June 11, 2014
The Guardian (UK)

Iraq Army Capitulates to ISIS Militants

by Martin Chulov, Fazel Hawramy, Spencer Ackerman

Iraq is facing its gravest test since the US-led invasion more than a decade ago, after its army capitulated to Islamist insurgents who have seized four cities and pillaged military bases and banks, in a lightning campaign which seems poised to fuel a cross-border insurgency endangering the entire region.

The extent of the Iraqi army's defeat at the hands of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) became clear on Wednesday when officials in Baghdad conceded that insurgents had stripped the main army base in the northern city of Mosul of weapons, released hundreds of prisoners from the city's jails and may have seized up to $480m in banknotes from the city's banks.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers - roughly 30,000 men - simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. . . .

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Enver Masud, "Iraq War: 'Supreme International Crime'," The Wisdom Fund, June 29, 2005

"The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War," The Wisdom Fund, March 19, 2013

Patrick Cockburn, "Battle to establish Islamic state across Iraq and Syria," independent.co.uk, June 9, 2014

Robert Fisk, "Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia," independent.co.uk, June 12, 2014

[It is not the Sunni-Shia sectarian war. ISIS's Saudi-backed Salafi-Wahabi terrorists are killing Sunnis, Sufis, Shias and Christians.--Zara Bokhari, "Western media's obfuscation and lies about the situation in Iraq," lubpak.com, June 13, 2014]

[Tehran and Washington form fragile alliance to aid Nouri al-Maliki as jihadist group threatens to take Baghdad--Martin Chulov, "Iran sends troops into Iraq to aid fight against Isis militants ," theguardian.com, June 14, 2014

[A depopulated, destroyed Iraq will be in no position to prevent the diversion of its oil supplies and water from the Tigris and Euphrates to Eretz Israel.--Tom Mysiewicz, "Iraq: The real strategy is about to succeed," therebel.org, June 14, 2014]

[The meteoric rise of Isis is a predictable consequence of a longstanding US-led geostrategy in the Middle East that has seen tyrants and terrorists as tools to expedite access to regional oil and gas resources.--Nafeez Ahmed, "Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction," theguardian.com, June 16, 2014]

Juan Cole, "7 Myths About the Radical Sunni Advance in Iraq," readersupportednews.org, June 16, 2014

[it resulted from calculated deception.--Dennis J Kucinich, "Stop Calling the Iraq War a 'Mistake'," huffingtonpost.com, June 16, 2014]

Paul Craig Roberts, "Professor Francis Boyle on Impeachment of Bush and Obama," paulcraigroberts.org, June 17, 2014

Aaron Klein, "Blowback! U.S. Trained ISIS at Secret Jordan Base," wnd.com, June 17, 2014

Thomas S. Harrington, "The Brutal Logic of a Self-Seeking Empire -- Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East?," counterpunch.org, June 17, 2014

VIDEO: Jon Stewart, "Mess O'Potomia," thedailyshow.cc.com, June 17, 2014

VIDEO: Jon Stewart, "Who's Who in the Middle East," thedailyshow.cc.com, June 18, 2014

[When Bush led his war on Iraq in order to fight al-Qaeda, the group simply didn't exist in that country.--Ramzy Baroud, "Iraq pays price of US sectarian meddling," atimes.com, June 18, 2014]

[The citizens of the United States still do not know why their government destroyed Iraq. "National Security" will prevent them from ever knowing. "National Security" is the cloak behind which hides the crimes of the US government.--Paul Craig Roberts, "Washington's failure in Iraq," tacstrat.com, June 18, 2014]

[it's impossible to deny that the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, plus a series of ideologically informed decisions by the Bush administration that followed, is the proximate cause of the bloody conflict raging there today.--Joshua Holland, "Iraq Is Coming Apart at the Seams -- Here's Our Essential Reader," billmoyers.com, June 18, 2014]

["For over 20 years, what has been happening to Iraq amounts to a psychological holocaust."--Justin Marozzi, "Baghdad: the psychological toll of being the world's most attacked city," theguardian.com, June 20, 2014]

[ . . . Ms. Clinton did not seem to have heard of either the Battle of Qadisseyah, where in 637 AD the Arabs drove the Persian Sassanids out of Mesopotamia, nor of Ismail I who from 1501 AD started the progressive transformation of Persia into a Shi'ite state, thus imparting to traditional Arab-Persian ethno-linguistic rivalry the sectarian complexion of a Sunni-Shia confrontation--Mani Shankar Aiyar, "The Crisis in Iraq and India," ndtv.com, June 20, 2014]

Christof Lehmann, "U.S. Embassy in Ankara Headquarter for ISIS War on Iraq -- Hariri Insider," nsnbc.me, June 22, 2014

[So the losers are the British, the Turks, and especially the Chinese, who were by far Iraq's largest customer. The winners are the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia.--Thierry Meyssan, "Jihadism and the Petroleum Industry," voltairenet.org, June 23, 2014]

William Engdahl, "ISIS in Iraq stinks of CIA/NATO 'dirty war' op," rt.com, June 24, 2014

Michel Chossudovsky, "The Islamic State, the 'Caliphate Project' and the 'Global War on Terrorism'," globalresearch.ca, July 2, 2014

[Nabeel Naiem re Abu Bakr Baghdadi: "It is known that the USA released him from prison and he spent 20 to 30 million US Dollars to establish these ISIS groups and the first ISIS camps were established in Jordan, and Jordan doesn't allow camps for charity, when Jordan establish camps to train terrorist groups, it doesn't do that out of good will and charity, these camps were supervised by the Marines, and the arming of ISIS is all American. . . .

"This is a conspiracy against the region, and I told you Netenyahu & Dick Chenney put the Clean Break plan in the year 1998, and it's destroying 4 countries, they start with Iraq, then Syria then Egypt then Saudi Arabia. It's called Clean Break plan (PNAC), well known.. Using radical groups in the region."--"ISIS: The Bombshell Interview to Impeach Obama'," syrianews.cc, July 3, 2014]

Patrick Cockburn, "The end of a country, and the start of a new dark age," activistpost.com, August 10, 2014

Peter Baker, "New Military Campaign Extends a Legacy of War," nytimes.com, September 10, 2014

Juan Cole, "The Year Iraq Ceased to Exist: Will it ever Again?," juancole.com, December 30, 2014

[A bill that could divide Iraq into three separate entities has passed the US House Armed Services Committee by a vote of 60 to 2. The controversial draft bill will now be debated in the US House of Representatives where it will be voted on sometime in late May. If approved, President Barack Obama will be free to sidestep Iraq's central government in Baghdad and provide arms and assistance directly to Sunnis and the Kurds that are fighting ISIS. This, in turn, will lead to the de facto partitioning of the battered country into three parts; Kurdistan, Shiastan, and Sunnistan.--Mike Whitney, "Splitting Up Iraq -- The Final Push," counterpunch.org, May 8, 2015]

"Obama 'to send 500 more troops to Iraq'," bbc.com, June 10, 2015

Patrick Cockburn, "A Sense of Despair Is Sweeping Through Iraq," bbc.com, September 20, 2015

Cassandra Vinograd, "Iraq: We Didn't Ask for U.S. Ground Operations," nbcnews.com, October 28, 2015