it sounds like the new Iraqi army that we 'trained' and who 'stood up as we stood down' are deserting en masse, and simply leaving all of the shiny new weapons and vehicles we gave them behind for ISIS to simply pick up and use.

So once again, our policy of arming people 'on our side' has wound up arming people who'd rather see us dead.

Arming the world is a fool's game.

I want to add that DU's disinterest in Iraq is.... interesting.

I keep thinking back to 'why we went in' and the power of 'framing' language. The 'pottery barn' argument ('You break it, you buy it') was enormously powerful in swinging around many of the people who were ambivalent about staying in after Saddam was overthrown, yet it was completely false as an analogy. Pottery Barn is not going to 'sell you' their wall if you break it, their table, their cash register. 'You break it, you buy it' ONLY applies to merchandise, things that were actually for sale in the first place. Other things you 'break', you pay for, but you don't get to keep.

A country you invade is not 'for sale'. So the true equivalency of 'you broke it' in that case would have been simply giving the Iraqis money to rebuild their country after our 'shock and awe' attacks, not to continue to occupy them for a decade. Let them fix their infrastructure without us butting in or dismantling their entire government, their entire military.

It was a clusterfuck when we went in the second time and broke Iraq, it remained one while we were there, it briefly ceased to be one for a while, then we left and it returned to being a clusterfuck. Currently, it's a clusterfuck. We'd like them to deal with their own clusterfuck. We'd prefer to be done with that clusterfuck and nobody really wants to discuss that if Baghdad falls it's probably going to fall to us for legitimate security concerns to once again deal with the clusterfuck...we could let Iran deal with the clusterfuck since it's the Shiites that ISIS is at war with but that's probably also a clusterfuck because they're very likely to do it with genocide and putting Sunni children to the sword and nerve gas...just like the last time they went to war with Iraq. That's not even getting into the clusterfuck of Israel for perfectly sane reasons losing their shit because there's now a terrorist state forming on their border because we broke Iraq and Syria creating this clusterfuck in the first place.

It's all clusterfucks all the way down and we'd prefer to not think about it. Maybe if we ignore it, it'll go away like the monster in my closet when I was 6. Been out of office for nearly 6 years and we're still dealing with the curse of the dim shit from TX.

And America has a "moral responsibility" to set up a new and functioning "strong man regime".

That's where this goes. All aboard!

only question is what will their armed thugs do???

US to boost support for Iraqi security forces as rebels gain ground

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/12/iraq-maliki-strike.html

The White House signaled on Wednesday that it was looking to strengthen Iraqi forces to help them deal with an insurgency rather than to meet what one U.S. official said were past Iraqi requests for U.S. air strikes.

An Obama administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Iraq had previously made clear its interest in drone strikes or bombing by manned U.S. aircraft to help it beat back rebel fighters.

Sunni rebels from an Al-Qaeda splinter group overran the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday and closed in on the biggest oil refinery in the country, making further gains in their rapid military advance against the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

The threat to the Baiji refinery came after armed fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern city of Mosul, advancing their aim of creating a Sunni Caliphate straddling the border between Iraq and Syria.


more at link...

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Just when you think you are out, they suck you back in!

Will the new regime threaten an ally? Will they invade Kuwait and create a deja vu?

What a disgusting mess as Bush/Cheney walk free.