Ten months after U.S. air strikes began, ISIS militants took
control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. The group launched an assault
on May 15 with the backing of sleeper cells to capture government facilities
and take control of most of the city just two days later, on May 17. Ramadi is
strategic to the Islamic State because of its proximity to Baghdad. The Islamic
State group’s seizure of Ramadi, was a painful blow to the US-led war against
the jihadists.
What happened in Ramadi was a failure of the Iraqi forces to
fight. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Sunday that Iraqi forces had
demonstrated “no will to fight” against the ISIS, blaming them for a retreat
that led to the terrorist group’s victory in capturing the Iraqi city of
Ramadi. Al-Zamili, head of Iraq’s parliamentary defense and security committee,
dismissed Carter’s remarks as “unrealistic and baseless”. He said the US had
failed to provide “good equipment, weapons and aerial support” to the soldiers
and was seeking to “throw the blame on somebody else”. Maj Gen Tim Cross,
speaking to the BBC’s Today program, said: “Churchill said back at the beginning
of the 20th century, you can destroy an army very quickly, and effectively we
did that when we disbanded the Iraqi military back in 2003, but … it can take a
generation to build a strong capable military that is going to win this sort of
campaign.”
Mr. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
repeated his call to send American ground troops, including Special Operations
forces, into Iraq. Mr. McCain blamed President Obama on CBS’s “Face the Nation”
by saying: “We need to have a strategy.” He added, “There is no strategy. And
anybody that says that there is I’d like to hear what it is. Because it
certainly isn’t apparent now.”
There is a frustration on the Capitol Hill that the
administration isn’t taking the fall of Ramadi seriously. John McCain was
responding to Josh Ernest, the White House spokesman, who said: '... Are we
going to light our hair on fire, every time there is a setback in the campaign
against ISIL?'
John McCain responded angrily by saying: 'In response to a
slaughter in Ramadi the [administration’s] answer seems to be ’let’s not set
our hair on fire.’' McCain asked, 'Where is our morality? Where is our decency?
Where is our concern about these thousands of people who are being slaughtered
and displaced and their lives destroyed? And we shouldn’t set our hair on fire?
Outrageous', reacted McCain.
Rep. Ed Royce in his statement on May 20, 2015 said: ‘It’s
dreadfully obvious that we aren’t working well enough to defeat ISIS and
protect the people of Palmyra and its precious relics of our shared history.’
Mr. Royce also responded to a statement by the President Obama when he said 'if
the Iraqis are not going to defend their country, we are not going to do that
for them', Mr. Royce said 'it is true that Iraqis have to be willing and able
to defend themselves and all Iraqi citizens. But at the same time we have to
remember that we in the United States should be making certain that the Sunni
tribes and Kurds have the weapons they need to actually fight ISIS.' Failure of
President Obama to support and arm Sunni tribal fighters, continues to leave
anti-ISIS tribes reluctant to actively counter ISIS.
On the other hand, there are over one million armed Shi’itemilitia active in Iraq backed, financed and very often led by the Quds force
from Iran, waging sectarian war on the Sunni population, and then the world
says why is it the Sunni tribes people in Anbar are not standing up and
fighting along with the Iraqi army to get rid of ISIS? Because the Sunni people
think that Shi’ite militia are worse than ISIS. If the U.S. is serious about
relief of the ISIS, if it is serious about encouraging the Sunnis tribes in
Iraq, to join forces with the Iraqi military with the Pishmargeh in Kurdistan
to help get rid of ISIS, and this is the only practical way that the fight
against ISIS is possible, then must rid Iraq of Iranian interference.
Although Iran has been helping Iraqi leaders to fight the
Sunni IS militants by arming and advising Shiite militias, Rajavi insisted that
Iranians called Iran’s religious leaders 'the godfather' of IS. 'It was the
Iranian regime ... that created terrorism as a major threat for stability,'
Rajavi said. 'Terrorism and fundamentalism under the name of Islam came to the
world as seen by the mullahs’ regime in Iran, and when this regime is
overthrown, that will be limited or destroyed.' And she alleged that 'despite
all their differences, ISIS is very close to the fundamentalists ruling in
Iran' and even on 'occasions they have cooperated.'
Gen. Qassim Suleimani (Commander of Quds force) pledging legions to
Khamenei (Iranian Supreme Leader)
'The mullahs’ regime is indeed the heart of the problem,'
she added, insisting the 'ultimate solution' was regime change in Iran.
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