More American War in Iraq?

Just to get things right:
- it's football (the organisation is called FIFA and not "FISA")
- Iraq didn't qualify (anlready in first qualifications in 2011/2 [but Iran did, playing today versus Bosnia & Herzegovina])

FIFA officials would never use the S word.

It called a joke, Walter. Any similarity to the facts is coincidental. This is for the US audience and we know what football is and what soccer is.

'Thank God for the Saudis': ISIS, Iraq, and the Lessons of Blowback
U.S lawmakers encouraged officials in Riyadh to arm Syrian rebels. Now that strategy may have created a monster in the Middle East.

Steve Clemons Jun 23 2014, 11:40 AM ET



ISIS fighters at a checkpoint in the northern Iraq city of Mosul (Reuters)

“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN’s Candy Crowley in January 2014. “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the senator said once again a month later, at the Munich Security Conference.

McCain was praising Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces.

But shortly after McCain’s Munich comments, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah relieved Bandar of his Syrian covert-action portfolio, which was then transferred to Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. By mid-April, just two weeks after President Obama met with King Abdullah on March 28, Bandar had also been removed from his position as head of Saudi intelligence—according to official government statements, at “his own request.” Sources close to the royal court told me that, in fact, the king fired Bandar over his handling of the kingdom’s Syria policy and other simmering tensions, after initially refusing to accept Bandar’s offers to resign. (Bandar retains his title as secretary-general of the king’s National Security Council.)

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the “moderate” armed opposition in the country, receives a lot of attention. But two of the most successful factions fighting Assad’s forces are Islamist extremist groups: Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the latter of which is now amassing territory in Iraq and threatening to further destabilize the entire region. And that success is in part due to the support they have received from two Persian Gulf countries: Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar’s military and economic largesse has made its way to Jabhat al-Nusra, to the point that a senior Qatari official told me he can identify al-Nusra commanders by the blocks they control in various Syrian cities. But ISIS is another matter. As one senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.”

ISIS, in fact, may have been a major part of Bandar’s covert-ops strategy in Syria. The Saudi government, for its part, has denied allegations, including claims made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that it has directly supported ISIS. But there are also signs that the kingdom recently shifted its assistance—whether direct or indirect—away from extremist factions in Syria and toward more moderate opposition groups.
“ISIS has been a Saudi project,” one Qatari official said.

The United States, France, and Turkey have long sought to support the weak and disorganized FSA, and to secure commitments from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to do the same. When Mohammed bin Nayef took the Syrian file from Bandar in February, the Saudi government appeared to finally be endorsing this strategy. As The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote at the time, “Prince Mohammed’s new oversight role reflects the increasing concern in Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries about al-Qaeda’s growing power within the Syrian opposition.”

The worry at the time, punctuated by a February meeting between U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and the intelligence chiefs of Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and others in the region, was that ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra had emerged as the preeminent rebel forces in Syria. The governments who took part reportedly committed to cut off ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and support the FSA instead. But while official support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia appears to have dried up, non-governmental military and financial support may still be flowing from these countries to Islamist groups.

Senior White House officials have refused to discuss the question of any particular Saudi officials aiding ISIS and have not commented on Bandar’s departure. But they have emphasized that Saudi Arabia is now both supporting moderate Syrian rebels and helping coordinate regional policies to deal with an ascendant ISIS threat.

Like elements of the mujahideen, which benefited from U.S. financial and military support during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and then later turned on the West in the form of al-Qaeda, ISIS achieved scale and consequence through Saudi support, only to now pose a grave threat to the kingdom and the region. It’s this concern about blowback that has motivated Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to encourage restraint in arming Syrian rebels. President Obama has so far heeded these warnings.

John McCain’s desire to help rebel forces toss off a brutal dictator and fight for a more just and inclusive Syria is admirable. But as has been proven repeatedly in the Middle East, ousting strongmen doesn’t necessarily produce more favorable successor governments. Embracing figures like Bandar, who may have tried to achieve his objectives in Syria by building a monster, isn't worth it.

They must have more local support than the US did, in addition to having support of outside influence and financing from Saudi Arabia. At least so I have read, the latter anyway. We were not really greeted as liberators even if some of them (most) were glad Saddam Hussein is gone.

Sounds more like popular uprising than an invasion.

Iraq crisis: Maliki rejects call for 'salvation' government – live updates

Iraqi PM: 'emergency government is a coup'
Nato foreign minister discuss Iraq crisis in Brussels
Obama telephones Cameron over Iraq
First US military advisers arrive in Baghdad
Read the latest summary

Matthew Weaver
theguardian.com, Wednesday 25 June 2014 12.12 EDT
Jump to comments (378)



Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected US calls for an emergency government as a coup against the Iraqi constitution. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected US calls for a unity government as a coup against the Iraqi constitution. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

5.11pm BST
Summary

We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage for the day. Here's a summary of where things stand:

• The Iraqi prime minister spoke out on television against calls to form a national emergency government, calling the proposition "a coup against the constitution and the political process."

• Nouri al-Maliki's comments were seen as inconvenient to the US vision of a new "inclusive" government for Iraq. US secretary of state John Kerry said Monday that Maliki was committed to convening a new government on 1 July.

• The Iraqi army has broadcast footage of strikes against insurgents near the disputed Baiji oil refinery. A civilian in the area claimed the raid hit a residential area, killing several members of his family.

• Militants have attacked one of Iraq's largest air bases north of Baghdad, battling Iraqi forces in Yathrib, witnesses and a local official said.

Updated at 5.12pm BST

2.32pm BST

Control of the Baiji oil refinery remains in dispute, but insurgents have taken another plant, according to a Reuters update on the battle for Iraq's oil facilities.

Militants overran the Ajeel oil site, 30 km (19 miles) east of Tikrit, which contains at least three small oilfields that produce 28,000 barrels per day, an engineer working at the field said.

The engineer said local tribes had taken responsibility for protecting the fields after police withdrew but that they also left after the nearby town of al-Alam was seized by militants.

Ajeel is connected to two pipelines, one running to Turkey's Ceyhan port and the other to the Baiji oil refinery, which remained a frontline early on Wednesday.

State TV showed troop reinforcements flying into the compound by helicopter to fend off the assault on Baiji, a strategic industrial complex 200 km north of Baghdad.

Local tribal leaders said they were negotiating with both the Shi'ite-led government and Sunni fighters to allow the tribes to run the plant if Iraqi forces withdraw. One government official said Baghdad wanted the tribes to break with ISIL and other Sunni armed factions, and help defend the compound.

The plant has been fought over since last Wednesday, with sudden reversals for both sides and no clear winner so far.



Iraqi police officers protecting oil installations secure an oil pipeline from the Rumailah refinery, north of Basra, in 2008. Iraqi police officers protecting oil installations secure an oil pipeline from the Rumailah refinery, north of Basra, in 2008. Photograph: Nabil al-Jurani/AP

2.19pm BST

More than 60% of Americans still support President Obama's 2011 decision to remove nearly all US troops from Iraq, according to a new Gallup poll. But public support for the withdrawal from Iraq has fallen by 14 percentage points from October 2011.

It also found that a clear majority (57%) see the US decision to send troops to Iraq as a mistake.


Iraq poll A clear majority of Americans see the decision to send troops to Iraq as a mistake. Photograph: Screengrab/Gallup

Updated at 2.32pm BST



Militants from the extremist Syrian group Jabhat al-Nusra have been filmed pledging allegiance to Isis after well documented differences with the group.

Belgium based jihad watcher Pieter Van Ostaeyen said they made the pledge after Isis claimed control of the eastern Syrian town of al-Bukamal.

Jabhat an-Nusra pledges allegiance to #ISIS in al-Būkamāl #Syria http://t.co/27jXt7SeAm pic.twitter.com/vE1Jo4Xsxk
— Pieter Van Ostaeyen (@p_vanostaeyen) June 25, 2014

The splits and origins of Jabhat al-Nusra and Isis are traced in great detail in a new 7,000 word article for Politico. It says:

Al-Qaeda, Nusra and Isis all share a transnational ideology with the same ultimate goal: an Islamic state that spreads out from Syria into the Middle East, reestablishing a caliphate that ended in 1924 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. They merely differ on who should lead the effort and the tactics to achieve it.

1.46pm BST
Summary

Here's a summary of the main developments today:

Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected international appeals for a new inclusive new government. He said a an emergency salvation government would represent a coup against Iraq's constitution. But there is some uncertainty about whether his remarks should be translated as an explicit rejection of a "unity" government. He also called for reconciliation among Iraq's political forces.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Iraq should be pressured to usher in a new inclusive government. In a speech to parliament she said: "We need a government in Iraq that embraces all parts of the population. For years this has not happened and because of this the pressure needs to be raised."

Barack Obama has discussed the crisis in Iraq in a phone call with Britain's prime minister David Cameron. Brett McGurk, the US state department official responsible for Iraq policy, said it was "now time for decisions" on the crisis.

Militants have attacked one of Iraq's largest air bases north of Baghdad. Militants including Isis and allied Sunni tribes battled Iraqi forces in the town of Yathrib, 90 km north of Baghdad, witnesses and the deputy head of the municipality said.

The Iraqi army has broadcast footage of strikes against insurgents near the disputed Baiji oil refinery. A civilian in the area claimed the raid hit a residential area, killing several members of his family.

Kirkurk's provincial governor has called for Iraq to be broken up into three autonomous regions in a federal system once advocated by US vice president Joe Biden.
Governor Najm al-Din Karim, said: "I think the only hope to keep the country together is probably through three different regions with a confederation."

US Secretary of State John Kerry has insisted that the deployment of American military forces is "not intervention" in Iraq's affairs. In an interview with American journalist Andrea Mitchell, Kerry diminished the deployment of up to 300 irregular forces, expected to come largely from US army special forces. "Well, that's not intervention," Kerry said.

1.23pm BST

Iran's foreign ministry has denied that al-Quds commander Qassem Suleimani is in Iraq despite repeated reports that he has been involved in organising the fight back against Isis insurgents.

Iran FM spokeswoman denies reports Qassem Suleimani, head of #Iran's Quds force, is in Iraq: "No Iran military official in Iraq" - ISNA
— Saeed Kamali Dehghan (@SaeedKD) June 25, 2014

The New York Times reports that Suleimani has made at least two visits to Baghdad and is supplying Iraq with tons of military equipment each day.


Qassem Soleimani head of the al-Quds brigade. Qassem Suleimani head of the al-Quds brigade. Public Domain

Iraq analyst Randa Slim sees Maliki's statement today about rejecting a unity (or salvation) government as a sign that he has Iranian backing.

#Maliki statement about coup & rejection of unity cabinet indicates he now has support of #Iranians. #Iraq
— Randa Slim (@rmslim) June 25, 2014

Updated at 1.41pm BST

1.00pm BST

AFP's Prashant Rao makes an important clarification. He points out that Maliki rejected the idea of a "salvation" government, not a "unity" government.

All - Maliki did not rule out 'national unity government'. He used the word انقاذ (salvation), rather than وحدة (unity). They are different.
— Prashant Rao (@prashantrao) June 25, 2014

Al-Jazeera and other media outlets have translated Maliki's rejecting a "national unity government".

As there is now doubt about exactly Maliki said we've changed the headline of this blog.

Updated at 1.03pm BST

12.19pm BST

Video has emerged purporting to show homes destroyed by Iraqi air strikes on Baiji which were reported to have killed a number of civilians.

A survivor of the attack claimed it killed several members of his family.


Mona Mahmood translates the man in the clip as syaing:

Thank God for making martyrs of my family.

Just after dawn prayers call, the explosive barrel fell on our house. My family were sleeping here. My father, my little brother and my mother were here. My other brother and his infant with him were there. The barrel fell just on the middle of them.

There was no important target here just innocent people escaping the heat and decided to sleep in the garden. It is a vicious crime.



11.17am BST

Maliki gave only a vague call for "all political forces to reconcile", according to AP's account of his weekly address.

It confirmed he rejected forming a "national salvation" government, which he said would go against the results of parliament elections.

11.02am BST
Maliki rejects unity government call as a 'coup'

AFP has more on Maliki's rejection of a unity government.

"The call to form a national emergency government is a coup against the constitution and the political process," Maliki said in a televised address.

"The dangerous goals of forming a national emergency government are not hidden.

"It is an attempt by those who are against the constitution to eliminate the young democratic process and steal the votes of the voters," said the Iraqi leader.

Maliki's electoral bloc won by far the most seats in April 30 parliamentary elections with 92, nearly three times as many as the next biggest party, and the incumbent himself tallied 720,000 personal votes, also far and away the most.

But he fell short of a majority in Iraq's Council of Representatives, and has had to court the support of rivals in order to form a government.

Updated at 11.06am BST

10.57am BST

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected calls from the US, and others, for a unity government, according to the BBC.

Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki rejects calls for "national salvation government" to deal with Sunni insurgency http://t.co/7A0NwOw7dp
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 25, 2014

According to Reuters Maliki also said he is on course to set up a new government but has given no indication that he plans to resign as US officials have hinted he should.

It quotes him telling State TV: "We will attend the first session of parliament in harmony with the constitutional merits and out of the commitment to the call of the Supreme Marjaiya and out of loyalty to our people," referring to country's most respected Shia clergy Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani


On Friday, Sistani called for the government formation process to begin.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

10.38am BST

The Iraqi army has broadcast cockpit footage purporting to show air strikes against insurgents near the Baiji oil refinery. The date of such footage, which is usually displayed on the top left of the screen, has been cropped out of the clip.


Last night a Kurdish counter terrorism officer based in Tikrit, told the Guardian's Fazel Hawramy that the Baiji refinery had not been taken by Isis insurgents.

There were reports on Wednesday that troops guarding the plant had agreed to surrender in return for safe passage out, but the officer said Iraqi counter terrorism police controlled it.

He told Fazel: "Isis were bombed yesterday from the sky. Some of the officers that are guarding the refinery are Kurds and the brigadier in charge is also Kurdish."

Updated at 1.42pm BST

10.23am BST

Militants have attacked one of Iraq's largest air bases north of Baghdad, Reuters reports.

Militants including Isis and allied Sunni tribes battled Iraqi forces in the town of Yathrib, 90 km north of Baghdad, into the early hours of Wednesday, witnesses and the deputy head of the municipality said. Four militants were killed, they said.

Insurgents have surrounded a massive air base nearby, which was known as "Camp Anaconda" under US occupation, and struck it with mortars. Eyewitnesses said the air base had been surrounded on three sides.

Updated at 11.00am BST



The stated ambition of Isis insurgents is to set up an Islamic state of Iraq and Syria. This map shows the boundaries of its ambitions in the context of the towns and cities currently under its control in both countries.


Updated at 10.05am BST

9.49am BST

Lorry drivers who have crossed into Jordan from Iraq have denied reports that Islamic militants control the main border post between the two countries, according to the Jordan Times.

After crossing the Jordanian checkpoint, Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian drivers coming from different destinations in the neighbouring country said the situation is calm, but there are no Iraqi army officers on the way from Baghdad to Turaibil, except on the border post.

In less than one hour, more than 10 trucks and two cars carrying passengers crossed the Jordanian checkpoint.

“Fighters are still controlling [the border]… there are no Daesh militants,” said Mahmoud Abbas, an Iraqi driver coming from Anbar, using the Arabic acronym for Isis ...

Saif Eddin Hussain, a Jordanian driving a truck that holds a Dubai licence plate, also echoed Abbas’ statement.

“Don’t believe all that has been reported,” Hussein said, adding that he came from Karbala, located about 100km southwest of Baghdad, which was “still controlled by the army”.

The only “strange scene”, as he described it, was seeing troops of the Iraqi army moving towards Karbala.

9.41am BST

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Iraq should be pressured to usher in a new inclusive government.

In speech to parliament she said:

We need a government in Iraq that embraces all parts of the population. For years this has not happened and because of this the pressure needs to be raised.

9.22am BST

That Nato meeting in Brussels is under way.

Currently happening at #NATO, 28 Foreign Ministers meeting: http://t.co/MmLq5PgaaK pic.twitter.com/Kiyw6yx60V
— US Mission to NATO (@USNATO) June 25, 2014

John Kerry and European foreign policy chief Catherine Aston wanted to keep their discussions private.


US Secretary of State John Kerry talks to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. US Secretary of State John Kerry talks to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters


Ashton chats to Kerry at the start of a Nato Foreign ministers council in Brussels. Ashton chats to Kerry at the start of a Nato Foreign ministers council in Brussels. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

8.36am BST

Biden's predecessor, Dick Cheney, remains unrepentant about the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and blamed the current crisis on the Obama administration's decision not to leave a residual force in the country.

In a interview with PBS, Cheney said:

This administration is taking exactly the opposite direction from which we ought to be headed. The president did not want to have, I don't believe, any stay-behind force in Iraq. I don't think it was consistent with the campaign he'd run when he campaigned against our forces in Iraq and promised to bring them all out during the course of the campaign.

Asked what mistakes were made, Cheney said: "It was not a flawless war, but I've never seen one that was ... I don't hesitate to defend what we did."

Liberal pundit Bill Scher said former officials like Dick Cheney should not be invited on to US talks shows unless they agreed to explain what they learnt from their mistakes over Iraq.

Speaking on Bloggingheads, before Cheney's latest interview, Scher said the former vice president had no right to blame Obama without acknowledging his own failings.
Bill Scher on Bloggingheads calls for conservative introspection over Iraq.

8.04am BST

Kirkurk's provincial governor has called for Iraq to be broken up into three autonomous regions in a federal system once advocated by US vice president Joe Biden.

Speaking to AFP, Governor Najm al-Din Karim, said: "I think the only hope to keep the country together is probably through three different regions with a confederation."

"This is actually what (US Vice President Joe) Biden suggested ... and everybody thought that he was breaking up Iraq, but that's the only way and he was right."

A 2006 opinion piece for the New York Times co-authored by Biden called for three separate regions based on Iraq's sectarian divisions, with a central government in Baghdad.

He wrote:

The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues. Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.

Decentralization is hardly as radical as it may seem: the Iraqi Constitution, in fact, already provides for a federal structure and a procedure for provinces to combine into regional governments.

Besides, things are already heading toward partition: increasingly, each community supports federalism, if only as a last resort. The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won't and don't want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.

Some will say moving toward strong regionalism would ignite sectarian cleansing. But that's exactly what is going on already, in ever-bigger waves. Others will argue that it would lead to partition. But a breakup is already under way. As it was in Bosnia, a strong federal system is a viable means to prevent both perils in Iraq.

The second element would be to entice the Sunnis into joining the federal system with an offer they couldn't refuse. To begin with, running their own region should be far preferable to the alternatives: being dominated by Kurds and Shiites in a central government or being the main victims of a civil war. But they also have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20 percent (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues.

AP's Josh Lederman claims the current crisis hints at vindication for Biden. He wrote:

While the White House isn't actively considering Biden's old plan, Mideast experts are openly questioning whether Iraq is marching toward an inevitable breakup along sectarian lines.

"Isn't this the divided Iraq that Joe Biden predicted eight years ago?" read an editorial this week in The Dallas Morning News.

Joe Biden delivers a speech during the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia conference in Philadelphia in 2006. As Iraq edges toward chaos, Vice President Joe Biden is having a quiet I-told-you-so moment. As a senator in 2006, Biden proposed that Iraq be divided into three semi-independent regions for Shia, Sunnis and Kurds. Joe Biden delivers a speech during in 2006. As Iraq edges toward chaos, Vice President Joe Biden is having a quiet I-told-you-so moment. As a senator in 2006, Biden proposed that Iraq be divided into three semi-independent regions for Shia, Sunnis and Kurds. Photograph: MATT ROURKE/AP

7.34am BST

Gregory Johnsen, one of the most respected analysts on Yemen, has cautioned the Obama administration against extending to Iraq the kind of drone strikes and targeted killings used against al-Qaida in Yemen.

Writing for Buzzfeed he warns that the tactic has been counter productive in Yemen and would be even worse in Iraq.

In Yemen the US has been attempting to keep AQAP [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] back on its heels, essentially striking the organization in the hopes of containing it. But for all the drone strikes, AQAP continues to grow. In Iraq, the US would be trying to uproot ISIS and expel it from the cities it controls. Drones that aren’t completely capable of the former certainly can’t do the latter.

Perhaps the best reason not to export the Yemen model to Iraq is that the Yemen model doesn’t even work in Yemen. When the Obama administration started bombing Yemen shortly before Christmas in 2009, al-Qaeda numbered about 200–300. Today, after four and a half years of drone strikes, al-Qaeda is several times that number.

7.22am BST
Summary

Welcome to live coverage of the crisis in Iraq.

Here's a summary of the latest developments:

US Secretary of State John Kerry has insisted that the deployment of American military forces is "not intervention" in Iraq's affairs. In an interview with American journalist Andrea Mitchell, Kerry diminished the deployment of up to 300 irregular forces, expected to come largely from US army special forces. "Well, that's not intervention," Kerry said.

Kerry will attend key Nato discussions on Iraq as the US military advisers began moving into Baghdad. The first of up to 300 US military advisers began to help the Iraqi army, but the Pentagon said the American troops were not taking on a combat role.

Barack Obama has discussed the crisis in Iraq in a phone call with Britain's prime minister David Cameron. Brett McGurk, the US state department official responsible for Iraq policy, said it was "now time for decisions" on the crisis.

Fighting continues for control of Iraq's largest oil refinery at Baiji. The Iraqi security forces have brought in reinforcements and used air strikes against insurgents in the area.

Friends of a man from Aberdeen who appears in a propaganda video for the militant Islamist group Isis said he became far more religious in recent years but showed little sign of supporting terrorism. Abdul Raqib Amin, in his mid-20s, has been identified as the third Briton to appear in an recruitment video for the militant Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) where he implores other Muslims in western countries to leave their comfortable lives behind and take up jihad.

More than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Iraq in two weeks since Isis and its allies began to sweep across the country, according to the United Nations. “This figure – which should be viewed very much as a minimum – includes a number of verified summary executions and extra-judicial killings of civilians, police, and soldiers who were hors combat,” said Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Malaki wanted us out. We got out. Let us stay out and let the region solve its own problems. We've made enough enemies. Obama finally has it right.

It the problem would likely stay in that area of the world, you might have a point however as it is that is a stupid statement on it face.

Thank you Bill. That confirms that my opinion is the right one.

Exactly right.In the end there will be blood no matter what. There is neither reason to intervene nor to try to delay the inevitable, it would be foolish. There is no reason further arm any of the players, that would be amoral. We now are in the same corner as Iran and the "elected" government against people (ISIS) people like McCain encouraged our "allies" the Saudis to bury in cash and material support. ISIS is also against Assad in Syria and are fighting him. Why isn't McCain being censured? Who gave him portfolio to act and speak on US foreign policy?

We really need to keep it at arms length.

And how exactly does it show up here? Seriously.

Will there had been any number of men like you who was sure they was right in US history over this issue.

The first name that come to mind is Charles Lindbergh a remarkable man who also was remarkably wrong when it came to letting a region settle it own problems and that after we had attempted to help a generation before at far greater costs then Iraq.

But then most Americans do not know and or do not learn from history.

LOL are you serous..............

What in the hell has 9/11 got to do with Iraq? Have you been listening to old bush tapes?

Are you really so dense?

Islamic jihadists (al-Qaeda) under the protection of a national government (Taliban - Afghanistan) established a permanent base of operations and launched 9/11 attack on USA.

Islamic jihadists (ISIS) now threaten to establish their own permanent base of operations from either all of Iraq or territory carved out of Iraq.

Get it now?

You really are so dense, Finn.

You kidding me right as while Iraq have nothing to do with 911 when Saddam was in charge or when Bush decided to removed him, the current core group that is now overrunning large areas of Iraq had been found too extreme even by Al Qaeda standards.

Sorry but you do not allow an organization that is bend on doing us and the west harm in the name of religion to gain a base of operation that is far greater then Afghanistan offer Al Qaeda when they was planning the 911 attack.

If we get involved, it'll be one of the most stupid moves our president makes. Iraq has always been at war, and our involvement isn't going to stop that. If the Middle East problems stretches into Europe, it looks like we'll get involved no matter at what cost.

WWIII in our sites.

We and our interests are already involved and allowing a base of operations that consist of a large percent of Iraq to be set up that is under the control of those who had proven they wish to bring fire and large scale deaths not only to the US but to Europe is insane on it face.