm sure we'd be willing to accept Iraqi help in fighting the Taliban, too.

[Col Frank Slade]

This sounds like the final days in Berlin when Hitler had young boys and old men defend the city against the Allied advance.

[2banana]

10 years and billions of dollars of building the iraq army...

And they are taking kids off the street to fight.

[blueunicorn6]

Wait.....IRAN has sent troops into IRAQ? And nobody is screaming?

[dfwgator]

This sounds like the final days in Berlin when Hitler had young boys and old men defend the city against the Allied advance.

With roaming death squads killing anyone who refused to fight.

[thackney]

and Iran is intervening

On which side?

[thackney]

None.

President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/iraq-asked-us-for-airstrikes-on-militants-officials-say.html?_r=0

[wideawake]

You're the first person to make that claim in 2,000 years.

[thackney]

[Doctor 2Brains]

Wow!

Thanks.

[VerySadAmerican]

They’ll be fighting us since they’ll be fighting people using our weapons.

[elcid1970]

Since this is in the aftermath of a U.S. withdrawal of forces, I’d draw a comparison with the fall of Saigon in 1975.

[TomGuy]

10 years and billions of dollars of building the iraq army...

Reuters: Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion: study [March 14, 2013]

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. More…

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iraq

[Tallguy]

I wonder if Obama has a plan to secure those Abrams tanks. 140 tanks... that’s about 3 tank battalions-worth of first-class armor that’s about to get handed over to the Syrians, Sov-er-Russians or the Chinese.

[grania]

Itan, Syria and maybe Turkey might be the only way to stop the terrorists which the US has armed and trained. It would be an odd coalition, but none of them gain from ISIS becoming even more powerful.

I was appalled when that military leader took over Egypt and mowed down the crazies. Now, it seems like he got it right. It's the only way to stop them, with all of the assets Obama has given them.

And meanwhile, the US is still arming and training the more reasonable terrorists to fight Assad? How nutty is that?

[thackney]

Obama has a plan

Why would he? He just said yesterday: “The World Is Less Violent Than It Has Ever Been”.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3166743/posts