Noah Rothman:
In early June, when fighters loyal to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria mounted a blitz across Iraq, taking key cities and forcing the far more numerous and better trained Iraqi Security Forces to flee or surrender, the Obama administration appeared to be as shocked as anyone.
We now know based on testimony that the administration had been following the rise of ISIS at least 2012, and knew that the city of Mosul – where horrific violence and human tragedy has been ongoing for weeks – would fall to the Sunni fundamentalist group as early as three days before it did.
Nevertheless, the administration projected concern over the troubling developments in Iraq and Syria, and President Barack Obama soon informed the public that the situation was so dire that he was contemplating manned and unmanned airstrikes in Iraq in order to stem the group’s advance.
“We have already taken some immediate steps, including providing enhanced aerial surveillance support to assist the Iraqis in this fight,” Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in London on Friday, June 13. “We have also ramped up shipments of military aid to Iraq since the beginning of the year.”
Reports indicated that the president was reviewing his military options and the order to execute military strikes inside Iraq could come as early as that weekend. “President Barack Obama has the authority to wage war in Iraq without going to Congress, because the original use of force authorization remains in effect,” Roll Call’s Steven Dennis reported on June 12.
While the administration has always supported the repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, passed by Congress in 2002, they never pursued its repeal with much enthusiasm and it appeared as though they never would. After all, the AUMF might come in handy now that a threat to American national security was being incubated there.
Guess again!
“The Obama administration is calling on Congress to fully repeal the war authorization in Iraq to ensure that no U.S. troops return to the country, which is under siege by the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reported on Friday.
At least Obama can’t do it unilaterally.
If he could have, he already would have.
This administration failed with ISIS. That’s the bottom line and no amount of spinning from them or their sheep can change that. Remember when we were told about Libya being a masterpiece? This is their masterpiece:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-evacuates-embassy-in-libya-amid-clashes-1406378890
@another vet:
Correct.
ISIS’ very first military success was fighting those ”moderate” Islamists in Libya who Obama had armed….and stealing all those armaments from them!
Later, in Iraq, ISIS (now IS for Islamic State) stole and collected arms from Iraqi soldiers who fled or deserted.
Then IS took money from looted banks and bought hundreds of millions of dollars in arms from foreign countries.
Is it any wonder IS reminds people of that hive of aliens from the Alien movie franchise?
That beast was based on The Ichneumon Wasp.
Yes, back in 2004, Wretchard (later outed as Richard Fernandez) wrote all about the similarities between Islams’ jihadists and that wasp and that movie.
Obama is not like those marines who run into danger.
He is more like that corporate flack who tried to hide…..and to hell with everybody else.
I wonder if this part of the broader strategy, Gen. Dempsey mentioned, to deal with ISIS/ISIL?
http://www.newsmax.com/GlobalTalk/dempsey-isis-us-response/2014/07/25/id/584916/
@Nanny G: What is happening in Iraq now is just the latest in the ongoing expansion of AQ and its affiliates. The left bemoans the concept of preemption, but had we taken the fight to IS sooner rather than later, if we are even going to take the fight to them at all, this would have been minimized. But when you refuse to even acknowledge that there is still a GWOT going on or refuse to name who the threat is because of political correctness or possibly sympathy to their cause, then you are doomed to failure.
@David:
Team Obama new about this in advance.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/kurdistans-prime-minister-we-warned-u-s-about-isis-iraq-n137686
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10918607/How-US-and-Britain-were-warned-of-Isis-advance-in-Iraq-but-turned-a-deaf-ear.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/24/kerry-says-nobody-expected-mosul-collapse-despite-reported-warnings/
Now Team Obama is apparently unwilling to stop the spread of ISIS.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraqs-kurds-want-us-help-to-hold-off-islamic-state-extremists/2014/07/24/3b98895c-128f-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html
As for Dempsey, he proved himself to be a political general when he injected himself into the 2012 elections when he told the former SEALs to back off of their criticism of Obama.
If they put their head in the sand or under the bed pillow, everything will just go away!