credit: Signe Wilkerson
...Cannot put Iraq back together again. The last decade of US blood and treasure sucked into the map of Iraq has been for nought. Iraq is crumbling before the eyes of the neocons who dragged America into a war it did not need to fight. They sold their hubristic cool-aide to a feckless White House Occupant determined to do his dad one better. Kurds, who have never lost sight of their goal--an independent Kurdistan--have seized two oil fields in the north and Kurdish MPs have withdrawn from Iraq's central government. They have also announced plans to hold referendums in northwest areas abandoned by the Iraqi army during the advance of ISIS and its allies. The two seized fields produced about 400,000 barrels a day.A "hysterical" al-Maliki made the mistake on Wednesday of calling the Kurdish provincial capital Irbill a haven for ISIS. The Kurds promptly ceased their participation in government. Without the Kurds it will be nearly impossible for al-Maliki to form a coalition majority in parliament. The Iraqi Foreign Minister who is a Kurdish politician told Reuters that the "country is now literally divided into three states--Kurdish, a black state, and Baghdad". Five years ago the United States said ISIS, an al-Qaeda splinter, was on the verge of strategic defeat! Today the jihadist group bombs Baghdad regularly and controls Mosul, the country's second city. More important that territory, the organization is hugely rich. The capture of Mosul added perhaps $2bn to its coffers. While taking Baghdad would be extremely difficult for a group thought to number ten to fifteen thousand men, the discredited and ineffective Iraqi army cannot retake Mosul. Their American advisors have even counseled against such a counterattack. ISIS is now attacking Baquba just 37 miles from Baghdad and two large Sunni suburbs of Amiriya and Khadra. The longer the fighting continues, the weaker the central government becomes.
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| credit: Jerry Holbert Wackydoodle sez: Someone tell him giggling during photo-ops is out-of-bounds! |