The Allmighty Mess in Iraq
Remember when President George W. Bush boasted, “mission accomplished?” Was not the wicked Saddam Hussein lynched by US Shia allies? Wasn’t the dreaded al-Qaida defeated and its leader, Osama bin Laden, assassinated? Remember all that crowing from Washington about “draining the swamp” in Iraq?
As soon as the US knocks down one challenger to its domination of the Mideast – which I call the American Raj – another rises up. The latest: ISIS, a fierce jihadist force that now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
ISIS is a combination of Sunni jihadist groups fighting the Shia-backed Damascus government of Bashar Assad( a US enemy backed by Shia Iran), and resurgent units of Saddam’s old Ba’athist army, led by Izzat Ibrahin al-Douri, the last surviving member of Saddam’s inner circle, and a handful of al-Qaida in Iraq.
They are battling to overthrow the US-installed Shia regime in Baghdad of Nuri al-Maliki, an Iranian ally. There are suspicions ISIS may be secretly financed by Sunni Saudi Arabia, a US ally."
* The 2003 invasion of Iraq, the stupidest war in US history, which was rousingly backed by Congress and the media, has produced a monumental mess of mind-numbing complexity"
* This awful mess can be directly traced to neoconservative strategists in Washington clustered around Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2002, their primary goal, according to Cheney, was to wreck Iraq, the most industrially advanced and progressive Arab state, so removing a major foe of Israel, and then grabbing Iraq’s oil. "
http://ericmargolis.com/2014/06/the-allmighty-mess-in-iraq/
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When I first heard of ISIS or ISIL, take your pick I guess, I though much as I had about Crimea - if they want to join another country (or in this case, start a new one), then fine, we should not arbitrate that if the Iraqis cannot prevent it themselves. And I believe this is the basic course that President Obama would adopt, and maybe it will come to pass. But then again, when a group starts shooting their captives in the back of the head after lining them up in a ditch . . . well some things should not be allowed to pass. I do not know how to impose a more genteel manner upon the gentlemen of ISIS, but I think they need a good talking-to at the least. 
