Iran-backed Shia militia says it will fight US Marines deployed to Iraq

One of the deadliest Iranian-backed militias in Iraq has threatened to attack US troops deployed fighting the Islamic State (Isil) and "deal" with them as occupying forces.
Read more at the UK Telegraph Read More......

Terrible Suffering in Iraq: Thousands of Civilians Face Death, Displacement and Slavery

     A new United Nations report has tried to count the civilian toll of continuing conflict in Iraq, largely at the hands of Islamic State militants, and the numbers are "staggering."
     "Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Jan. 19.
Read more at the National Catholic Register Read More......

“Abducting Women” and “Destroying Churches” is “Real Islam”—Iraqi Ayatollah

If they are people of the book [Jews and Christians] we demand of them the jizya—and if they refuse, then we fight them. That is if he is Christian. He has three choices: either convert to Islam, or, if he refuses and wishes to remain Christian, then pay the jizya [and live according to dhimmi rules]. But if they still refuse—then we fight them, and we abduct their women, and destroy their churches—this is Islam!


Read more at Human Events Read More......

Iraqi PM to share anti-ISIS intel with Russia

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi announced on Saturday that Iraq will share anti-ISIS intelligence with Russia, Iran and Syria if cooperation is requested.
“We have been fighting ISIS more than a year and we have some important security information that no other country has regarding ISIS,” Abadi stated during a press conference which took place at the presidential office in the capital.


Read more at TRT World Read More......

Facing Islamic State threat, Iraq digitizes national library

The digitization project aims to perserve priceless books and manuscripts from future threats; Baghdad National Library officials say that sharing Iraqi art and literature is key to combatting terrorism.
The dimly lit, dust-caked stacks of the Baghdad National Library hide a treasure of the ages: crinkled, yellowing papers holding the true stories of sultans and kings; imperialists and socialists; occupation and liberation; war and peace.


Read more at YNET News Read More......

Judith Miller's "Story": Setting the Record Straight

“In the spring of 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, I was at the peak of my profession,” Judith Miller writes in the prologue to “The Story: A Reporter's Journey,” her compelling account of her life in journalism. Miller had been a versatile reporter at The New York Times for 25 years, but her special beat was the Arab world, Islamic extremism, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and war.  She was part of the Times staff that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for its investigation of al-Qaeda's pre-9/11 global network; she received an Emmy that year for a documentary based on her co-authored book “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.” She was nine years into a happy marriage to New York publishing eminence Jason Epstein.  Three years later, with her reporting “mired in controversy,” the Times drove her out. A swarm of bloggers and more than a few fellow print journalists accused her of “hyping” the threat of WMD posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, thus helping President George W. Bush and his team sell a misbegotten war to the American public. At best, Miller was blamed for lacking the requisite skepticism any serious reporter must have, for ignoring facts, and distorting information. At worst, she was charged with having morphed into one of the dreaded neoconservatives who, according to this media caricature, sought to export democracy to the Arab world by sword and fire.

Read more at Real Clear Politics Read More......

‘American Sniper’ thrills audiences — in Iraq

Moviegoers in Baghdad were on the edge of their seats while watching “American Sniper” — as the controversial war drama thrilled audiences in Iraq, where much of the film is set. “When the sniper was hesitating to shoot [the child holding the RPG in the film’s first scene], everyone was yelling, ‘Just shoot him!’” Gaith Mohammed told the Global Post, adding that his theater was packed. “Some people watching were just concentrating, but others were screaming, ‘F-ck, shoot him! He has an IED, don’t wait for permission!!’” Since the movie’s release, many people have objected to the film’s portrayal of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle — a man who described Iraqis as “savages” in his memoir.

Read more at the New York Post Read More......

'Dragon's Egg': Marines who guarded Saddam's mysterious bunker fear weapons unleashed

The U.S. Marines who guarded the sprawling complex in northwest Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s 1980s war machine churned out some of the most deadly chemical and biological weapons known to man had a name for one especially mysterious bunker: The Dragon’s Egg.

Although the Americans assigned to the Al Muthanna facility until 2008 were forbidden by superiors from peering inside the bunker, they knew the larger complex’s history. From 1983 to 1990, the brutal dictator’s scientists worked there, developing mustard, sarin, VX and Tabun gases for use on Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurds. And although it was under the control of U.S. and Iraqi military forces for most of the last decade, the entire facility - and whatever it held - is now firmly in the grasp of the Islamic State, the terrorist army that has claimed a vast swath of Iraq and Syria and allegedly used chemical weapons against Kurds this summer.

Read more at Fox News Read More......

Obama Rejected "Best Military Advice"

As he laid out his strategy to combat the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, President Obama rejected the “best military advice” of his top military commander in the Middle East.

Read more at Real Clear Defense Read More......

U.S. weighing airdrops — and/or airstrikes — to help Yazidis trapped on mountain by ISIS

An update to Ed’s post this morning about the tens of thousands of Yazidi Kurds forced up onto Mount Sinjar to escape jihadi barbarians. The good news is, help might be on the way:

The president, in meetings with his national security team at the White House on Thursday morning, has been weighing a series of options ranging from dropping humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to military strikes on the fighters from ISIS now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said…

Read more at Hot Air Read More......

Iraq: The Day of Reckoning

Ernest Hemingway observed that people went broke gradually at first then all of a sudden.  Barack Obama’s career, for so long without visible means of support, has now moved onto the “all of sudden stage” of bankruptcy. ✧ The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaeda affiliated front of Muslims, have followed up their lightning seizure of Mosul by taking Tikrit, the former stronghold of Saddam Hussein.

In Mosul and surrounding areas, more than 150,000 troops fled their posts as the militants advanced, leaving behind thousands of weapons, including tanks and helicopters, that are now in ISIL’s possession, said Jabbar Yawer, a spokesman for ethnic Kurdish armed forces in Erbil.

The speed with which ISIL and its allies have advanced after their seizure on Tuesday of Mosul – a city of two million people – has sent alarm bells ringing not only in Baghdad but in western capitals.

Read more at Belmont Club Read More......

Al Qaeda drives Iraq toward chaos; U.S. withdrawal left door open to sectarian battle for power

Security inside Iraq is unraveling at an alarming pace, and al Qaeda terrorists there aren’t just pulling the thread; they’re setting it on fire.

More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in bombings and shootings last month, making July the deadliest month since violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims peaked from 2006 to 2008, the United Nations says.

On Thursday, gunmen stormed a policeman’s home in Tikrit and killed him, his wife and their three children. When neighbors later approached the house, a nearby car bomb exploded and killed eight people — a noted al Qaeda tactic, though the terrorist group has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Read more at the Washington Times Read More......

‘Obama policy will lead region to war,’ warns ex-Iraqi MP who’s paid heavy price for dissent

Mithal Al-Alusi is angry. He is angry with Iran for supporting global terrorism. He is angry with Syrian President Bashar Assad for oppressing and killing his own people. He is angry with his own prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, for colluding with the two.

But most of all, he is angry with US President Barack Obama for allowing this all to happen.

“Obama has handed Iraq over to Iran and said ‘do what you like’,” Alusi, a former Iraqi member of parliament who hails from the tribal Sunni province of al-Anbar in western Iraq, told the Times of Israel in a telephone interview from his home in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.

Ten years after freeing Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Obama administration has allowed a no less dictatorial regime to emerge, and then handed it over to its avowed enemy Iran, Alusi said.

Read more at the Times of Israel

Read More......

UPI: Bush Praises Troops As They Leave Iraq

As the last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq, former President George W. Bush expressed thanks to the U.S. military for its service in Iraq. Read more at UPI... Read More......

53% Now Trust Republicans More Than Democrats on Health Care

RASMUSSEN REPORTS, 4/3/2010 - Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on nine out of 10 key issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports, but the gap between the two parties has grown narrower on several of them. ∴ Following the passage of the health care bill, 53% now say they trust Republicans on the issue of health care. Thirty-seven percent (37%) place their trust in Democrats. A month earlier, the two parties were essentially even on the health care issue. Read more at Rasmussen's... Read More......

Polls Close in Iraq as Insurgent Attacks Kill 36

FOX NEWS, 2/7/2010 - (AP) Iraqis defied insurgents who lobbed hand grenades at voters and bombed a polling station Sunday in an attempt to intimidate those taking part in elections that will determine whether their country can overcome deep sectarian divides as U.S. forces prepare to leave. ∴ The conclusion of the vote, however, did not spell an immediate end to political uncertainty. It could be days until results come in and with the fractured nature of Iraqi politics, it could take months to form a government. Read more at FOX... Read More......

War in Iraq will be called 'Operation New Dawn'

WASHINGTON POST, 2/19/2010 - The Obama administration has decided to give the war in Iraq a new name -- "Operation New Dawn" -- to reflect the reduced role U.S. troops will play in securing the country this year as troop levels fall, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. ∴ Since U.S. forces charged across the Kuwaiti border toward Baghdad in 2003, the war has been known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. The new name is scheduled to take effect in September, when U.S. troop levels are supposed to drop to about 50,000. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Multi-National Force - Iraq

Visit the official website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq for a glimpse of what is being accomplished in Iraq. Then go to Flickr for photos. Enjoy. Read More......

Thank you from an Iraqi

An Iraqi woman just voted and she has something to say in a video message. Read More......

Prayers for fallen Oregon soldiers

Oregon Army National Guard Pfc. Taylor D. Marks (19), of Monmouth, and Sgt. Earl D. Werner (38), whose wife and son live in Amboy, Wash., were killed Friday in Iraq by an EFP device. A third soldier was injured but name and condition has not been released. (Provided by Oregon Military Department). Rest in peace young warriors and prayers and best wishes for the injured. Read more at the Corvallis Gazette-Times... Read More......