While the press wrings-hands over Iraq War, second major city falls to ISIS

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Noah Rothman:

While the American political press was consumed with re-ligating the Iraq War and in leading GOP presidential candidates to denounce George W. Bush’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein “given what we know now,” the crisis in that Middle Eastern country deepened.

The Islamic State’s advance into Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar Province, accelerated this week and has reportedly culminated in the seizure of the city’s central government compound. On Friday, the black flag of ISIS flew over Ramadi’s city center.

“They set off a co-ordinated series of as many as six car bombs outside the compound that houses the city’s main police station and governor’s office,” the BBC reported. “At least 50 security personnel are reported to have been taken hostage.”

While preliminary reports indicate that ISIS has near “full control over Anbar’s provincial capital,” the fighting on the outskirts still rages. Iraqi officials contend that there is still time to prevent the city and its outskirts from falling completely to ISIS.

Even more dispiriting is that this ISIS advance occurred despite sustained coalition airstrikeson ISIS positions near Ramadi. On a near daily basis, U.S. Central Command revealed strikes on ISIS tactical units near the Anbar capital. Just yesterday, CENTCOM reported “two airstrikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL fighting position.”

If Ramadi has fallen to ISIS fighters, it would mean that, along with Mosul, two of Iraq’s three biggest cities are now in the hands of the Sunni militia movement. The fall of Ramadi is asymbolic defeat and a reversal of the gains made in Iraq during the Bush administration. The vaunted “Anbar Awakening,” in which Sunni tribesman turned away from Islamist militias and helped the Iraqi Security Forces and U.S. troops pacify the restive province, has been completely reversed.

But Ramadi’s fall is a strategic setback as well. Ramadi’s fall is a prelude to what many said would be the ultimate siege of Baghdad.

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People act like Megan Kelly’s question was ”brilliant.”
But it only reminded me of Donald Rumsfield’s comment when he was interviewed about his book.
He spoke of ”what we know, what we don’t know, what we THINK we know and what we think we don’t know.”
At the time of the decision to go into Iraq there were 17 reasons explained to the public and approved as reasons by the Congress as to why.
BUT there had to be other reasons, based on intel our gov’t didn’t want the public to know, that added even more reason to taking Saddam out of office.
Kelly’s question would be very difficult to answer because there were so many reasons we went into Iraq, some publicly known, others not.

What the liberal press loves about the question is it folds Republican candidates into pretzels.
There is no easy answer that fits into a soundbite.

Iraq was a success until someone decided to put legacy above all else by ignoring the advice of his generals about leaving U.S. troops there to further stabilize the country and then ignored his intelligence community, the Iraqi government, and the Kurds when they warned that same someone about the ISIS threat. You’d think at least one of the GOP wannabe Presidents would have the courage to point that out as opposed to towing the MSM’s party line that the Iraq invasion was a mistake.

So does anyone else who has read the stories about the recent successful Delta raid on an ISIS leader wonder about the cluelessness of announcing that we killed him ,got his wife, computers and cell phones?

Wouldn’t it make more sense NOT to tell the enemy we just got potential intelligence on their group so we could maybe get some more of the evil bastards?

It almost seems like this administration is more concerned with chest thumping than actually destroying ISIS.

@Pete: You are totally correct.
It would make more sense IF the goal really was to destroy ISIS.
But Obama weasel-worded and said he was going to ”degrade” ISIS.

And what kind of ISIS commander only has one wife?

Oh, ISIS is just so confused by Field Marshal Barack Obama’s brilliant campaign against them that they simply retreated in the wrong direction and accidentally conquered a city instead of surrendering it. We have the right where they want us.