Liz Sly and Abigail Hauslohner wouldn't know a high-powered sniper rifle if they were hit over the head with one...
Posted on 06/14/2014 4:37:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Men young and old piled into taxis, trucks, police vehicles and minibuses and drove noisily through the streets, honking horns and waving an assortment of weapons including rocket-propelled grenades, high-powered sniper rifles, Kalashnikov assault rifles and handguns.
“Daiish we will never surrender,” chanted a group of young men piled on the back of a pick-up truck, using an acronym for the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which carried out a stunningly swift seizure of large swaths of northern Iraq last week.
“We want to show the world that we can protect ourselves,” said Khodr al-Tamimi, a turbaned cleric who waved a pistol from the window of his black, armored sports utility vehicle as it wound through emptied shopping streets. “Wherever they go, we will defeat them,” he added, referring to ISIS.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So, Iraq is really three provinces in the absence of an over-riding strongman. No one has allegiance to the cobbled together army of the “nation-built” state.
I bet the Sunnis never take Baghdad or the South, or that the Kurds ever relinquish control of Kirkuk.
What surprises me is that the Iraqi state fell apart so easily to a bunch of terrorists that, even with Obama’s confused help, “non-lethal aid”, military training, and Libyan weapons, couldn’t beat Assad.
Heaven knows Old Ben is no kind of military expert.
But they really should use all that energy for digging in. Deep.
This is like when the Soviets were fighting the Nazis. I don’t have a dog in this contest.
The U.S. could stop this ISIS drive in a heartbeat with our air power. All we would have to do is tell the morons on the ground to take cover and not have any “weddings” until the bombing stops.
One strategic air strike and this offensive is over.
But Obama is golfing. I heard he almost broke 100 once.
Bump for digging in.
Gonna need a score card for this conflict. Sunni, Shiite.
Are Subaru and Scirocco on the bench?
Never thought I would cheer for team Shia.
You think ISIS would be openly on the roads unless they were assured, at a VERY high level, that the US would not attack them?
ISIS are the people we've bankrolled and given weapons to in Syria. Obama is on the Sunni side, the side of his Saudi benefactors. He WANTS them to win.
How did he do on the back 9?
Apparently, this ISIS bunch are so bad that even al-Qaeda doesn’t want to have much to do with them.
When they cause Iran and the Iraqi governments to join forces, that says they see a potentially fearsome foe.
When Iran offers to join with the evil USA to fend them off, that says they are in fear of maintaining their control.
And that was just on the front 9
Liz Sly and Abigail Hauslohner wouldn't know a high-powered sniper rifle if they were hit over the head with one...
Never thought I would cheer for team Iran.
The story buries the name of the town so well I haven’t found it yet. Is it Samarra?
Where is Code Pink to protest this war, imperialism, and the war crimes?
If we had a decent president I might actually consider a short term alliance with Iran on this. Obviously I don’t trust Iran but I trust Obama to only make a mess of such an alliance.
I would avoid direct contact with the Iranians by going through Al Sistani the senior Shia guy in Iraq. He doesn’t love us but has been willing to work with us in the past.
Gotta at least give Joe Biden some credit...splitting Iraq into 3 was a pretty good idea.
I agree with you but this is stranger than that. It's more like the Brownshirts fighting the SS. But even that's a bad example. There were clearer differences between the SA and the SS then there are between any two Muslims anywhere.
There's not a dime's worth of difference between any two Muslims in the world. But don't tell them that. Let them slaughter each other. The more the merrier.
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