Breitbart:
On the evening of July 21, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) attacked the infamous Baghdad Abu Ghraib’s prison with car bombs, mortars and heavy weapons. Guards inside the prison walls were armed only with pepper spray and clubs. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence, up to a thousand prisoners escaped to rejoin AQM in its rebellions against the Syrian and Iraqi government forces. President Obama won reelection by claiming that al Qaeda was on the run. It now seems that al Qaeda is running at Americans.
The attack began with suicide bombers driving three cars packed with explosives into the gates of the prison. Fifty AQM warriors dressed in tribal garb blasted their way into the compound with rocket propelled grenades as over a 100 mortar rounds fell on the defenseless guards.
Prisoners rioted and burned mattresses and clothes to blind visibility. Inmates started throwing homemade explosives at the guards and infiltrators handed weapons to their jailed comrades. Several militants wearing suicide vests entered the prison on foot and blew up the gates to free prisoners on death row, including several of the most dangerous AQM leaders captured by U.S. troops in the bloody 2007-2008 surge.
AQM teams took up positions on the main roads leading in from Baghdad and ambushed Iraqi government security reinforcements trying to retake the prison. It took another 16 hours and a large number of attack helicopters to allow government forces to regain control of the area. The death toll was only four AQM insurgents, 71 prisoners and 10 Iraqi policemen.
The attack was part of coordinated assaults on at least nine Middle East prisons in the last month according to Interpol. At least 1000 inmates were freed in Iraq; another 1,000 escaped from the jail in Benghazi, Libya; and a Taliban raid on a Pakistan prison freed 250 convicts.
AQM warriors are gaining much greater control over Iraq’s countryside. The United Nations just announced that July was the most deadly month since the supposed end of the Iraqi civil war, with 1,057 Iraqis killed.
The Abu Ghraib prison break represents that a clear victory for al Qaeda’s ability to mount large-scale sophisticated operations and suffer only minor casualties. The Iraqi government’s reputation for being able to provide security for its citizens seems to be in full collapse.
Senator John McCain, who traveled to Cairo on August 6th to review the military coup d’état in Egypt, blamed America’s failure to leave a residual U.S. force in Iraq for the attack. “We won the peace and lost the war. It is really tragic,” he said. “And those people who are out of Abu Ghraib now, they are heading right to Syria.”
Little nugget here in Chriss W. Street’s original:
Recall that Sean Smith was tweeting to fellow gamers from Banghazi the night he died.
In one tweet he noted that those men who were SUPPOSED to be his security guards were taking photos of the Benghazi compound’s security gates, doors and windows. In the tweet he said he hoped to survive the night.
He didn’t.
Now Obama closed around 20 country’s embassies and consulates.
I wonder if he realizes that the people who bundled for him were not willing to die for him as Ambassadors?
I wonder if he knew that a large proportion of foreign ”security” at those embassies would also melt away should an attack begin?
I bet he knows.
After all, he is pretty famous for melting away from real problems, himself.
I don’t even know that statement means.
For how many more years would the occupation have gone on, and from whom would we have borrowed the money to pay for it?
Sad to say, but the evil S.O.B. formerly in charge in Iraq was not only keeping al Qaeda out, but giving Iran an expensive military problem next door to worry about. This state of affairs was costing U.S. taxpayers nothing, and costing us no American lives. Now we’ve apparently got al Qaeda conducting large-scale operations within Iraq’s borders, and Iran free to devote its resources to a nuclear program and missile development while providing military support to the dictator in Syria.
The invasion of Iraq was an enormous geopolitical blunder.
Two problems there, Greg. Saddam was hosting Islamist training camps. That cannot be classified as “keeping al Qaeda out”. They were quite handy in bypassing the OFF program.
The second problem is Iran and Iraq are neighbors, and many of the citizenry have relations in both nations. They need to find a way to co-exist. Iraq’s military retains the Saddam regime’s equipment (what survived), plus has been trained by US. It’s not going to suffer a decline any time soon. If it remains a US ally, it will have no problems staying superior to Iran.
Pure parallel universe conjecture on your part. What was a US enemy is now a US fragile Muslim ally. That is an improvement. The best you’ve got is to say it was an enormous economic blunder. Then again, depending upon what happened in that parallel universe (i.e. an “arab spring with someone worse than Saddam getting power?) you can’t even say that with certainty.