The blood and treasure of valiant U.S. troops and allied forces spent in Iraq are fading away. We are sadly witnessing a complete shift to supremacy in the Middle East such that the entire Obama National Security team must be fired, and NOW.
Maliki has begged for air support from NATO and the United States for more than a year. Barack Obama, simply said no. Instead Barack Obama chose to sell Iraq military assets that include fighter jets, weapons and surveillance equipment. There is no other plan to stop the caliphate. except between Barack Obama and John Kerry the only solution is a $5 billion Counter-terrorism Partnership Fund for the Overseas Contingency Operation. This Fund and its design has yet to be fully crafted, it is likely only in concept mode. This does not help Iraq nor does it help NATO.
Meanwhile Turkey is on full alert as their consulate in Iraq has been seized and at least 24 employees of the diplomatic staff there have been kidnapped.
ISIL is moving towards Baghdad, and one of the largest embassies of the U.S. is there. Currently the most proactive measure so far to protect our embassy is to put out travel warnings.
Since the invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces in 2003, Iraq had been the mandate of a multi-national contingent led by the U.S. However, as control began to slip away from this multi-national contingent, and later U.S. troops also started to pull out of Iraq, the Quds Force, which is the special-ops unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of Iran, under the leadership of the enigmatic Major General Qasem Soleimani, by taking advantage of the situation managed to replace the multi-national force.
Dozens of comprehensive reports published in the past couple of years show that Soleimani has been wielding considerable power in Iraq and been enjoying a privileged position behind the political scene in that country. As it seems, he has under his thumb both Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, and Masoud Barzani, the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. By exploiting his immense clout in Iraq, he has been tirelessly setting up numerous Shi’ite militia bands and training and equipping them, not only to enhance his influence and maintain his empire in Iraq but also to keep the road to Syria, where many pro-Islamic Republic contingents fight for the Assad regime, secure.
So, perhaps it is easier to explain by just looking at maps. The question now is what comes next? The power struggle is convoluted but it does include Iran’s al Quods force, Kurds, al Nusra, AQIM, Haqqani, Taliban, ISIS, which make up the whole region.
