Jihadis Are Like Jews Who Left For Palestine

The Theme Of The Broadcast Was About Possibly Confiscating The Passports Of Jihadists.

In the interview, Broertjes, a politician for Dutch Labor and former editor-in-chief of the highbrow Volkskrant daily, was asked whether he thought Jihadists who are leaving to fight in Syria and Iraq should be prevented from departing.

He opposed such steps, and added: 

“Dutchmen after World War II went to Israel to fight the English. We didn’t prevent them then.”

To Our Countries - لبلادي

لبلادي عمل من إعداد وإنتاج وتنفيذ مجموعة شباب يقيمون في السويد وهم من سوريا و العراق و لبنان و فلسطين. على أمل السلام

To Our Countries is a project produced by a group of youths who live in Sweden and are originally from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

The Persecution Of Iraq's Sunni Muslims

This is a video of a young Sunni Muslim from Iraq. The shia rafidah (rejectors) murdered him in cold blood, then dragged him by the neck with a rope, at the same time, other shia animals repeatedly kick him, some hurl rocks at his head until part of his head caves in. Finally, they douse  him gasoline and set him on fire.

The reason this Sunni teen was murdered, was because his name was "Omar," after the Sahabi (Companion) of the Prophet Muhammed, and the Second Caliph of the Muslim nation.

This is what the Sunni Muslims have been dealing with, since America Saddam and handed the country to the Iraqi shia and Iran.

تمت الجريمة في مدينة الشعلة ببغداد، والتي تعد معقلا ومنطلقًا للمليشيات الشيعية الطائفية التي نشطت مؤخرًا لتنفيذ اعتداءات طائفية ضد أهل السنة في بغداد.

ويُظهر الفيديو عددًا كبيرًا من شباب الشيعة وهم يتناوبون على جثمان الشاب "عمر المفرجي" بمختلف صنوف الضرب والركل والتنكيل، وقد ربطوه من عنقه بحبل وسحلوا جثمانه، حتى انتهى بهم الأمر إلى إضرام النار في جسده.

وكشف المقطع المصور أن الجريمة تمت بجميع تفاصيلها تحت أعين عناصر الشرطة، التي تغض الطرف بشكل واسع عن هذه الجرائم الطائفية، فضلاً عن تورطها نفسها في العديد من تلك الجرائم.


 إن عملية قتل هذا الشاب والتنكيل بجثته جرت على خلفية كون اسمه (عمر)؛ ما يشير إلى أن طائفية الجريمة وأن عملية القتل تمت على الهوية كونه سنيًّا يحمل اسم أمير المؤمنين (عمر بن الخطاب) الذي فتح بلاد فارس وأطفأ نيران مجوسيتهم؛ الأمر الذي جعل الشيعة يحملون حقدًا وبغضًا لكل من يحمل اسمه رضوان الله عليه. وقد شهد العراق العديد من الجرائم الطائفية التي تمت فيها عمليات القتل على الهوية، ولمجرد أن الضحية يحمل اسم (عمر) أو (عائشة).

All The Ayatollah's Men

Iraq's Shiite Militias Are Becoming As Great A Danger As The Islamic State.

Armed men posing with severed heads, massacres of mosque-goers during Friday prayers, massive reliance on transnational jihadists -- these are crimes that are usually associated with the Islamic State (IS). However, they're also the actions of some of Iraq's growing Shiite militia organizations, which are playing an increasingly prominent role in fighting the Sunni jihadists. These groups, many of which have deep ideological and organizational links to Iran, are sweeping away what is left of any notion of the Baghdad government's authority -- and represent a massive challenge to President Barack Obama's stated goal of working with an inclusive Iraqi government to push back IS.

Over 50 Shiite militias are now recruiting and fighting in Iraq. These groups are actively recruiting -- drawing potential soldiers away from the Iraqi army and police and bringing fighters into highly ideological, anti-American, and rabidly sectarian organizations. Many of these trainees are not simply being used to push back Sunni jihadists, but in many cases form a rear guard used to control districts that are supposedly under Baghdad's control. 

Shiite militias have embedded themselves within the structures of the Iraqi government, which has become far too reliant on their power to contemplate cracking down on them. Together, they have committed horrifying human rights abuses: In early June, Shiite militias, along with Iraqi security forces, reportedly executed around 255 prisoners, including children. An Amnesty International report from June detailed how Shiite militias regularly carried out extrajudicial summary executions, and reported that dozens of Sunni prisoners were killed in government buildings.

The militias also played a leading role in the liberation of the besieged Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli. Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group and direct Iranian proxy, even used Iraqi government helicopters to deliver arms and other supplies during the battle. Just as IS has captured and used U.S.-supplied vehicles, U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks provided to the Iraqi governmenthave flown sectarian Shiite banners and supported Kataib Hezbollah operations. Those tanks are not alone: U.S.-made armored Humvees, which Kataib Hezbollah once targeted during the Iraq War with rocket-propelled grenades (when driven by Americans), have also been taken by the militia and used in operations.

Iran has led the way in developing Iraq's Shiite militias. Since May 2013, Tehran has bolstered its network of new and old Iraqi proxy groups to provide a steady flow of fighters to Syria. Some of these Iraqi forces, who had been fighting on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, redeployed back to Iraq and form the nucleus of newer militia groups which are currently fighting the Baghdad government's Sunni enemies.

Due to Iran's Syria-focused recruitment efforts, Tehran's proxies also had a leg up on pulling in new fighters for the Iraq front. In April, Iran-backed groups such as Kataib Hezbollah, Badr, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq called for fresh recruits to fight in Iraq. Eventually, these calls morphed into Iraqi Shiite militias spinning off popular committee-based militias under their command. While the creation of so many groups may seem unnecessarily complicated, it actually helps create the image of wide-ranging popular support for militias promoting Iran's policies and ideology. Furthermore, it allows established groups to more easily separate new, less-experienced volunteers from career militiamen.

For example, Kataib Hezbollah -- a militia formed with the help of Lebanon's Hezbollah in 2007 -- recently announced the creation of the Popular Defense Companies. The new group was crafted to take Iraqi Shiite volunteers under Kataib Hezbollah's management, and today it boasts large deployments south of the cities of Baghdad, Diyala, and Amerli.

The Badr Organization, an armed group in the thousands and one of Iran's primary clients in Iraq, is another pillar of Tehran's efforts to develop Shiite militias. During the Iraq War, through its domination of government offices, the group ran a number of sectarian death squads. Badr has also been involved in the fighting in Syria, creatingthe Martyr Baqir al-Sadr Force for that purpose. 

But it is in Baghdad where the Badr Organization's influence is strongest.

The group's sway extends deep into Iraq's Internal Security Forces, where it is said to directly manage many police and special operations-type groups. Badr also has great influence in the political sphere: It has secured key positions within the Iraqi government, and is part of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's State of Law alliance -- Abadi even wants to appoint its leader, Hadi al-Amiri, as the country's interior minister. 

Badr's militiamen have spread far and wide among the constellation of Iraq's Iranian proxies. Its alumni include Kataib Hezbollah leaderJamal al-Ibrahimi; Ali al-Yasiri, the leader of a Shiite militia fighting in Syria called the Khurasani Unit; and Wathiq al-Battat, leader of the Mukhtar Army, a hyper-sectarian group that once launched a rocket attack against Iranian dissidents at Camp Liberty.  

Former Badr militiamen are also deeply embedded within Iraq's political leadership. Sheikh Adnan al-Shahmani, an Iraqi parliamentarian and member of the Iraqi parliament's National and Defense Committee, is himself a former Badr fighter and leader of the Tayyar al-Rasuli political party, which also has a militia. As early as September 2013, he had called for sectarian militias to protect Shiites living in Sunni areas. The parent parties of Khurasani Unit and Tayyar al-Rasuli are both members of the State of Law coalition -- portions of a nebula of allied organizations created to impose Iran's will within Iraq.

Iran's most powerful proxies in Iraq have worked closely together to prop up the Assad regime in Damascus. Kataib Hezbollah and Badrformed the Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada ("The Master of the Martyrs Brigade," or KSS) in early 2013 to fight in Syria. KSS is led in part by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, a commander affiliated with both Badr and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. The group's secretary-general, Mustafa al-Khazali, deployed to Syria andwas wounded in the suburbs of Damascus.

Now, the commanders who cut their teeth in Syria are returning home to play a political and military role in the struggle for Iraq. Khazali went on to win a seat in parliament during Iraq's parliamentary election in April, when his group took on the role of political party and ran in the city of Basra on then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law electoral list. KSS commanders are also engaged in fighting against their domestic enemies: Abu Mujahid al-Maliki, a KSS veteran from Syria and Khazali's campaign manager,was killed fighting in Iraq in August.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq ("The League of the Righteous," or AAH) has been another major Iranian proxy in Iraq. The group began during the Iraq War as an Iranian-backed splinter from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and quickly grew into a formidable fighting group. During the war, it gained a degree of infamy for itskidnappings and executions of British contractors and American soldiers. The group has sent many fighters to Syria, and in early 2014started to deploy in Iraq's restive Anbar province to combat the government's Sunni enemies.

The growth of these pro-Iranian Shiite militias, and many more like them, helps demonstrate Iran's goals for the domination of Shiite Iraq. These groups not only benefit from Iran's patronage and organizational capabilities -- they also all march to Tehran's ideological tune. They are loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Iran's ideology of absolute wilayat-e faqih, which grants the supreme leader ultimate political and religious authority. They also follow the model of Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and are intent on executing Iran's will in the region and furthering Iran's "Islamic Revolution."

Just as IS's stated aim is to erase the borders that were drawn in the Middle East following the end of World War I, Iranian-backed Shiite militias are also taking part in this process. The cross-pollination between Syrian and Iraqi Shiite militias has eroded national boundaries as surely as the Sunni jihadist campaign: From the beginning of their involvement in both conflicts, Shiite militias have adopted a narrative that they will "defend shrines" or "defend Shiites," no matter their geographic location.

Damascus's oldest and most prominent Shiite foreign fighter militia, the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigade (LAFA), has played a key role in promoting this grander notion of sectarian war. In August, the pro-Iranian organization announced its own Iraq-based organization, which claims to be deployed south of Baghdad and possibly near Amerli. Abu Ali al-Darraji, one of its former commanders from Damascus, also started his own LAFA affiliate with fighters who had previously been engaged in Syria. Often, these LAFA offshoots have been hazy regarding their own ideology, but their links to Iran's networks certainly suggest that Tehran exerts a strong pull on them.

While Iran has extensive links to most, if not all, of Iraq's Shiite militias, other powerful

Iraqi Shiite elements that do not share Iran's absolutist ideology have also invested in their own groups.

Moqtada al-Sadr's Saraya al-Salam ("The Peace Brigade") was established this June, at around the same time Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for a jihad against the Islamic State. Sistani's fatwa, however, was clarified to say that Iraqis should join the Iraqi army, whereas the fighters in Sadr's new brigade have no loyalty to Sistani. Nevertheless, with the ability to draw on tens of thousands of Sadrist supporters, Saraya al-Salam certainly will not lack for fighters.

Despite reported cooperation on some levels with Iranian proxies, Sadr's forces have had years of conflict with AAH, Badr, and other groups. Additionally, his political party is currently in an alliance with a political bloc that opposes the State of Law coalition.

When Saraya al-Salam was initially formed, Sadr called for it to engage mainly in defensive actions. In the past month, however, the group has been more heavily invested in offensive actions. Today, its deployments have occurred across Iraq, from the shrine city ofSamarra, to the recently liberated Amerli, to the city of Jurf al-Sakhr, to Diyala in the east. Saraya al-Salaam's large numbers, increasing activity in the conflict, and Mahdi Army background suggest the group could re-engage in sectarian mass killings.

Following Sistani's fatwa, Ammar al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) established the Ashura Brigades. The group has engaged in recruitment efforts using ISCI's media and political apparatus, and its forces have deployed to Baghdad and Samarra. In July, the group's recruits from the southeastern province of Maysan suffered heavy casualties during fighting in Anbar Province.*

As political and clerical leaders have established their own militias throughout Iraq, fringe groups have at times come in conflict with the government. One of the more unusual cases was that of the marginal Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi. His supporters engaged in firefights with members of Iraq's internal security forces in southern Iraq, resulting in seven deaths. While the example of Sarkhi is unique, the risk of intra-Shiite conflicts rearing their head is very real.

Iraqi Shiite militias are also on a collision course with the Kurdish community, a major U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State.Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba, another Iranian proxy group spun off of AAH, and Kataib Hezbollah both accused Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani of coordinating with IS and Baathist groups, and issued stern warnings against any Kurdish moves in Kirkuk. Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba's spokesman went so far as to say, "the rockets of the Islamic Resistance will strike at Erbil" if Barzani continued to "coordinate" with the jihadists.

The growing power of these militias is a sign that, despite Maliki's removal as prime minister, the Iraqi government remains beholden to deeply sectarian forces. These militias have generally retained their operational independence from Baghdad, even as they exploit the country's nascent democratic system to gain support through their domination of official bodies. They are not simply addendums to the state -- they are the state, and do not answer to any authority in Baghdad, but only to their own clerical leaders or Tehran.

While ostensibly focused on defeating the Islamic State, these armed factions also promise to be hugely influential in shaping the future of Iraq's Shiite community. Their radical ideology and organizational ties suggest that they will allow Iran a greater influence in Iraq than ever before. If Washington does not take steps now to check their growth, it may discover too late that it has effectively ceded Baghdad to Tehran -- and that there is no going back.

By Phillip Smyth

Preventing Civilian Casualties Doesn't Cover Iraq & Syria

Above image: U.S. Apache helicopters killing Iraqi civilians after the U.S. had occupied that nation.

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

At a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after a cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.

“They were carrying bodies out the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff.

Residents inspect damaged buildings in what activists say was a U.S. strike, in Kfredrian, Idlib province September …

Hayden said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian casualties does not cover the current U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

The “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time,” Hayden said in an email. “That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.” 

The laws of armed conflict prohibit the deliberate targeting of civilian areas and require armed forces to take precautions to prevent inadvertent civilian deaths as much as possible.

But one former Obama administration official said the new White House statement raises questions about how the U.S. intends to proceed in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and under what legal authorities.

View gallery

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A man inspects a damaged site in what activists say was a U.S. strike, in Kfredrian, Idlib province September 23, …

“They seem to be creating this grey zone” for the conflict, said Harold Koh, who served as the State Department’s top lawyer during President Obama’s first term. “If we’re not applying the strict rules [to prevent civilian casualties] to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value."

The issue arose during last week’s briefing for two House Foreign Affairs Committee members and two staffers when rebel leaders associated with factions of the Free Syria Army complained about the civilian deaths — and the fact that the targets were in territory controlled by the Nusra Front, a sometimes ally of the U.S.-backed rebels in its war with the Islamic State and the Syrian regime.

But at least one of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. 

“I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details,” Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

Source: Yahoo News

Clear As Mud

Are you confused by what's going on in the Middle East? 

Let me explain:

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We don't like IS, but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like.

We don't like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him. 

We don't like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS. 

So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, whom we want to lose, but we don't want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win. 

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. 

And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren't actually there until we went to drive them out. 

Do you understand now?

By Aubrey Bailey,
Fleet, Hants.

Transcribed by: CZ

Harun Al-Rashid Receiving A Delegation Of Charlemagne In Baghdad

Harun al-Rashid (Arabic: هارون الرشيد‎}; Hārūn ar-Rashīd) (17 March 763 or February 766 — 24 March 809) was the fifth Abbasid Caliph.

His surnametranslates to “the Just”, “the Upright”, or “the Rightly-Guided”. Al-Rashid ruled from 786 to 809, during the peak of the Islamic Golden Age.

His time was marked by scientific, cultural, and religious prosperity. Islamic art and musicalso flourished significantly during his reign. He established the legendary library Bayt al-Hikma (“House of Wisdom”) in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, and during his rule Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge, culture and trade.

Charlemagne (/ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/; 2 April 742/747/748 – 28 January 814),also known as Charles the Great (German: Karl der Große; Latin: Carolus or Karolus Magnus) or Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of Italy from 774, and from 800 the first emperor in western Europe since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state he founded is called the Carolingian Empire.

The oldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, Charlemagne became king in 768 following the death of his father. He was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. Carloman’s sudden death in 771 under unexplained circumstances left Charlemagne as the undisputed ruler of the Frankish Kingdom. Charlemagne continued his father’s policy towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in northern Italy, and leading an incursion into Muslim Spain.

He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, Christianizing them upon penalty of death, at times leading to events such as the Massacre of Verden.

Charlemagne reached the height of his power in 800 when he was crowned “emperor” by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day at Old St. Peter’s Basilica.

Called the “Father of Europe” (pater Europae), Charlemagne united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of cultural and intellectual activity within the Catholic Church. Both the French and German monarchies considered their kingdoms to be descendants of Charlemagne’s empire.

Charlemagne died in 814, having ruled as emperor for just over thirteen years. He was laid to rest in his imperial capital of Aachen in what is today Germany. His son Louis the Pious succeeded him.

Artist: Julius Köckert
Date: 1864
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Location: Maximilianeum Foundation, Munich, Germany
Info via: Wikipedia
Info provided by: CZ

'American Forces ARE On The Ground In Iraq'

American Special Forces commandos are on the ground fighting in northern Iraq, according to a published report, just a week after Barack Obama said that wouldn't happen.  And with a second brutal beheading in Syria ,the president may soon have to decide how much more military might to deploy.

Even as he has authorized more than 100 target airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Iraq, Obama told the American Legion on August 26 that 'American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq.'

'I will not allow the United States to be dragged back into another ground war in Iraq,' he said, adding later that 'the answer' to ISIS 'is not to send in large-scale military deployments that overstretch our military.'

His parsing of words – 'combat troops' and 'large-scale' – now seem calculated to produce platoon-sized loopholes.

A Daily Beast freelance reporter wrote Tuesday that he saw 'what appeared to be bearded Western Special Operations Forces' in a caravan of armored vehicles near the Iraqi town of Zumar.

The battle-scarred location, 30 miles from Mosul and a bit further from Erbil, had been the site of fierce fighting between Kurdish Peshmerga forces and ISIS militants.

'They didn't wear any identifying insignia,' the reporter added, 'but they were visibly Western and appeared to match all the visual characteristics of American special operations soldiers.'

This particular freelancer should know: He's a 27-year-old former U.S. Army Ranger who served three tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

A Peshmerga commander, backed up by Kurdish intelligence sources, confirmed that 'Yes, German and American forces are on the ground here. They are helping to support us in the attack.'

A retired Special Forces soldier told MailOnline on Tuesday that most of the 100-plus airstrikes the Pentagon has confirmed would have required 'some kind of boots on the ground' to deliver real-time intelligence on airstrike targets – such as who is traveling in a convoy or which ISIS leaders are in a building.

They're also useful for 'painting targets,' he said, referring to a technique involving a laser, held by a nearby Special Operator and pointed at a target. Some missile guidance systems can detect laser light and use it for precision guidance.

And, the source added, 'if keyhole sat[ellite] images don't confirm a 'kill,' it helps to have ground forces who can find out for sure who we've just taken out.'

U.S. and German special ops teams, the Daily Beast reported, 'had taken up positions in Zumar that allowed them to coordinate with U.S. aircraft.'

By David Martosko

Stay Out Of Our Civil War: Iraq VP To U.S.

The world may be focused on the terrorist group ISIS, but inside Iraq the group is only one part of a larger revolt that has been years in the making.

ISIS is only one small part of a larger Sunni revolt in Iraq that sectarian groups have been preparing for years, according to Iraq’s exiled Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi. And defeating ISIS won’t stop the greater battle.

“We shouldn’t look at this development of ISIS as apart from the uprising of the Arab Sunni provinces over two years,” Hashimi told The Daily Beast in an interview from Turkey, where he has been living since the government of Nouri al-Maliki purged him in 2012 by indicting him on murder charges, then convicting him in abstentia.

“The provinces have done a peaceful Sunni revolt against the oppression, the injustice, the inhuman conditions the Arab Sunnis have been suffering for years,” he said.

Hashimi referenced Iraqi army and police crackdowns in cities including Fallujah and Madain over the past year, part of the escalating Sunni-Shia tit-for-tat violent incidents that have plagued Iraq for over a year. In one April 2013 incident he mentioned, dozens of Sunnis were killed by Iraq security forces in the town of Hawijah during a peaceful protest.

“There is anger against Nouri al-Maliki and the behavior of the government over almost eight years so there was no other option other than to go into Sunni revolt.”

“The U.S. is in the process of committing itself into another set of grave mistakes. Definitely we consider all this military support to Nouri al-Maliki an alliance with Iran against the Arab Sunnis.”

The sudden rise of ISIS in Iraq, especially their part in the takeover of Mosul last month, was a surprise to everyone, Hashimi said. But although there is some coordination between ISIS and the other Sunni groups fighting in northern Iraq, ISIS is not a core part of Sunni revolt, he said.

“I can assure you a widespread spectrum of groups participated in what happened in Mosul. The media is focusing on ISIS,” he said. “They are influential and empowered on the ground and they are participating in this armed revolution. But we shouldn’t be blamed for that.”

The Maliki government reneged on its promises to build an inclusive government with the Sunnis as soon as the American troops left Iraq, Hashimi said, and went after Sunni moderate leaders even though those leaders had led the Sunni awakening in 2008 that resulted in extremist groups leaving Iraq in the first place.

“We managed to clean up our territories, especially Anbar, and we put an end for a time to he extremists. But Nouri al-Maliki, instead of involving the Sunni moderates, he attacked them, starting with me,” said Hashimi. “There are two sides, the extremists and moderates. If you target the moderates, you intentionally create a vacuum that could be filled by the extremists and that’s exactly what happened.”

Hashimi said that the Obama administration was repeating that mistake again by sending U.S. advisers and equipment to shore up the Iraqi military and considering U.S. military force against Sunnis inside Iraq. He urged the U.S. to stay out of the conflict.

“It’s a really annoying development. The U.S. is in the process of committing itself into another set of grave mistakes. Definitely we consider all this military support to Nouri al-Maliki an alliance with Iran against the Arab Sunnis,” he said. “Try to avoid any use of military means, try to be fair, try to diffuse the bomb by asking Nouri al-Maliki to immediately to establish a caretaker government. Try to be neutral at least.”

And don’t expect another Anbar awakening this time around, Hashimi warned. The Sunni tribes still remember what happened last time and they are not going to make the same mistake of expelling the extremists and thereby leaving themselves vulnerable to Shiite forces.

“Nobody from the Arab Sunnis are ready to repeat the same experience of 2008, no way. But if we establish a real state in Baghdad, extremism will be over, I assure you.”

The U.S. had better also be concerned about the rise of Shia extremism in Iraq, Hashimi said, pointing to the growing ranks of the Shia militias supported by the Baghdad government inside Iraq.

By Josh Rogin

1,200 Years Of Iraqi History In Five Maps

Sunni Arab insurgents, have gained control of vast tracts of land along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq, and are pushing south toward Baghdad.

Over the centuries, the region once known as the cradle of civilization has seen significant changes.

Early Caliphates

The idea of a Sunni-dominated Islamic caliphate harkens back centuries to two empires: the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. A caliphate is an Islamic state led by a religious and political leader known as a caliph. Sunnis believe their leaders should be elected from among the political successors of the Prophet Muhammad, the nonhereditary elite known as caliphs. The Shiites, however, believe their leaders should come from the direct family line of Muhammad. That schism remains to this day and is a defining element of the sectarian violence in Iraq.

The Ottoman Empire

At the height of its expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire—whose leadership was Sunni and based in what is now Turkey—covered vast tracts of land in southern Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The empire allowed for multiple languages and religions and divided the area that is now Iraq into three provinces. The Kurds settled in Mosul, the Shiites in Basra, and the Sunnis in Baghdad. 

World War I Aftermath

World War I saw the end of several imperial powers, including the Ottoman Empire. The newly formed League of Nations, tasked with maintaining world peace, carved up the former Ottoman Empire and unified the three provinces under British rule, essentially demarcating the modern boundaries of Iraq. Displeased with this plan, the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united for the first time to revolt against British colonial occupation, but they were unsuccessful in gaining full independence until 1932. In the decades that followed, Sunnis held political prominence through the monarchy and political leadership positions, including Saddam Hussein’s presidency beginning in 1979.

Toppling Of Saddam Hussein

In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq and toppled the decades-long regime of Saddam Hussein. The violent insurgency that followed resulted in more than 4,000 U.S. deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties. By 2006 the insurgency appeared to have devolved into a civil war between Sunni and Shiite factions. That same year, the election of a new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is Shiite, led to an unusual period of Shiite political dominance in Iraq and to claims of disenfranchisement by Sunnis, one key factor in the violent opposition to his leadership today.

The Rise Of ISIS

Earlier this year, an al Qaeda splinter group based in Syria swept into Iraq with the aim of establishing an Islamic state in both countries, which—if successful—would effectively erase the borders imposed by the West in the wake of WWI. In recent weeks, this Sunni Arab militia, called ISIS, has seized significant resources and conducted mass executions in its dramatic push toward Baghdad. While they have faced little opposition in the Sunni-dominated northwest, the encroachment of ISIS into Shiite-dominated southern territories is expected to result in significant bloodshed.

6 US Presidents Have Destroyed Iraq

It doesn’t take a PhD in Sociology to conclude that Iraq was better off with Saddam Hussein than it is today.

It’s not that Saddam was a great leader without blood on his hands. It’s just that what six US presidents have done to Iraq over the past 35 years has been much worse than anything Saddam ever did to the people of Iraq.

Under Saddam, Iraqis had a thriving economy that included a wealthy middle class, a high functioning infrastructure on par with the most developed nations of the world, and free healthcare and free education through graduate school. Today, Iraqis have an effective unemployment rate of 50%, a difficult time getting water and electricity, and bombed out hospitals and schools.

In Saddam’s Iraq, women’s rights were guaranteed in the constitution, religion played virtually no role in government, Sunni and Shia got along relatively well, and al-Qaeda didn’t exist. Today, Iraqis are facing Sharia law, Sunni and Shia are killing each other, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (now known as ISIS) has become arguably the most powerful non-government force in the world.

Good job, America

The reason Iraq is in the mess it is today is not because of some long-standing feud between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, it’s because six US presidents, spanning ten terms, have created a situation that made today’s Iraq inevitable.

The people of Iraq should be applauded for going this long without imploding. They obviously are more peaceful and have more fortitude than Americans. The United States would be in a state of anarchy if bombs were dropped on its major cities, crushing sanctions were levied that killed hundreds of thousands of its children, they were occupied by a foreign military, a puppet government was installed by another country, and arms were given to Republicans to shoot Democrats, and vice-versa.

But Americans can’t imagine that type of scenario, and they choose not to think about what their tax dollars, their elected officials, and their willful ignorance has done to another civilization.

And to add insult to injury, Americans, particularly Democrats, are essentially quiet now that their president is about to do the same thing to Iraq that five other presidents have already done.

So working chronologically backwards, here’s how six US presidents have destroyed Iraq.

Barack Obama

The US is at war in Iraq. Nobody wants to acknowledge it, possibly because this is not a war with Iraq, it’s a war inside Iraq.

Maybe people actually believed Obama two weeks ago when he said, "American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq." But on Tuesday it was announced that armed drones and Apache helicopters are being flown by US military inside Iraq.

Since when do "advisers" fly Apache helicopters and armed drones?

Also on Tuesday, The Hill reported that Obama is sending 200 more US troops to Iraq, bringing the total number of US ground forces in Iraq to 750. And on Wednesday, the State Department stated that the Obama administration wants to sell 4,000 more US Hellfire missiles to the Iraqi government.

At what point will "progressive" news outlets like Democracy Now andCommonDreams talk about "mission creep" and Obama doublespeak? It may be a while given they are currently talking about immigration, the NSA and the Hobby Lobby.  Important issues, yes, but when your country is starting another war in a place it has already terrorized for 35 years, those issues need to be moved down the priority list.

If a Republican were in the Oval Office it’s a guarantee that the supposed left-leaning media and national antiwar groups would be going berserk, and might actually play a role in stopping the US from going back into Iraq.

But they won’t because their funding largely comes from Democrats, so they can’t go after Obama with the same vigor in which they did with Bush.

Even Kirsten Powers, who writes for the USA Today questioned the integrity of fellow liberals in Wednesday’s paper when she wrote, "Liberals who obsessed over President Bush’s abuses of executive power are suspiciously silent now, or worse, defend the same behavior they found abhorrent in a Republican."

George W. Bush

Not much needs to be said about what the younger Bush did to Iraq. Based on the lie (not bad intelligence, it was a lie) that Saddam had WMD and was a threat to the US, and on the ruse of tying Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush whipped Americans into a frenzy and got them to go along with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Bush’s war left at least one-half million Iraqis dead, forced nearly 4 million to become refugees, destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, and created an untold number of enemies of the US, including ISIS.

Bill Clinton

It was the Clinton administration that first perpetuated the myth that Saddam had WMD. "Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton stated in 1998 in justifying missile strikes on Iraq.

And even after the Clinton presidency had expired, former Clinton VP Al Gore supported George W. Bush on the issue of Iraq WMD, saying, “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

But the most extreme form of terrorism carried out by Clinton was with the use of sanctions on the civilians of Iraq that killed 500,000 children. "Medieval," and "unconscionable" were words used to describe the slow, painful deaths Iraqi children suffered due to the absence of food, basic medicines and anesthesia, which the US prohibited from being imported into Iraq.

Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright showed the true face of American compassion when she was asked about the deaths of a half million Iraqi children – more than the number who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – when she told 60 Minutes in 1996, "This is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

The humanitarian disaster resulting from sanctions against Iraq has been frequently cited as a factor that motivated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden himself mentioned the Iraq sanctions as a reason for the attack against the United States.

George HW Bush

Most everyone remembers the "Saddam’s troops are throwing babies from their incubators" story that swayed public opinion in favor of going into Iraq in 1990.

But not everyone knows that the story was a hoax created by American PR firm Hill & Knowlton. The lie reached a crescendo when a young woman named Nayirah appeared in front of a congressional committee to describe the supposed atrocities. But it turns out that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States – a man who desperately wanted the US to enter the Iraq/Kuwait fray. When young Nayirah was later asked to provide evidence, she admitted that her story was not true.

And little was made about how one minute the US gave implicit approval for Saddam’s military response to Kuwait and the next minute it declared war on Iraq in the name of defending Kuwait.

This was confirmed in a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks in 2011, which detailed the now famous discussion between US ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam himself.

The result of Bush’s war on Iraq: At least 100,000 Iraqis killed, and the start of the inhumane, collective punishment sanctions mentioned above.

Ronald Reagan

CIA files released in 2013 confirm what was already believed to be true: The US helped Saddam as he used chemical weapons on Iran.

Adding to the bloodshed, the US also armed Iran, as evidenced by the Iran-Contra Affair. Ultimately, with the US arming both sides, the Iraq-Iran war lasted eight years and killed over one million Iraqis and Iranians.

Jimmy Carter

Because of his reputation of being a man of peace, few want to recall that the Carter Doctrine laid the foundation for US military interventions in the Middle East.

In response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter declared in his State of the Union address in January 1980 that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.

Following this, and fearing that Iran’s Revolution might spread to neighboring countries, the Carter administration "gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran," according to documents written by Alexander Haig.

It’s the people of the US, too

Iraq is a near failed state today in large part because of imperial America’s quest for absolute world domination. The US does not care how many people must suffer and die – it always finds a way to claim, "it was worth it, because without us, things would be much worse."

People around the world are generous, if not naïve, in believing that America’s global aggression is the fault of the government and not the people. Americans are like the guy who watches a neighborhood bully beat up a kid every day but doesn’t say anything because the bully’s father is his boss at work.

Of the six US presidents who have shattered Iraq, half have been Democrats and half have been Republicans. Obviously, it’s not just one party that votes for war presidents. And voters from both parties are conspicuously silent when their president tells lies in order to justify waging war.

At the end of 35 years, how is it that Americans care less about Iraq than they did 10 years ago?

Chris Ernesto is cofounder of St. Pete for Peace, an antiwar organization in St. Petersburg, FL that has been active since 2003. Mr. Ernesto also created and manages OccupyArrests.com and USinAfrica.com.