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Opinion: The Third Iraq War By: Cmdr. Daniel Dolan Published: June 24, 2014 12:57 PM Updated: June 25, 2014 2:33 PM In the Naval War College’s Strategy and Policy course students have an opportunity to critically analyze both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). These two historical case studies are commonly referred to by students and faculty alike as the First Iraq War and the Second Iraq War. Now, before us we see the Third Iraq War unfolding. Despite what some pundits and former administration officials are saying America is still playing an active role in Iraq’s wars....

Senior Obama administration officials’ closed-door briefing to senators Tuesday night revealed that the White House did not anticipate and was not prepared for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), which has wreaked havoc in Iraq and seized many key cities in recent weeks. Top State Department and Defense Department officials joined senators Tuesday evening for a briefing on the quickly developing chaos in Iraq and future U.S. plans for a response. Sources familiar with the brief said that the administration officials repeated talking points issued over the past several days in both...

Iraqi security officials said Wednesday that fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were advancing on the Haditha Dam, the second-largest in Iraq. Worried that the insurgents would reach the dam on the Euphrates River, about 120 miles northwest of Baghdad, army officers told employees to stay inside and to be prepared to open the dam’s floodgates if ordered to do so, an employee said. “This will lead to the flooding of the town and villages and will harm you also,” the dam employee said he told the army officer. This would not be the first time that...

It’s not some shadowy anonymous source from the peshmerga’s middle management who’s claiming this, do note. It’s Nechirvan Barzani, the Kurds’ prime minister. That’s the second time in four days that a major foreign official has accused Obama’s America of being a fickle, disengaged ally. Thoughtfully considering the Kurds’ offer and declining so as not to get sucked back into Iraq would be one thing, but that’s not what happened according to Barzani. Apparently, we simply didn’t respond. The Kurds became especially alarmed at signs that ISIS had already formed a shadow government in Mosul, weeks before initiating the carefully...

BRUSSELS — Iran is directing surveillance drones over Iraq from an airfield in Baghdad and is secretly supplying Iraq with tons of military equipment, supplies and other assistance, American officials said. Tehran has also deployed an intelligence unit there to intercept communications, the officials said. The secret Iranian programs are part of a broader effort by Tehran to gather intelligence and help Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government in its struggle against Sunni militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, has visited Iraq at least twice to help...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday rejected calls to create a new national unity government that the Obama administration has been pushing. "The call to form a national emergency government is a coup against the constitution and the political process," Maliki said in a televised address, according to Agence France-Presse. "The dangerous goals of forming a national emergency government are not hidden,” he added. "It is an attempt by those who are against the constitution to eliminate the young democratic process and steal the votes of the voters.”Al-Maliki, however, said he is still committed to launching the process that...

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged leaders of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Tuesday to stand with Baghdad in the face of a Sunni insurgent onslaught that threatens to dismember the country. Security forces fought Sunni armed factions for control of the country's biggest oil refinery on Tuesday and militants launched an attack on one of its largest air bases less than 100 km (60 miles) from the capital. More than 1,000 people, mainly civilians, have been killed in less than three weeks, the United Nations said on Tuesday, calling the figure "very much a minimum". The...

ISIS is bigger, badder, richer, and better organized than any jihadi threat the United States has faced thus far. Its rise represents a foreign policy disaster of the first order. A group more radical than al-Qaeda, better organized, better financed, commanding the loyalty of thousands of dedicated fanatics including many with Western and even U.S. passports? And this group now controls some of the most strategic territory at the heart of the Middle East? Welcome to President Obama’s brave new world. [....] One wishes we had a Republican President right now if only because when a Republican is in the...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (R) and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meet at the Prime Minister's Office in Baghdad June 23, 2014. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry just finished a meeting with Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, which not expected to be friendly, after the U.S. entertained the idea that the Iraqi Prime Minister should resign. A few days prior to his Middle East trip, the senior U.S. diplomat held a conference call with Sunni Arab leaders. According to a senior Arab diplomat briefed on the call, the U.S. contingent did not fully grasp the situation. "We felt...

“This was the moment,” Barack Obama had told the cheering audience in St. Paul, Minnesota. “When we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war.” St. Paul has an Ocean Street. It has an Ocean Spa and Salon. It even has an Oceanaire Seafood Room. It does not however have an ocean. But with ObamaCare an unpopular subsidized failure, the few new jobs around being confined to...

Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office. Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obama’s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.

Russia and Saudi Arabia Saturday stressed the importance of preserving Syrian and Iraqi territorial integrity after talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah. Riyadh and Moscow have opposing positions on the conflict in Syria, with Russia backing President Bashar Assad and Saudi Arabia supporting the rebels seeking to topple him for more than three years. But Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov said they had agreed "to work together to apply the Geneva I agreement that provides for a peaceful transfer of power in Syria," a Saudi spokesman said after the meetings. The ministers also...

Video here, but I'm warning you- it's pretty graphic (and unsettling)  to watch desperate, unarmed souls hunted down like animals... especially the last one on foot.

A strategic border crossing and three other towns in western Iraq fell Saturday to the control of ISIS militants, a senior Iraqi security official said. In addition to their offensives in northern Iraq, the militants have now strengthened their hand in the western province of Anbar, the country's largest geographically, and were controlling Al-Qaim, Rawa, Ana and Huseiba, said the senior official, who's based in Anbar. Most importantly, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, or ISIS, controlled the strategic town of Al-Qaim on the border with Syria, where the enemy fighters enjoy a stronghold, Iraqi security officials said Saturday....

Like Birkenstocks and ironic t-shirts, blaming Bush has never gone out of style on the left. When Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq became so obvious that even the media, which had been pretending that Obama’s claims about a successful withdrawal were true, could no longer ignore them, their talking points were all lined up and ready. It was all Bush’s fault.Defenses of the war by pivotal figures like Dick Cheney and Tony Blair only enraged them further. “Why wouldn’t they admit it was all their fault?”But the left’s lazy talking points about Iraq, like their talking points about the economy,...

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, has long been hard for the central government to control because of its combustible mix of Arabs and Kurds. The first time I visited Mosul was in August 2003 when a tenuous calm was maintained by the 101st Airborne Division. Its commander, a then-obscure two-star general named David Petraeus, had on his own initiative opened the Syrian border to trade, struck deals with Syria and Turkey to provide badly needed electricity, restored telephone service, and held elections to elect local leaders. Along the way he also managed to kill Saddam Hussein’s poisonous offspring Uday and Qusay.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday, Iran would be willing to help fight militants in Iraq, if asked. More than 4,200 Iranians have reportedly volunteered to go into Iraq to protect Shiite shrines.

As the Al Qaeda aligned ISIS jihadists roll on towards Baghdad, there are reports that at least 200 Americans were trapped and surrounded at the Balad Force Air Base. An anonymous contractor claiming to be among the besieged U.S. citizens posted this call for help on CNN’s “IReport” website yesterday: I am writing from ballad Iraq as a employee of sallyport, ksillc..there are approx 500 US citizens on balad air base north of Baghdad trapped..we are part of a little known F16 iraq support mission here…The company has reportedly for the last 3 days to fly us out, we are...

President Barack Obama is spending a long Father’s Day weekend in the desert oasis of Rancho Mirage. The president and the first lady arrived at the Palm Springs International Airport Friday night after visiting an Indian reservation earlier in the day. SNIP The Obamas are staying with White House decorator Michael Smith and his partner, U.S. Ambassador to Spain James Costos, at their vacation home. The president’s handlers scoped out some golf courses and gave a list to Obama just in case he wants to spend Father’s Day on the links. SNIP Obama plans to take a short flight to...

Here is the full replay video and transcript of President Barack Obama’s speech on the situation in Iraq. He delivered the statement on Friday, June 13, 2014 at the White House. The text and complete video are below, after the jump. See more at: http://www.shallownation.com/2014/06/13/president-obama-iraq-speech-video-transcript-june-13-2014/#sthash.y7VTvu2d.dpuf