The Unraveling of Iraq and President Obama

BY BRIAN HUGHES, Washington Examiner

President Obama, who rode his opposition to the Iraq War straight into the White House, isn’t so eager to talk about the conflict there anymore.

The chaos just outside Baghdad has the potential to puncture Obama’s carefully crafted narrative, even more than the civil war in Syria or Russian aggression in Ukraine, because his political Image is more closely linked to Iraq than any foreign policy issue.

The capture of Mosul and Tikrit by militants tied to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has once again called into question whether Obama is quick enough to deploy U.S. resources that could deter instability abroad — a point that even some of the president’s allies acknowledged.

US considers military options as militants push closer to Baghdad

FOX NEWS

Al Qaeda-inspired militants pushed into a province northeast of Baghdad Friday, capturing two towns there after having already toppled cities in the country’s north, as the Obama administration considered possible responses to the crisis.

Police officials said militants driving in machinegun-mounted pickups entered two towns in Diyala province late Thursday — Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, and Sadiyah, 60 miles north of the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts there without any resistance, the officials told The Associated Press.

The fresh gains by the fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant  (ISIS) come as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government struggles to form a coherent response after the Sunni militants blitzed and captured the country’s second-largest city of Mosul as well as other, smaller communities and military and police bases.

The new offensive by the militant group is the biggest threat to Iraq’s stability since the U.S. withdrawal at the end of 2011, and it has pushed the nation closer to a precipice that would partition it into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.

Trumpeting their victory, the militants declared they would impose Shariah law in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city they captured on Tuesday, and other areas they seized, and promised to march on Baghdad, joined by Saddam Hussein-era loyalists and other disaffected Sunnis.

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