No sooner had he been seated when he reneged on his promise and went on a rampage to eliminate those he promised would be welcomed into his new government. With the country fracturing apart by Maliki's disastrous mis-management, and, both Iran & ISIS watching what was going on, with their mouths drooling at the opportunities that lay ahead, today's collapse became a foregone conclusion.

Even if we were able to get a satisfactory SOFA, what could we have done with a few thousand American troops, except postpone the inevitable for a little while. With the sectarian infighting within Iraq apparently more important to them than securing the country from belligerent forces just waiting to attack, the die was cast.

After 10 years of American "training" you saw how prepared and motivated the Iraqi Army was the minute an enemy shot was fired.

We all know the saying, "God helps those who help themselves." Even God couldn't help a country whose people hate each other more than they hate the enemy waiting at their doorstep.

As I have before, my Ranger son, who fought in Ramadi and Fallujah in later 2006 and 2007, told me as Obama ordered US troops leave Iraq that all or most of the gains the US coalition had made were going to fall apart. Had the US kept troops in Iraq and kept a close eye on Maliki and Iraq and Syria, ISIS would not have arisen to be a force like it is today, in my view.

I agree with Max Boot who said this a few days ago: "Today we are fast falling into an ever worse abyss--and it is one to which, by all indications, President Obama and his senior military commanders and civilian aides are utterly blind. Perhaps we should be talking about that rather than about what happened 12 years ago." Boot Commentary article.

Boot also said this in the same article: "Ramadi was really where the Anbar Awakening began--the movement, started by Colonel Sean MacFarland in Ramadi in 2006, to mobilize Sunni tribes against AQI. After having lost hundreds of American soldiers in Ramadi and its environs since 2003, US efforts finally appeared to have paid off. AQI had been routed of the capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate, and would soon be routed out of the rest of the Sunni Triangle. Victory was in sight." "I remember walking down the ruined streets of Ramadi in the spring of 2007. ... But what was most remarkable was not the evidence of violence but, rather, the fact that no insurgents were shooting at my military escorts or me."

"Iran has no intention of defeating ISIS in Iraq - Iran will use threat of ISIS to stay - an unstable Iraq is the goal"

I never thought of this that way, but yes, if true, it makes sense.  It's pretty pathetic that Iraq government took the fight to ISIS (with our help) and lost.

But we hear Shiite militias backed by Iran are going in to Ramadi.  If that is true, they wil be a lot tougher than the Iraqi national army, which is a total and utter joke.  

Our military involvement in Iraq is just fueling violence ... We should be exiting the arena, not doubling down.

We should be exiting.
We should have exited in 2008 - when that hopey-changey thing was to have taken hold.

But we are not exiting.
We are going even deeper into the pit.

Not too many years ago we were concerned with smaller, localized extremist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. Then, on 9/11/2001, Al-Qaida burst into the forefront in a spectacular way.

Sensing the disarray, and incompetent manner with which the U.S. and other Western countries responded, a more virulent form of Radical Islam was spawned, ISIS. Utilizing policies and techniques so savage they shocked our consciousness, they rapidly took advantage of the West's confusion, and the ME countries' infighting and paralysis.

Around the same time ISIS was forming into a powerful military power, Boko Haram, "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad," was born, and growing. Cognizant of the success ISIS was enjoying with their shocking, elevated use of savagery as a policy to compel their territorial targets to submit, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS. And, as if to show their loyalty, and prove their mettle, they invented equally inhumane methods in accomplishing their goals, among them, mass rapes:
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nytimes.com/2015/05/19

"Hundreds of women and girls captured by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group, have been raped in Nigeria, many repeatedly, in what officials say is a strategy to dominate rural residents and possibly create a new generation of militants."
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