IDK How Much More 'Success' We Can Take

[Kathianne]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...ng_cheney.html

The Administration’s Sunny Iraq Progress Reports Are Approaching Cheney Territory

By Joshua Keating

On May 15, Marine Brig. Gen. Thomas D. Weidley, chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, assured reporters that “We believe across Iraq and Syria that Daesh is losing and remains on the defensive.” As the Long War Journalnoted, Weidley’s timing couldn’t have been worse: That same day ISIS drove Iraqi troops out of Ramadi in the group’s biggest strategic victory of the year.

The setback has raised some doubts about whether the administration and the Pentagon have been far too sunny in their assessments of progress against ISIS. Weidley’s comments have not been unusual, even post-Ramadi.



American and Iraqi officials havedescribed the loss of the capital of Anbar province as an anomaly, noting that ISIS fighters took advantage of a sandstorm that delayed American warplanes and suggesting that they may have been galvanized by the release of a rare recording of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi several days earlier. (If Baghdadi’s sermons are quite that inspirational, let’s hope he doesn’t start recording them more often.)



More dubiously, the Pentagon had downplayed the importance of the city in the weeks leading up to the capture, with Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Martin Dempsey saying, “I would much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall.” He also called the loss of a city that was the site of one of the hardest-fought campaigns of the Iraq war “not symbolic in any way.”

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...9e9_story.html

Capture of Palmyra marks Islamic State’s 2nd major gain in past week

By Loveday Morris

May 21 at 6:53 AM


BAGHDAD — Concerns for one of the Middle East’s most renowned archaeological sites deepened Thursday after Islamic State militants swept into the historic Syrian city Palmyra, urging residents to turn in regime collaborators and army soldiers over mosque loudspeakers.


The capture of Palmyra, 130 miles northeast of Damascus, marks the Islamic State’s second significant strategic gain in the past week following the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi west of Baghdad.


The Syrian advance has added resonance because Palmyra’s ancient ruins — a UNESCO World Heritage site — fell under Islamic State control as the militants consolidated their grip on the nearby modern city.

...

[NightTrain]

Yeah, but you have to remember that this is only the JV.

If the Varsity takes the field, I calculate that the entire Middle East and half of Europe will be conquered in 6 months.

Bambam is probably waiting for the Big Boys to take over before he starts getting serious about things.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Yeah, but you have to remember that this is only the JV.

If the Varsity takes the field, I calculate that the entire Middle East and half of Europe will be conquered in 6 months.

Bambam is probably waiting for the Big Boys to take over before he starts getting serious about things.

That is because the bam sees so much further than you my friend. He sees a Caliphate complete with Iran and its nukes ruling all.
In that context these ISIS boys are the JV team....
Aren't we lucky to have such a dear leader see so far into the future?
And then go ahead to try to force that future upon the world?
The murder/death cult(Islam) sees nukes as their answer--How else to be able to kill over a million people in one ten thousandth of a second?

obama knows and prays for --If they get them , they will use them..
The world fails to see this committed -"muslin -in-hiding"- on his Jihad crusade..
Globalists think he is their boy but truth is he is Islam's secret weapon...

Arab world supposed wants ISIS destroyed yet the obama holds our military back and eliminates very few at a time...
Yet nobody seems to understand why he interferes so with his restrictive policies. ... I do....
He even stated that we must contain ISIS -not destroy it... - Tyr

[jimnyc]

The idiot tossed out OBL documents yesterday or the day before. Of course they highlighted it and stated it was because of his promise for "transparency".

Are you fricking kidding me? The only thing transparent are the lies from this administration, the coverups - and obviously the never ending shit and screwed up policy and decisions.

[Kathianne]

related:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._overseas.html

The Obama Doctrine: A Recipe for Failure Overseas

ByPeter Berkowitz - May 21, 2015

...

Nothing emerged from Camp David, however, likely to alter the calculations of the Saudis, who have increasingly indicated that if the United States signs what they judge a bad deal with Iran, the kingdom will buy or build their own nuclear arms. Should the Saudis take that fateful step, chances are that two other Middle East powers—Egypt and Turkey—will attempt to follow suit. That would turn the world’s most unstable and volatile region into a poly-nuclear powder keg.


Why has Barack Obama, who has long proclaimed a desire to reduce nuclear proliferation, aggressively pursued a rapprochement with a resolute American adversary that is provoking several longtime U.S. allies to go nuclear?


It’s tempting, although not reassuring, to surmise that the problem is that the president lacks a plan. The temptation is intensified when one considers America’s halting and equivocal response to the wars that have swept the Arab world since the winter of 2011, to increased Russian adventurism in the Ukraine, and to Chinese muscle flexing in the East and South China seas.


It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the president’s foreign policy has proven ineffective for want of an overarching conception of America’s role in the world, according to author Colin Dueck. In “The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today,” Dueck argues that Obama does “have a kind of implicit grand strategy.” It consists of “overarching American retrenchment and accommodation internationally, in large part to allow the president to focus on securing liberal policy legacies at home.” In Dueck’s view, America’s position abroad has deteriorated because of Obama’s grand strategy.


An associate professor of government at George Mason University's School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs, Dueck draws on the president’s speeches and writings to distill his understanding of the benefits of retrenchment—cutting costs and scaling back America’s overseas presence—and of accommodation, which in the president’s hands means showing respect for adversaries’ interests and ambitions by offering unilateral concessions in the hopes of reducing their enmity. Dueck examines the Obama Doctrine’s shortcomings as a strategic outlook and Obama’s mistakes in implementing it, the domestic politics of foreign affairs, and several conservative alternatives. Finally, he defends what he calls “conservative American realism.” With this multifaceted book, he takes his place among our premier scholars of foreign affairs.


Insofar as Obama’s grand strategy aims “to secure progressive policy legacies, win domestic political victories, and preserve the strength of his center-left coalition,” Dueck observes, “then it must be conceded that—during his first term, at least—the strategy worked fairly well.” At least in the short term, Obama prevented world affairs from interfering with his ambitious progressive reform agenda: expanding the government’s role in health care and financial regulation, easing barriers to immigration and naturalization, legitimizing same-sex marriage, and pushing liberal solutions in an array of fields ranging from higher education to the environment. And he won re-election.


But Obama’s strategy of foreign policy avoidance, Dueck shows, has cost the United States. Retrenchment and accommodation have produced no detectable gain in international cooperation, even as the president’s coddling of adversaries and neglect of friends has eroded the world order that is indispensable to America’s long-term interests.


Consider the mismatch between Obama’s rhetoric and, in the seventh year of his presidency, international realities.

...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

related:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._overseas.html

And that is why the obama is so hellbent on making sure Iran gets nukes first. If it does it has the power to unite into a caliphate the M.E.
And to stop the other nations from getting nukes by either force of threats back up with nuke weapon authority.
Obvious the obama wants the Caliphate to be born IMHO..
ANYTHING, just as long as this nation is cut down to size..
That he openly works to weaken this nation and gets by with it is in a way absolutely mind-boggling .-Tyr

[indago]

From The Associated Press 21 May 2015:
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An expedited shipment of 2,000 lightweight shoulder-fired weapons intended to help the Iraqi army stop the Islamic State group's increasingly effective use of car bombs should arrive in Iraq as soon as next week, the Pentagon said Thursday. The shipment is among a variety of weaponry and equipment the U.S. agreed to send to Iraq on an expedited basis after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited Washington in April to plead for more help in fighting the extremists.
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article

It would probably be more expeditious to send the weapons directly to the extremists, since the Iraqis will abandon them anyway when faced with adversity and leave them to the extremists to use.

[indago]

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: "The administration is sounding like Baghdad Bob during the invasion of Iraq."

article/video

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

From The Associated Press 21 May 2015:
-------------------------------------------------------------
An expedited shipment of 2,000 lightweight shoulder-fired weapons intended to help the Iraqi army stop the Islamic State group's increasingly effective use of car bombs should arrive in Iraq as soon as next week, the Pentagon said Thursday. The shipment is among a variety of weaponry and equipment the U.S. agreed to send to Iraq on an expedited basis after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited Washington in April to plead for more help in fighting the extremists.
-------------------------------------------------------------

article

It would probably be more expeditious to send the weapons directly to the extremists, since the Iraqis will abandon them anyway when faced with adversity and leave them to the extremists to use.

Iraqi army raced away the other day leaving all their weapons/ammo to the ISIS forces --seems to be a regular pattern, leaving military hardware for the enemy--maybe a muslim thing , huh?
You are right why not just send the shipments directly to ISIS AND SAVE THE BOTHER?

Now obama is sending 2000 shoulder fire weapons to ISIS, that is where most if not ALL will end up..
Its insanity.

In Korea when the Army was racing away from the rapidly advancing million man Chinese horde(army), the rear guard was the Marines commanded by the great man himself Chesty Puller. As the army abandon all those vehicles and weapons Puller order his Marines to bring every damn one of them along with them so the enemy could not use them against us.
I read that after the war the army generals begged him for much of that equipment back but Puller refused and used much of it for target practice for his tanks and artillery crews stateside. -
Now try to tell me that man was not badass to the ffing bone! ----Tyr