Iraq militants seize Mosul

[Khajit]

and you've been missing too many basic reading comprehension reports if you think anything in my post said 'Al Quaeda (was) big in Iraq in the first place'

al-Qaeda in Iraq was the moniker given a loose association of Sunni Islamist groups headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant best known for being a psychopath, that pledged allegiance to Bin Laden in 2004. there was no significant Islamist presence in Iraq prior to the invasion.

it is a deeply troubling course of events, even at its height al-Qaeda in Iraq never achieved this kind of success,

Are you seriously incapable of reading your own writing? At best you were vague as you did not define how successful they were in Iraq despite the fact that even bothering to mention and saying they had some sort of height implies they had some form of success.

[archibaldcrane]

No one else misunderstood him but you bro.

[AidenCarby]

When something is at it's height it can still be insignificant, which was his point in saying that the Al Quaeda wasn't big in the first post, and then pointing out that they never achieved any success in the second.

[archibaldcrane]

I don't know if the US should've left a residual force in Iraq or not, but I know one person who should shut the fuck up permanently about Iraq strategy:

Dick Cheney

This motherfucker has the balls to open his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

Not that rare, Dick.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-...ine-1403046522

Spoiler: show

The Collapsing Obama Doctrine

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

By Dick Cheney And
Liz Cheney


Updated June 17, 2014 7:34 p.m. ET
As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. "If a J.V. team puts on Lakers' uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant" (January 2014). "[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated" (August 2013). "So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding" (September 2011).
Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is "ending" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America's enemies are not "decimated." They are emboldened and on the march.
The fall of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul and Tel Afar, and the establishment of terrorist safe havens across a large swath of the Arab world, present a strategic threat to the security of the United States. Mr. Obama's actions—before and after ISIS's recent advances in Iraq—have the effect of increasing that threat.

On a trip to the Middle East this spring, we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel, "Can you please explain what your president is doing?" "Why is he walking away?" "Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard fought gains you secured in Iraq?" "Why is he abandoning your friends?" "Why is he doing deals with your enemies?"
In one Arab capital, a senior official pulled out a map of Syria and Iraq. Drawing an arc with his finger from Raqqa province in northern Syria to Anbar province in western Iraq, he said, "They will control this territory. Al Qaeda is building safe havens and training camps here. Don't the Americans care?"
Our president doesn't seem to. Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.

When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge. Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
The tragedy unfolding in Iraq today is only part of the story. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent across the globe. According to a recent Rand study, between 2010 and 2013, there was a 58% increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist terror groups around the world. During that same period, the number of terrorists doubled.
In the face of this threat, Mr. Obama is busy ushering America's adversaries into positions of power in the Middle East. First it was the Russians in Syria. Now, in a move that defies credulity, he toys with the idea of ushering Iran into Iraq. Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror.
This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies. Despite the threat to America unfolding across the Middle East, aided by his abandonment of Iraq, he has announced he intends to follow the same policy in Afghanistan.
Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists' takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch.
The president explained his view in his Sept. 23, 2009, speech before the United Nations General Assembly. "Any world order," he said, "that elevates one nation above others cannot long survive." Tragically, he is quickly proving the opposite—through one dangerous policy after another—that without American pre-eminence, there can be no world order.
It is time the president and his allies faced some hard truths: America remains at war, and withdrawing troops from the field of battle while our enemies stay in the fight does not "end" wars. Weakness and retreat are provocative. U.S. withdrawal from the world is disastrous and puts our own security at risk.
Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War. Defeating them will require a strategy—not a fantasy. It will require sustained difficult military, intelligence and diplomatic efforts—not empty misleading rhetoric. It will require rebuilding America's military capacity—reversing the Obama policies that have weakened our armed forces and reduced our ability to influence events around the world.
American freedom will not be secured by empty threats, meaningless red lines, leading from behind, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies, or apologizing for our great nation—all hallmarks to date of the Obama doctrine. Our security, and the security of our friends around the world, can only be guaranteed with a fundamental reversal of the policies of the past six years.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, "If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom." President Obama is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.

[quannum]

we're going going baq baq to iraq iraq

[Mazmaz]

I don't know if the US should've left a residual force in Iraq or not, but I know one person who should shut the fuck up permanently about Iraq strategy:

Dick Cheney

You know what's ironic?

[Outlaw]

Syrian warplanes bombed Sunni militants' positions inside Iraq, military officials confirmed Wednesday, deepening the concerns that the extremist insurgency that spans the two neighboring countries could morph into an even wider regional conflict. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned against the threat and said other nations should stay out.

Meanwhile, a new insurgent artillery offensive against Christian villages in the north of Iraq sent thousands of Christians fleeing from their homes, seeking sanctuary in Kurdish-controlled territory, Associated Press reporters who witnessed the scene said.

The United States government and a senior Iraqi military official confirmed that Syrian warplanes bombed militants' positions Tuesday in and near the border crossing in the town of Qaim. Iraq's other neighbors — Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were all bolstering flights just inside their airspace to monitor the situation, said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

American officials said the target was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Sunni extremist group that has seized large swathes of Iraq and seeks to carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.

"We've made it clear to everyone in the region that we don't need anything to take place that might exacerbate the sectarian divisions that are already at a heightened level of tension," Kerry said, speaking in Brussels at a meeting of diplomats from NATO nations. "It's already important that nothing take place that contributes to the extremism or could act as a flash point with respect to the sectarian divide."

Meanwhile, two U.S. officials said Iran has been flying surveillance drones in Iraq, controlling them from an airfield in Baghdad. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said they believe the drones are surveillance aircraft only, but they could not rule out that they may be armed.

A top Iraqi intelligence official said Iran was secretly supplying the Iraqi security forces with weapons, including rockets, heavy machine guns and multiple rocket launchers. "Iraq is in a grave crisis and the sword is on its neck, so is it even conceivable that we turn down the hand outstretched to us?" said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The intelligence-gathering and arms supplies come on the heels of a visit to Baghdad this month by one of Iran's most powerful generals, Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, to help bolster the defenses of the Iraqi military and the Shiite militias that he has armed and trained.

The involvement of Syria and Iran in Iraq suggests a growing cooperation among the three Shiite-led governments in response to the raging Sunni insurgency. And in an unusual twist, the U.S., Iran and Syria now find themselves with an overlapping interest in stabilizing Iraq's government.

None-Arab and mostly Shiite, Iran has been playing the role of guarantor of Shiites in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It has maintained close ties with successive Shiite-led governments since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who oppressed the Shiites, and is also the main backer of Syria's Assad, a follower of Shiism's Alawite sect.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...4293355?page=2

I only copied the first part of it. Click link if you want to read the whole thing.

[Andalusian girls]

ISIS (IS just doesn't sound as good does it) shifted direction after stalling out in the advance on Baghdad, they just took the largest oil field in Syria and captured the headquarters of their Islamist rivals, the al-Nusra Front, half of whom fled like whipped dogs before ISIS's advance while the other half promptly defected and declared allegiance to Baghdadi. it looks like they now reign as the undisputed leaders of Jihadism in the region, and they just got a whole lot richer

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/03/world/...sis-oil-field/

A string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River fell like dominoes to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, bridging the Syrian province of Deir Ezzour with the group's recently gained territories in Iraq's Sunni heartland, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported. Fighters for the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, the largest and most powerful affront to ISIS, had been headquartered in al-Shahil. Fighters began melting away late Wednesday.

With Nusra Front's bastion in the east defeated, ISIS militants simply rolled through, unopposed, staking their black and white flag through most of the oil-rich province, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Deir Ezzour said in a statement. "Most of the activists that were opposed to ISIS have disappeared. Some are trying to flee to Turkey and others are pledging allegiance to the Islamic State along with other factions." Abu Abdallah, an opposition activist in Deir Ezzour, told CNN.

The capture of al-Omar oil field, the country's largest and most important oil facility, with a capacity to produce 75,000 barrels of oil daily, is the jewel in a string of gains that includes a military airport and a local army base.

[BaneTheBrawler]

i wonder how depopulated the area is by now.

[kuronosan]

And gas will go up even more.

[archibaldcrane]

Aren't they ISIL now? Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant?

[Waraji]

Didn't they not want the Iraq and Levant part included, therefore just Islamic State?

[Byrthnoth]

I hope they change their name to *something* else. ISIS sounds like it could be the name of a supervillain group from some comic book. I can just imagine a bunch of guys with machine guns going around shouting "HAIL ISIS" while wearing fatigues with some kind of eye-pun logo on it.

[6souls]

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...0/50977909.jpg

[archibaldcrane]

http://www.avid.com/US/products/family/ISIS

This is what ISIS means to me, I connect to it every day at work.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

http://www.avid.com/US/products/family/ISIS

This is what ISIS means to me, I connect to it every day at work.

Wow, this subforum just never ceases to amaze me. This just might be the worst post yet. Is this supposed to be funny? Because it just isn’t. How can you honestly sit there and tell me music hasn’t been going downhill since Queen (RIP Freddy Mercury). Do you even know what real music is? All this shit about mom’s lasagna and ladybugs is just complete and utter garbage. You hear songs from the 60s and 70s that are still so iconic they are featured all the time. Today’s music just doesn’t have that staying power. It is just formulaic filth that panders to whatever today’s youth is into. You think you can honestly sit there and tell me people will still be listening to Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj 30 years from now? Yeah fucking right. You still hear we are the champions by queen at every single sporting even in the world. No song made today will last anywhere close to that long. And where’s the emotion? Where’s the feeling? Back in my day artists actually put thought into what they wrote. And that’s just it. Today’s artists don’t even write their own songs anymore. They get some guy with a degree in bullshit who makes money engineering these meaningless but catchy songs that rake in millions only because the record companies are forcing radio stations to play them every ten seconds to get them stuck in people’s heads so that is all they can think of. This simply didn’t happen in the 70s. People made songs based on how they were feeling. And guess what, their music also had impacts on what was going on in the world. You guys have probably never heard of him, but there was this indie guy named John Lennon who wrote a song about imagining the world without any violence. Now that’s the type of stuff we need in today’s music. Something to inspire the youth to do something good. That’s why kids are always getting in so much trouble now. The music is telling them to fuck everything that moves and beat the shit out of each other. So they do it. No questions asked. And don’t even get me started on today’s celebrity worship. Do we really need to know every time Kim Kardashian is taking a shit? Seriously, who gives a fuck what those idiots are doing. Why are they even famous in the first place? And all this obsession with technology is driving us into idiots. You see with the most recent facebook scandal how easy it is for them to manipulate you. Do you guys even realize that facebook was designed for college students? Anyone under the age of 18 should not be allowed on it. Simple as that. I think you should be required to register with a .edu email when creating an account. That also keeps out the idiots that can’t get into college and the poor people that can’t afford it. And back in my day we didn’t even need facebook, if you wanted to contact someone, you had to call their house. And guess what, if they weren’t home, you didn’t talk to them. We also had to memorize each others phone numbers by heart. Kids these days have it too easy putting everyone’s numbers in their phones. And twitter is even worse. #what is the point of these things? Seriously, I don’t get it. They are just made up catchphrases that make you sound stupid. And what is with advertisers trying to get me to use them? Like when a couple guys are going hiking and spot some wildlife and you see #ladybugs. Stop popping those things up in the middle of my show. I don’t fucking care! Now I know you guys all agree with everything I just said but are going to report me anyway to try and fit in with the group. And that’s fine. But listen to this first. Today’s music is ruining this planet. Pretty soon there will be riots in the streets that will make Rodney King dwarf in comparison. Freddy Mercury will rise from the dead and lead the charge in murdering Mark Zuckerberg, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, and every other trendy celebrity that is ruining the youths. It will be called “the modern cleansing where a new renaissance will emerge. We will see Davinci and Michelangelo rise again and bring new artistic beauty in this world. And you will all see just how bad it really was.

[Acevalefor]

Wow, this subforum just never ceases to amaze me. This just might be the worst post yet. Is this supposed to be funny? Because it just isn’t. How can you honestly sit there and tell me music hasn’t been going downhill since Queen (RIP Freddy Mercury). Do you even know what real music is? All this shit about mom’s lasagna and ladybugs is just complete and utter garbage. You hear songs from the 60s and 70s that are still so iconic they are featured all the time. Today’s music just doesn’t have that staying power. It is just formulaic filth that panders to whatever today’s youth is into. You think you can honestly sit there and tell me people will still be listening to Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj 30 years from now? Yeah fucking right. You still hear we are the champions by queen at every single sporting even in the world. No song made today will last anywhere close to that long. And where’s the emotion? Where’s the feeling? Back in my day artists actually put thought into what they wrote. And that’s just it. Today’s artists don’t even write their own songs anymore. They get some guy with a degree in bullshit who makes money engineering these meaningless but catchy songs that rake in millions only because the record companies are forcing radio stations to play them every ten seconds to get them stuck in people’s heads so that is all they can think of. This simply didn’t happen in the 70s. People made songs based on how they were feeling. And guess what, their music also had impacts on what was going on in the world. You guys have probably never heard of him, but there was this indie guy named John Lennon who wrote a song about imagining the world without any violence. Now that’s the type of stuff we need in today’s music. Something to inspire the youth to do something good. That’s why kids are always getting in so much trouble now. The music is telling them to fuck everything that moves and beat the shit out of each other. So they do it. No questions asked. And don’t even get me started on today’s celebrity worship. Do we really need to know every time Kim Kardashian is taking a shit? Seriously, who gives a fuck what those idiots are doing. Why are they even famous in the first place? And all this obsession with technology is driving us into idiots. You see with the most recent facebook scandal how easy it is for them to manipulate you. Do you guys even realize that facebook was designed for college students? Anyone under the age of 18 should not be allowed on it. Simple as that. I think you should be required to register with a .edu email when creating an account. That also keeps out the idiots that can’t get into college and the poor people that can’t afford it. And back in my day we didn’t even need facebook, if you wanted to contact someone, you had to call their house. And guess what, if they weren’t home, you didn’t talk to them. We also had to memorize each others phone numbers by heart. Kids these days have it too easy putting everyone’s numbers in their phones. And twitter is even worse. #what is the point of these things? Seriously, I don’t get it. They are just made up catchphrases that make you sound stupid. And what is with advertisers trying to get me to use them? Like when a couple guys are going hiking and spot some wildlife and you see #ladybugs. Stop popping those things up in the middle of my show. I don’t fucking care! Now I know you guys all agree with everything I just said but are going to report me anyway to try and fit in with the group. And that’s fine. But listen to this first. Today’s music is ruining this planet. Pretty soon there will be riots in the streets that will make Rodney King dwarf in comparison. Freddy Mercury will rise from the dead and lead the charge in murdering Mark Zuckerberg, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, and every other trendy celebrity that is ruining the youths. It will be called “the modern cleansing where a new renaissance will emerge. We will see Davinci and Michelangelo rise again and bring new artistic beauty in this world. And you will all see just how bad it really was.

Troll much?

Seriously, you played the "back in my day" card and came off as nothing more than a cranky old man bitching about change. Time Marches On. Oh yeah, Lennon also was far from an Indie artist making music in his garage. Queen was also an international band. Just because you dislike today's "pop" music doesn't mean every song created now is subpar. There are many artists and songs that will be iconic 30 years from now. Just like Sublime music was called "horrible druggy music" and Nirvana was nothing but Seattle Grunge, more iconic artists and songs will emerge from today's music.

And lol @ facebook requiring a .edu account...

[AoE]

So you called him out for trolling and then proceed to take the bait anyway?

[archibaldcrane]

Wat

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Troll much?

Seriously, you played the "back in my day" card and came off as nothing more than a cranky old man bitching about change. Time Marches On. Oh yeah, Lennon also was far from an Indie artist making music in his garage. Queen was also an international band. Just because you dislike today's "pop" music doesn't mean every song created now is subpar. There are many artists and songs that will be iconic 30 years from now. Just like Sublime music was called "horrible druggy music" and Nirvana was nothing but Seattle Grunge, more iconic artists and songs will emerge from today's music.

And lol @ facebook requiring a .edu account...

lol