Free Republic

Ramadi falls. The Iraqi army flees. The great 60-nation anti–Islamic State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall. It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief....

Of all of the questions Hillary Clinton will evade on the campaign trail this week, none are more important than those she will not answer on Iraq. Clinton holds the unique distinction in the 2016 field of having supported the unpopular Iraq policies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She supported Bush’s invasion and Obama’s withdrawal, and in both cases was tracking with public opinion when she started. After Bush’s war got unpopular, Clinton recanted. And one supposes that as Obama’s policy for that woe-begotten nation and its region continues to displease voters, Clinton will be tempted to...

Hillary Clinton on Thursday said the U.S. shouldn’t provide military assistance to Iraq despite the threat from an Islamist militant group that has captured major cities. [READ MORE] “I agree with the White House’s rejection and reluctance to do the kind of military activities that the Maliki government is requesting, mainly the fighter aircraft to provide close support for the army and also to go after targets,” the former secretary of State said on BBC’s “Newsnight.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reportedly asked the Obama administration to launch airstrikes against militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)....

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a leading and outspoken supporter of the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq and even defended the White House’s controversial failure to reach a status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government. Team Obama’s decisions in Iraq are coming under intense criticism from experts and lawmakers across the political spectrum in light of the seizure of key Iraqi cities by a violent Muslim extremist group that is seeking to transform the nation into a strict Islamic state. Clinton emerged as one of the top supporters of the withdrawal and defended...

NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- Sheik Lami Abbas Ajali looked around at the small cell where he spent several bleak weeks of his life and recounted the torture: how he was hit, prodded, had his eyelids pulled back, had electric shocks applied to his temples and genitals, how his hands were cuffed behind him then raised until he was off the ground. He recalled Saturday how torturers stuffed 10 suspects into an 8-by-6-foot room so only two could sleep at any given time while the other eight were forced to stand