COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, May 18, 2015




Rout of Ramadi reawakens Iraq to ‘brutal reality'

Second fall of city belies claims that the country’s military has learned how to hold its ground and that Islamic State is withering in the face of air strikes 

Martin Chulov Guardian

Monday 18 May 2015 13.55 EDT Last modified on Monday 18 May 2015 19.20 EDT 

When Ramadi was last overrun by jihadis nine years ago, the rest of Iraq slid rapidly into chaos. Now Iraqis are trying to come to terms with the fall of the city for a second time, with some predicting that this loss may prove even more catastrophic. 

 Islamic State took full control of Ramadi on Sunday night after Iraqi federal troops and police officers withdrew from the last government compounds and bases they had held since the militants stormed towards them on Friday. Outgunned though far from outmanned, up to 1,000 soldiers and officers were seen streaming from the city to a nearby highway, in scenes reminiscent of the fall of Mosul a year ago. 

This was Isis’s biggest triumph since then – a victory that belied claims that it was withering in the face of relentless air strikes and that Iraq’s military had learned how to hold its ground. The rout left government officials reeling. By early Monday, ministers and paramilitary leaders were mobilising Shia militias to travel from Baghdad to take on the estimated 400 Isis fighters now in control of the city. Such was the speed of events that the prospect of Shia fighters being sent to the predominantly Sunni Anbar province met with little hostility from Ramadi residents, who until this week had disavowed the role that militias had played in the fighting elsewhere in the country. 

 “The ones to be blamed for this are the government and the local authorities in Ramadi,” said Saleh Eraqi, a police colonel who fled on Sunday after his brother was killed in the fighting. “The army don’t have the fighting spirit. They were there waiting for Isis to attack. They are poorly equipped comparing to Isis. We are fighting with guns and pistols while Isis have Humvees and IEDs and suicide bombers.

 “There are many Sunnis inside the city who want to fight Isis but they don’t have the weapons. Our only hope is that we can get real support from the Americans.” Eraqi said the Shia militias, known as Hashd al-Shaabi, or the popular mobilisation units, faced an enormous challenge in winning back the city as Isis members stream towards it from elsewhere in Anbar province. 

 “The Hashd al-Shaabi can’t do it,” he said. “They will suffer huge losses. I saw Isis fighting; they were more than 250, most of them Iraqis with some foreigners, and they had support from sleeper cells inside the city. We fought them from 12 in the morning till 4pm but we almost ran out of weapons and had to withdraw.” 

 Ramadi, which sits on both the Euphrates river and a highway connecting Baghdad to the Jordanian and Syrian borders, has been the centre of gravity in Anbar province throughout the past 12 years of war and insurrection. It was a hub for foreign fighters crossing from Syria from 2003-07 and, over the past year, it has been contested by government forces and militants who have crept towards the city from Iraq’s western deserts. 

 Sunni tribal leaders were instrumental in protecting the city, just as they were in 2006 during a crucial phase of the US occupation in which Ramadi tribes rose up against the Islamic State of Iraq, an earlier incarnation of Isis, ousting the group from their midst with the support of US ground forces. But since then, some Sunni communities in Ramadi and Fallujah have been central to claims that Iraq’s post-US governments have pursued sectarian policies that benefit the majority Shias.

 Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Bahari, a tribal leader whose members were involved in the battles at the weekend, said the loss of the city was a reflection of a decade of neglect both by the Shia-dominated central government and by exiled Sunni tribal leaders. “We are exhausted, we want security and to be able to walk in our streets,” he said. “We are tired, we want peace, we want to live, and the government is run by thieves and ignorant people. I know most of the decision-makers in Anbar who pretended to be tribal leaders. They used to be shoeless and now they own streets in Jordan. They are sitting outside Anbar in Baghdad, Irbil, Jordan or Dubai and deciding our future by [the messaging service] Viber.

 “We are not welcoming Hashd in our city. We won’t fight them if they enter, but we are emotionally against them. They are an ethnic militia who will treat us badly. “The Hashd al-Shaabi think they can win Ramadi as quickly they won Salaheddine [the province surrounding Tikrit] but that’s a lie because Salaheddine is small compared to Ramadi. It was surrounded by other areas which they had already won, while Ramadi is a big city and is surrounded by desert.” 

 Shia militias led government troops in a successful battle to reclaim Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit in late March. Along the way, though, the militias have faced persistent claims that some members have pursued sectarian agendas and committed abuses against some Sunni communities. While Hashd al-Shabi has struck alliances with some Sunni tribes near Tikrit, it is distrusted by Sunni residents in Diyyala province, north of Baghdad, who claim its fighters are answerable to no state authority. 

 Hakim Zamili, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s defence committee and leader of the Salam Brigades, a Shia militia, said other Anbar tribes had been more circumspect about militias being sent to replace the vanquished national army. “I have just finished a meeting with the leaders of Hashd al-Shaabi, Iraqi generals and the defence minister and we have put a plan to coordinate the fighting in Ramadi,” he said. “I have received many requests from the tribe leaders in Anbar asking us to bring the Hashd al-Shaabi to defend them.” Ihsan Shimari, a Baghdad-based political analyst, said the fall of Ramadi was a wakeup call for Iraqi citizens who had been persuaded by the government that the campaign against Isis had been going well, especially since the reclaiming of Tikrit.

 “Iraqis are easily misled by their emotions and they used to believe in a quick victory, but now they are hit with a harsh reality in Ramadi,” he said. “Now they believe that the war against Isis will be long and difficult. It took them a long time to understand that brutal reality. The militias dwarf Iraq’s embattled security forces in number and influence. With resolute backing from Iran, they have led the war against Isis since June, regularly taking primacy over Iraqi forces, to whom they readily cede credit for most battlefield successes. 

 “Hashd al-Shaabi … are stronger because they are ideological,” said Shimari. “They are better organised and some of their brigades even have better weapons than the Iraqi army.” Naim al-Ubaidi, a leader of Asaib ahl al-Haq, one of the militias that plays a leading role under the Hashd al-Shaabi banner, said: “The Iraqi government asked us last night to intervene and rescue the city. We know that decision came late and we warned [the prime minister, Haidar] al-Abadi that they won’t achieve victory without us, but we know that he was under pressure from the Americans to not let us be involved in this operation.

 “All the brigades are now gathering their elite fighters to go for the battle in Ramadi and we are expecting the rescue the city within few days. The fighting in Ramadi will be easier for us than the operations in Salaheddine because of the collaboration of the tribes. “Ramadi has fallen under the eyes of the Americans and they haven’t done anything. This isn’t like what happened in Irbil when the Americans intervened there and prevented the fall of Irbil at all costs. This tells us that Iraqis are the ones who should deal with their problems together and get united to fight their enemies.” 

 The US military said it had carried out nine air strikes as Isis advanced and officials in Washington said they were confident that the city could be retaken with their ongoing air support. If so, that would almost certainly mean that the US would be flying in support of militia forces, rather than the national army. 

Asa’ib ahl al-Haq and the Jeish al-Mehdi, both strong allies of Iran, were two of the US military’s most formidable foes from 2006-11, accounting for more than 25% of its casualties, according to figures provided by Washington. 

 The US relationship with Iraq’s Sunnis was at times equally fraught. However, it reached a high point in Anbar in 2007, when a grassroots revolt was amplified by an increased presence of US troops, which curbed violence drastically in Anbar. Sheik Saddon al-Eifan, from the town of Amriyat al-Fallujah, said: “We in Anbar need any help we can get to get rid of Isis. They are attacking every family who fought against them and seeking revenge from everyone. We are now between two bad choices but we prefer the Hashd, and once they kick out Isis from our city we will ask them to leave.

 “We need the Americans to intervene in our reconciliation like they did before in order to bring us together to fight Isis. We all want to fight but we don’t have faith in the Iraqi government and it will take a lot to make us believe in them again.” Additional reporting by Mais al-Baya’a.

34 comments:

  1. The Sunnis and Shias have a long and brutal history of true savage slaughter....

    They deserve each other.

    America should support Israel, the Bhai and the Kurds.

    Period.

    America should not be bring into the USA (wholesale) syria islamists, iraqi islamists or even arabs from the so called Palestinian controlled lands of the west bank or Gaza.

    Turkey, Obama's bestest FRIEND in the middle east is a raving Jew hating, Israel destruction seeking snake whose people genocided 1.2 million Armenians.. Not to mention Turkey's real occupation of Kurdistan and who can forget Cyprus!

    Well the world can forget it since Turkey aint the Jews.....

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh and the murderer of 650 thousand kurds...

      Delete
    2. .

      Hmmm. Israel can't be occupying Palestine because Palestine is not a state; however, Turkey is occupying Kurdistan even though Kurdistan has even less claim to being a state.

      So confusing.

      .

      Delete
    3. .

      Well, I'm glad that you at least recognize the Armenian genocide. Israel doesn't. Must be a political thing.

      .

      Delete
    4. Probably is. Most things over there, and here too, are. The Israelis were trying to get along with the Turks, at least until Erdogan came along. The world would be better off if the Turkish military had moved, like the Egyptian military did.

      Israel used to have military exercises with the Turks once in a while, IIRC.

      Turkey should be kicked out of NATO, and Israel should take its place.

      IMHO

      Delete
    5. QuirkTue May 19, 12:01:00 AM EDT
      .

      Hmmm. Israel can't be occupying Palestine because Palestine is not a state; however, Turkey is occupying Kurdistan even though Kurdistan has even less claim to being a state.

      So confusing


      Israel has a land dispute with arabs over the lands of the west bank.


      Turkey occupies another nation's land, cyprus.

      It also occupies another real people's land called the kurds.

      The Kurds have far more right to a nation than some newly invented people called the palestinians.

      The kurds have real history...

      The Palestinians? Do not go back further than 1965.

      Delete
    6. QuirkTue May 19, 12:03:00 AM EDT
      .

      Well, I'm glad that you at least recognize the Armenian genocide. Israel doesn't. Must be a political thing.



      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/24/why-israel-does-not-recognize-the-armenian-genocide/

      It's pure politics...

      but Israel and others do call out the turks for the murder of 300,000 to 1.2 million armenians no matter the term.

      Delete
    7. Who Truly Deserves a State? The Kurds or the Palestinians?

      There are over twenty Arab states throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the world demands, in a chorus of barely disguised animosity towards Israel, that yet another Arab state be created within the mere forty miles separating the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan.

      Israel, a territory no larger than the tiny principality of Wales or the state of New Jersey, would be forced to share this sliver of land with a new and hostile Arab entity to be called Palestine, while seeing its present narrow waist reduced to a mere and suicidal nine miles in width -- what an earlier Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, described as the Auschwitz borders.

      Remember, there has never existed in all of recorded history an independent sovereign nation called Palestine -- and certainly not an Arab one. The term "Palestine" has always been the name of a geographical territory, such as Siberia or Patagonia. It has never been a state.

      But there is a people who, like the Jews, deserves a homeland and truly can trace their ancestry back thousands of years. They are the Kurds, and it is highly instructive to review their remarkable history in conjunction with that of the Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustice imposed upon them over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.

      Let us go back to the captivity of the Ten Tribes of Israel, who were taken from their land by the Assyrians in 721-715 BC. Biblical Israel was depopulated, its Jewish inhabitants deported to an area in the region of ancient Media and Assyria -- a territory roughly corresponding to that of modern-day Kurdistan.

      Assyria was, in turn, conquered by Babylonia, which led to the eventual destruction of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah in 586 BC. The remaining two Jewish tribes were sent to the same area as that of their brethren from the northern kingdom.

      When the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to their ancestral lands, many Jews remained (and continued to live) with their neighbors in Babylon -- an area which, again, included modern-day Kurdistan.

      The Babylonian Talmud refers in one section to the Jewish deportees from Judah receiving rabbinical permission to offer Judaism to the local population. The Kurdish royal house and a large segment of the general population in later years accepted the Jewish faith. Indeed, when the Jews rose up against Roman occupation in the 1st century AD, the Kurdish queen sent troops and provisions to support the embattled Jews.

      By the beginning of the 2nd century AD, Judaism was firmly established in Kurdistan, and Kurdish Jews in Israel today speak an ancient form of Aramaic in their homes and synagogues. Kurdish and Jewish life became interwoven to such a remarkable degree that many Kurdish folk tales are connected with Jews'.


      Delete
    8. It is interesting to note that several tombs of biblical Jewish prophets are to be found in or near Kurdistan. For example, the prophet Nachum is in Alikush, while Jonah's tomb can be found in Nabi Yunis, which is ancient Nineveh. Daniel's tomb is in the oil-rich Kurdistan province of Kirkuk; Habbabuk is in Tuisirkan; and Queen Hadassah, or Esther, along with her uncle Mordechai, is in Hamadan.

      After the failed revolt against Rome, many rabbis found refuge in what is now Kurdistan. The rabbis joined with their fellow scholars, and by the 3rd century AD, Jewish academies were flourishing. But the later Sassanid and Persian occupations of the region ushered in a time of persecution for the Jews and Kurds, which lasted until the Muslim Arab invasion in the 7th century. Indeed, the Jews and Kurds joined with the invading Arabs in the hope that their action would bring relief from the Sassanid depredations they had suffered.

      Shortly after the Arab conquest, Jews from the autonomous Jewish state of Himyar in what is today's Saudi Arabia joined the Jews in the Kurdish regions. However, under the now-Muslim Arab occupation, matters worsened, and the Jews suffered as dhimmis in the Muslim-controlled territory. The Jews found themselves driven from their agricultural lands because of onerous taxation by their Muslim overlords. They thus left the land to become traders and craftsmen in the cities. Many of the Jewish peasants were converted to Islam by force or by dire circumstances and intermarried with their neighbors.


      From out of this population arose a great historical figure. In 1138, a boy was born into a family of Kurdish warriors and adventurers. His name was Salah-al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub -- better known in the West as Saladin. He drove the Christian crusaders out of Jerusalem even though he was distrusted by the Muslim Arabs because he was a Kurd. Even then, the Arabs were aware of the close relationship that existed between the Kurdish people and the Jews.

      Saladin employed justice and humane measures in both war and peace. This was in contrast to the methods employed by the Arabs. Indeed, it is believed that Saladin not only was just to the Christians, but he allowed the Jews to flourish in Jerusalem and is credited with finding the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, which had been buried under tons of rubbish during the Christian Byzantine occupation. The great Jewish rabbi, philosopher, and doctor Maimonides was for a time Saladin's personal physician.

      According to a team of international scientists, a remarkable discovery was made in 2001. Doing DNA research, a team of Israeli, German, and Indian scientists found that many modern Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean area (Kurds and Armenians) than to the Arabs and Bedouins of the southern Mediterranean region.

      Delete
    9. But let us return to the present day and to why the world clamors for a Palestinian Arab state but strangely turns its back upon Kurdish national independence and statehood. The universally accepted principle of self-determination seems not to apply to the Kurds.

      In an article in the New York Sun on 6 July 2004 titled "The Kurdish Statehood Exception," Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood. He wrote, "[T]he historic injustices done to them and their suffering over the years can be adequately redressed within the framework of a federal Iraq, in which they will have to make do -- subject to the consent of a central, Arab-dominated government in Baghdad -- with mere autonomy. Full Kurdish statehood is unthinkable. This, too, is considered to be self-evident."

      The brutal fact in realpolitik, therefore, is that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians have many friends in the oil-rich Arab world -- oil the world desperately needs for its economies. The Kurds, like the Jews, have few friends, and the Kurds have little or no influence in the international corridors of power.

      Mr. Halkin pointed out that "the Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. They have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinian Arabs do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinian Arabs have not had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinian Arabs have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs."

      Delete
    10. The old nostrum, therefore, that only when the Palestinian Arabs finally have a state will there be peace in the world is a mirage in the desert. Fellow writer Gerald Honigman also writes on the world's preoccupation with the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians while ignoring the plight of the Kurds, Berbers, and millions of other non-Arab peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. Honigman's book was part of the LSS exhibit at the prestigious ASMEA Conference of scholars last November (and is now in at least a dozen major universities so far) and has several chapters focusing on the Kurdish issue. It's no accident that its foreword was written mostly by the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.

      During the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were gassed and slaughtered in large numbers. They suffered ethnic cleansing by the Turks and continue to be oppressed by the present Turkish government, whose foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had the gall to suggest, at a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Turkey supports the oppressed of the world. He ignored his own government's oppression of the Kurds and predictably named the anti-Semitic thugdom in Gaza "oppressed." On the basis of pure realpolitik, the legality and morality of the Kurds' cause is infinitely stronger than that of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

      On the other hand, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israel, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of sharia law, with its attendant denigration of women and non-Muslims.

      The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world -- and certainly anywhere else in Iraq, which is fast descending into ethnic chaos now that the U.S. military has left.

      Delete
    11. Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and all the leaders of the free world should look to Kurdistan, with its huge oil reserves, as the new state that needs to be created in the Middle East. It is simple and natural justice, which is far too long overdue. A Palestinian Arab state, on the other hand, will immediately become a haven for anti-Western terrorism, a base for al-Qaeda and Hamas (the junior partner of the Muslim Brotherhood), and a non-democratic land carved out of the Jewish ancestral and biblical lands of Judea and Samaria upon which the stultifying shroud of sharia law will inevitably descend. In short, it will be established with one purpose: to destroy what is left of embattled Israel.

      Finally, it is also natural justice for the Jewish State -- with its millennial association of shared history alongside the Kurdish people, who number over 30,000,000, scattered throughout northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey -- to fight in the world's forums for the speedy establishment of an independent and proud Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter future for both non-Arab nations.

      Mahmoud Abbas, Holocaust denier and present president of the Palestinian Authority, has never, and will never, abrogate publicly in English or in Arabic the articles in Fatah's constitution, which call for the "obliteration of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence" -- or, in other words, the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of its citizens. So much for the man President Obama and the Europeans shower with money and praise.

      It is the Kurds who unreservedly deserve a state. The invented Palestinian Arabs have forfeited that right by their relentless aggression, crimes, and genocidal intentions towards Israel and the Jews.

      Delete
    12. .

      ...the plight of the Kurds...

      A state?

      You and Obumble are politicking for something the Kurds through their leaders are not asking for themselves. This must go along with Obumble's post below, the do-gooder demanding a state for the Kurds whether they want it or not.

      Too funny.

      .

      Delete
  2. .

    The US currently has mutual defense agreements with the countries listed in the treaties in the following link.

    http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/

    These are the countries where our interests or at least our commitments lie. IMO, we have no existential national interests in the ME and should think carefully before getting involved there for any reason and certainly not for the ones we have used as excuses in the past.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why should a country need an "existential national interest", in your fancy language, to be involved in world politics ?

      Should not a desire for decency, human rights, rights of women, freedom of speech, and all the rest, including humanitarianism toward the victims of savagery, count as well ?

      Delete
    2. The outlook you have prescribed seems exceedingly narrow.

      Delete
    3. .

      Should not a desire for decency, human rights, rights of women, freedom of speech, and all the rest, including humanitarianism toward the victims of savagery, count as well ?


      The desire to correct all the ills of the world, the ideal of those who would wage war and the bane of those sent to war by the idealists who sit at home content.

      .

      Delete
  3. To The Noble Fighters Of ISIS and Hezbollah -

    The Right Thing

    Let others probe the mystery if they can.
    Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
    The right thing happens to the happy man.

    The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
    The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
    Let others delve that mystery if they can.

    God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
    The small become the great, the great the small;
    The right thing happens to the happy man.

    Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
    His being single, and that being all:
    The right thing happens to the happy man.

    Or he sits still, a solid figure when
    The self-destructive shake the common wall;
    Takes to himself what mystery he can,

    And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
    Wills what he would, surrendering his will
    Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
    The right thing happens to the happy man.

    Roethke


    May you all succeed in slaying one another. You so deeply desire to do so, may you all succeed.

    Just leave everyone else alone.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "His being single, and that being all" is not a reference to a marital state. It is a metaphysical statement.

      Delete
  4. Shia Iraq + Shia Iran.....that is to say, Shia Iran + its satrap Shia Iraq.....ought to be able to defeat ISIS, given enough time, and effort.

    But what then ?

    Are they to occupy --peacefully ? -- that entire area for time out of mind ?

    Because they will be faced with a slow burning insurgency, snippings, car bombings, etc on and on.

    They may well tire of this and embark on a genocide of sorts....they are not one bit more 'civilized' than ISIS, when it comes down to it.

    This prospect of a possible genocide is the one thing that makes me wonder if I am right in thinking we shouldn't put troops back in there.

    Most Americans, over 60% I think it is, favor putting American troops back in 'Iraq'.

    Sometimes, often, it is really hard to say just what to do, what to do............

    "Sin bravely" was Luther's advice. Good advice it is too, sinning being thought of as making inevitable mistakes.....take your best shot at what you finally determine to be best, and be brave about, knowing you might well be wrong....

    End of Sermon

    ReplyDelete
  5. According to the latest I have heard, the Twin Peaks riot went this way: a fight broke out in the Men's Restroom between two rival gang members, which spilled out into the Bar area, and shots were fire inside the building; a general melee broke out that spilled out into the parking lot with gang members - five different gangs - going at one another with chains, knives, guns and the Police were soon engaged. Gunfire was exchanged between the gangs and the Police......

    This does not sound like a "Police Riot" to me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. More gang members are reported to be heading to Waco, of course......

      Hopefully they will be met by a strong line of men in blue, not blue gang colors, but blue Police uniforms.

      Delete
  6. The Police would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money had they allowed the fight to continue, let the body count build up a bit, but they were being shot at themselves, and they did what Police are trained to do, stop the violence and the criminal activity ASAP.

    190 bikers in jail at last count, bail set at a $million each, 100 biker guns recovered. There had been much disturbance at and around the Twin Peaks recently, and the Police had tried to get the owners of the joint to co-operate with them, which the owners refuse to do.

    Their franchise has now been voided, at least temporarily, by the parent company.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Obama knew jihadis were planning Benghazi attack 10 days in advance

    May 18, 2015 10:59 pm By Robert Spencer

    This makes his blaming of the freedom of speech — his attribution of the attack to a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video — frankly insidious. What anti-free speech initiative was he hoping to implement in the wake of the attack?

    “JW: Obama Admin Knew About Benghazi Before It Happened,” Judicial Watch, May 18, 2015:

    Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq

    Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria

    (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

    The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

    Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.

    A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.” The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council. The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

      “A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.” The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons. Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock. They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.”

      The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents, in “a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters…that contain information on all of the AQ activity in Libya.”

      (Azuz is again blamed for the Benghazi attack in an October 2012 DIA document.)

      The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:

      Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.

      During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo...........

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/obama-knew-jihadis-were-planning-benghazi-attack-10-days-in-advance


      Delete
    2. >>>>This makes his blaming of the freedom of speech — his attribution of the attack to a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video — frankly insidious.<<<<

      Insidious ?

      Treasonous is better.

      Delete
  8. How inconvenient for the Neocons and their Republican Guard

    WASHINGTON, DC - The United States has approved the deployment of Shiite militias to retake the Sunni city of Ramadi despite warnings from US lawmakers of an uptick in sectarian violence due to involvement of the Iran-backed Shiite fighters.

    "The militias have a part to play in this. As long as they are controlled by the central Iraqi government, then they will participate," Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Steve Warren told reporters Monday.

    Warren added that the urban environment of the city “ limits the ability of airpower, so it creates unique challenges.”

    The Islamic State, or ISIS, overran Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, on Sunday in a major victory against the Iraqi army. According to social media accounts managed by the extremists, the group seized at least 30 US-made armored Humvees and nearly 10 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks in addition to tons of ammunitions and other advanced weapons.

    Hawkish Republican senators, many of whom have lambasted President Barack Obama’s strategy to counter the ISIS, warned that allowing the Iran-backed Shiite militias to take part in operations to retake the Sunni city will fuel the sectarian violence in the country.

    “Whatever operational success Shia militias may have in Anbar would be far exceeded by the strategic damage caused by their violent sectarianism and the fear and suspicion it breeds among Iraqi Sunnis. Moreover, the prominent role of these militias continues to feed the perception of a Baghdad government unable or unwilling to protect Sunnis,” several senators said in a joint statement.

    The senators called for assisting the Sunnis by allowing them to fight for themselves.

    “Defeating ISIL requires empowering Sunnis who want to rise up and fight ISIL themselves, including by integrating them into Iraq’s security forces and providing more robust American military assistance,” the senators added.

    Sunni politicians have accused the government of Prime Minister Haider Abadi of failing to properly train and arm Sunni tribal forces to counter ISIS due fears the arms might be used later against Baghdad.

    Abadi ordered the deployment of the Shiite paramilitary to recapture Ramadi on Monday after the Anbar Provincial Council voted in favor of dispatching the Shiite fighters. Some analysts believe Baghdad preferred the fall of the city to ISIS than to arm the Sunni tribes.

    Videos surfaced online showing the hasty withdrawal of the fleeing Iraqi army in the city on Sunday.

    The Pentagon press secretary warned the battle to retake Ramadi will be “toughest” due to its population. According to UN data, Ramadi’s population is close to one million, while only an estimated 25,000 residents have reportedly left the city

    "Ramadi is an urban environment that is among the very toughest to fight in," Warren added

    ReplyDelete
  9. The UN says nearly 25,000 people have fled from Ramadi since fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured the Iraqi city from government forces over the past few days.

    Residents continue to flee, mainly towards the capital, Baghdad, as thousands of Shia militias were massing around Ramadi to retake the Anbar province’s capital city.

    ISIL fighters seem defiant as they spread out in anticipation of the fight with Shia militias, who were asked to deploy by the government in the wake of the government forces' defeat.

    ReplyDelete
  10. A senior Iranian official said on Monday that his country was ready to help confront ISIL and that he was certain Ramadi would be “liberated” from their grip.

    "If the Iraqi government made an official request to the Iranian government in it's capacity as a friendly and brotherly country to Iraq, which can take on a role to help Iraq to confront these extremist phenomena - then the Islamic Republic will respond to this request," said Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Blaming Obama for Iraq? Let’s do something inconvenient for the Republicans and Neocons:

    Next Post

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This should be something new and different.

      Goody, I can't wait.

      ;)

      Delete
    2. Obama has destroyed 'Iraq' and turned most of it over to the Iranians.

      He did this because he knows the Iranians are fighting for civilization.

      His Iranian born adviser, Valerie Jarrett, told him so.

      Beware Iranian women. They can wrap a man around their little finger.

      Delete
    3. I need to get my shots in now cause I am leaving shortly.

      I am glad I will miss the two hundredth rerun of the old 'Republicans and NeoCons' Movie.

      It was stupid the first time I saw it, and it has gotten worse with each subsequent rerun.

      Cheers !!

      out

      Delete