An Iraqi provincial leader has issued a plea for US ground forces to head off total collapse in the country’s largest province, a swathe of territory that could serve as a springboard for an assault on Baghdad by forces of the so-called Islamic State.
The call by Sabah al-Karhout, the president of Anbar’s provincial council, will test the nerve of officials in the Iraqi and American capitals. It comes as a rash of suicide bombings in Baghdad late on Saturday killed more than 50 people and wounded nearly 100, mostly in Shiite districts of the city.
Set beside the ongoing failure of US-led airstrikes to turn the tide in the battle for Kobane, a small Kurdish community in the north of neighbouring Syria, and desperate fighting in the oil refinery town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, Mr Karhout’s appeal will leave many in the region and beyond wondering how the US and its allies intend to save an entire country, when seemingly they can’t save a single town.
Read it all from the SMH.
The United States is showing the world that our country is no longer a dependable ally for any country.
I have been praying that the people of IRAQ and the Kurds will find dependable allies to help them defeat ISIL.
It is disgraceful that the United States, as powerful as it is, is depending on, IRAQ and the KURDs alone as their first line of defense against the powerful Islamist State of ISIL.
Bettcee, it’s the President. He is an ideologue. He doesn’t care because what is happening in Iraq doesn’t fit his predetermined scenario. Last week I was watching live pictures of ISIS massing for an attack. One carrier group strike could have wiped them out. But we/he did nothing. He doesn’t know anything about the military, and in fact hates the military. He doesn’t trust his advisors except Valerie Jarret because they don’t share his naive, if not downright idiotic, world view. By all accounts even Hillary told him to keep troops in Iraq, and he refused. It really becomes worrisome when the best case scenario is that he is merely naive and unintelligent. The worst case scenario is downright scary.
Of course it is the President, but you are giving him the benefit of the doubt when you say he is naïve … it could be that he is thinking about building a base for his future in international politics once he is no longer President of the United States.
I agree with you when you say “the rest is downright scary”.
bettcee, I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my personal opinion is the “scary” part.
I knew something was terribly wrong when the President didn’t seem to care or acknowledge that Christians and other minorities, even children, were being beheaded, that women were being kidnapped and raped and men were being tortured and killed by ISIL until he was forced to acknowledge the beheading of reporters when ISIL released the videos.
I still don’t understand why the President demanded that the government of IRAQ depose their elected Prime Minister and include more SUNNI’s in their government when, at the same time, the people of IRAQ and Syria were being ferociously attacked by the Sunni Islamist State of ISIL or why the President chose to withhold real lifesaving military help even after “his” conditions were met.
I am tired of trying to figure out whether he is naïve or has another motive, I just know that no President of the United States has ever lead our country into such dangerous waters before and we really need a Christian leader to guide us out of this wicked forest.