ISIS apparently just siezed Ramadi... Now trapped with 300 US Marines.

Defengar · Feb 12, 2015

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/isis-seizes-al-baghdadi-iraq-300-us-marines-in-jeopardy/

SIS fighters seized most of al-Baghdadi in Ramidi where 300 US Marines are stationed training Iraqi Forces.

Al-Asad base is near the city where 300 Marines are stationed.

The US Marines at Al-Asad airbase has been under frequent attack since January.
But today ISIS seized large swaths of the city.

Islamic State insurgents took control on Thursday of most of the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, threatening an air base where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, officials said.

Al-Baghdadi, about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province, had been besieged for months by the radical Sunni Islamist militants who captured vast swathes of Iraqs north and west last year.

Ninety percent of al-Baghdadi district has fallen under the control of the insurgents, district manager Naji Arak told Reuters by phone.

Militants attacked al-Baghdadi from two directions earlier in the day and then advanced on the town, intelligence sources and officials in the Jazeera and Badiya operations commands said.

The officials said another group of insurgents then attacked the heavily-guarded Ain al-Asad air base five km southwest of the town, but were unable to break into it.
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Lots of screen grabs of ISIS tweets mocking US inside the article. I almost feel sorry for these idiots.

All right, theyre on our left, theyre on our right, theyre in front of us, theyre behind usthey cant get away this time - Lewis B. Chesty Puller, USMC
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300 Marines in a fortified base full of equipment. How long do you think it's going to take for them to clean up the mess outside?

ballantine · Feb 12, 2015

Doesn't sound good. "Iraq has lost contact with the base".

Hm. Why are we (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)footing around with these ISIS types? Our CIA is real good at wiretapping us, but let's see what they can do with a real threat. So far the answer seems to be "not much".

Wehrwolfen · Feb 13, 2015

ballantine said: ↑

Doesn't sound good. "Iraq has lost contact with the base".

Hm. Why are we (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)footing around with these ISIS types? Our CIA is real good at wiretapping us, but let's see what they can do with a real threat. So far the answer seems to be "not much".
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Sorry Obama has a golf date today and another tomorrow, his busy schedule is too important to be interrupted by the mere triviality of three hundred Americans surrounded by ISIS barbarians.

ballantine · Feb 13, 2015

The CFR says: "ISIS is not a terrorist group".

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143043/audrey-kurth-cronin /isis-is-not-a-terrorist-group

Dutch · Feb 13, 2015

Defengar said: ↑

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/isis-seizes-al-baghdadi-iraq-300-us-marines-in-jeopardy/

SIS fighters seized most of al-Baghdadi in Ramidi – where 300 US Marines are stationed training Iraqi Forces.

Al-Asad base is near the city – where 300 Marines are stationed.

The US Marines at Al-Asad airbase has been under frequent attack since January.
But today ISIS seized large swaths of the city.

Islamic State insurgents took control on Thursday of most of the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, threatening an air base where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, officials said.

Al-Baghdadi, about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province, had been besieged for months by the radical Sunni Islamist militants who captured vast swathes of Iraq’s north and west last year.

“Ninety percent of al-Baghdadi district has fallen under the control of the insurgents,” district manager Naji Arak told Reuters by phone.

Militants attacked al-Baghdadi from two directions earlier in the day and then advanced on the town, intelligence sources and officials in the Jazeera and Badiya operations commands said.

The officials said another group of insurgents then attacked the heavily-guarded Ain al-Asad air base five km southwest of the town, but were unable to break into it.
____________________

Lots of screen grabs of ISIS tweets mocking US inside the article. I almost feel sorry for these idiots.

300 Marines in a fortified base full of equipment. How long do you think it's going to take for them to clean up the mess outside?
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With the joke we have instead of Commander-in-Chief? They'll never be given an order to fight and will be lucky to escape from the heavily fortified base full of weapons with their side arms.

APACHERAT · Feb 13, 2015

ballantine said: ↑

Doesn't sound good. "Iraq has lost contact with the base".

Hm. Why are we (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)footing around with these ISIS types? Our CIA is real good at wiretapping us, but let's see what they can do with a real threat. So far the answer seems to be "not much".
Click to expand...

Doesn't sound good, Obama's fourth Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has reported that he has lost contact with CnC Obama when Obama was on the ninth hole.

waltky · Dec 10, 2015

Push to re-take Ramadi...

Civilians Trapped as Iraqi Forces Fight ISIS for Control of Ramadi
December 09, 2015 - Hundreds of civilians are trapped in central Ramadi, squeezed between Islamic State extremists who have booby-trapped the building around them and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) fighting to retake control of the western city.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. official in charge of the coalition against IS, told journalists in Baghdad that the extremists were taking human shields as hostages. It is the poorest and most vulnerable who are trapped because they did not have the means to leave earlier, UNHCR representative Bruno Geddo told VOA via telephone from Baghdad. Geddo said for the last 10 days Iraqi forces have been dropping leaflets on the city advising civilians to leave and head south to an area under Iraqi control. But fleeing the city has been difficult. According to reports, IS has threatened those who try to leave and booby-trapped a lot of buildings in the city center.

Displaced civilians from Ramadi and around the area cross the Bzebiz bridge as they leave their hometowns, heading towards Baghdad

Many people are reportedly paying bribes in order to escape. Our information is that those who manage to escape from the city center, where they are trapped by IS, will leave one by one. This is the more plausible option, so there will not be a big outflow, Geddo said. According to the UNHCR, there are already some 10,000 displaced Iraqis in Anbar province in camps bordering Baghdad, and another 90,000 displaced Iraqis in Baghdad itself. Ramadi is roughly 125 kms west of the capital.

Airstrikes continue

A spokesperson for the U.S. military's Operation Inherent Resolve told VOA via Twitter that the ISF now controls many locations on both sides of the city, which is divided by the Euphrates river. U.S. airstrikes in support of the Iraqi Forces in Ramadi continued Wednesday, hitting large IS tactical units, vehicles, command-and-control centers and bomb factories.

The spokesperson said the precision airstrikes strive to protect civilians in the area. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday the U.S. was ready to send in attack helicopters and accompanying advisors to help the ISF retake the city, if requested by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi. Regaining control of Ramadi would be a major success for the Iraqi forces, which have been criticized for allowing IS to over-run the city in May.

Taking a 'long time'
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U.S. ready to send advisers, helicopters to Iraq to help retake Ramadi
Wed Dec 9, 2015 - The United States is prepared to deploy advisers and attack helicopters if requested by Iraq to help it "finish the job" of retaking the city of Ramadi from Islamic State, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.

Carter's remarks were the latest sign of U.S. preparations to intensify its military campaign against the group, which controls wide swaths of Iraq and Syria and has orchestrated and inspired attacks abroad. Islamic State captured Ramadi, a provincial capital just a short drive west of Baghdad, in May in its biggest conquest since last year. Retaking it would be a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Carter, speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, said it has taken a "frustratingly long time" for Iraqi security forces to claw back territory.

But he pointed to significant gains, including recapturing the Anbar Operations Center on the northern bank of the Euphrates River in the past 24 hours. "The United States is prepared to assist the Iraqi Army with additional unique capabilities to help them finish the job, including attack helicopters and accompanying advisers, if circumstances dictate and if requested by Prime Minister Abadi," Carter said. A U.S. defense official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. advisers would be prepared to provide advice to Iraqi security forces on how to move through the center of Ramadi over the next several weeks.

The White House cautioned later on Wednesday that President Barack Obama had not yet approved the use of the helicopters, and that Abadi would first have to request such support. "Any decision like this would only come at the request of Prime Minister Abadi, and after explicit sign-off from the president of the United States," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "And that sign-off has not been given at this point."

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IS Opens New Supply Route Between Syria and Iraq
December 09, 2015 - Islamic State (IS) militants have been using a new route between Syria and Iraq to ferry supplies since Iraqi Kurdish forces cut off one of IS' crucial links in northern Iraq last month. The Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga and supported by American airstrikes, recaptured the town of Sinjar, cutting off a crucial IS supply route known as Highway 47 between Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria.

IS has created informal routes through the flat desert of southern Mosul where it uses civilian cars to transfer its fighters and supplies across the border between Iraq and Syria, Kurdish commanders and Iraqi officials told VOA. VOA Kurdish correspondent Kawa Omar reports that IS militants are using civilian vehicles to move supplies between Raqqa and Mosul. The informal route starts from the small town of Baaj, south of Mosul, and continues to the town of Qirwan close to the border with Syria.

This file picture released on July 13, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Islamic State militants, shows an Islamic State militant sniper in position during a battle against Syrian government forces, in Deir el-Zour province, Syria.

A former member of the Iraqi parliament, Qasim Hussein Barjis, said that this new route has become an important lifeline to IS as it has been suffering casualties and damage to its infrastructure from an increase in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. IS has also faced Russian and Syrian regime strikes. The route has been paved by IS from Raqqa to Mosul with the exception of Qirwan town where it has to move across a sandy flat desert, Barjis told VOA. The Sinjar operation was an important move toward limiting Islamic State's movement across the border between Iraq and Syria, Kurdish commanders and U.S. officials say.

The new IS route is costlier and more time-consuming compared to Highway 47, but the ease of movement in the flat desert of southern Mosul makes it an attractive alternative to the fighters. Unlike Sinjar area, southern Mosul is easy for movement because it is sandy and flat, said Seydo Husein, a council member in Nineveh, one of Iraqs 19 governorates. We had information that [IS] was working on creating that route before the liberation of Sinjar, Khalaf al-Adidi, another member of Nineveh Governorate, told VOA. An Iraqi news website, Niqash, reported that the route is also being used by civilians who trade between Raqqa and Mosul. People of the area have opened up small shops on the way and sell water, food, and fuel, according to a civilian truck driver who was quoted on the website.

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waltky · Jan 17, 2016

Looks like it got hit by a tornado...

Iraqi city of Ramadi, once home to 500,000, lies in ruins
Jan 17,`16 -- So complete was the destruction of Ramadi that a local reporter who had visited the city many times hardly recognized it.

"Honestly, this is the main street," Amaj Hamid, a member of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, told the TV crew as they entered from the southwest. He swerved to avoid the aftermath of months of fighting: rubble, overturned cars and piles of twisted metal. Airstrikes and homemade bombs laid by the Islamic State group had shredded the poured-concrete walls and ceilings of the houses and shops along the road. Ramadi, once home to about 500,000 people, now largely lies in ruins. A U.N. report released Saturday used satellite imagery to assess the devastation, concluding that more than 3,000 buildings had been damaged and nearly 1,500 destroyed in the city 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad.

All told, more than 60 percent of Anbar's provincial capital has been destroyed by constant air bombardment and the scorched-earth practices of IS fighters in retreat, according to local estimates. Officials are already scrambling to raise money to rebuild, even as operations continue to retake neighborhoods in the north and east. Their concern is that the devastation could breed future conflicts, recreating the conditions that allowed the Islamic State group to first gain a foothold in the province in late 2013. While the U.S.-led coalition acknowledges the importance of reconstruction efforts, the actual money pledged to help rebuild is just a fraction of the amount spent on the military effort against IS.

Iraqi soldiers stand near destroyed armoured vehicles amid the devastation in Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq. Ramadi, once home to 500,000 people, lies largely in ruins after months of air bombardment and the scorched-earth practices of IS fighters in retreat. The U.S-led coalition acknowledges the importance of rebuilding, but actual money for the effort falls far short

In previous fights for the city, government buildings, bridges and key highways bore the brunt of airstrikes and heavy artillery. But during the most recent round of violence, airstrikes targeted the largely residential areas where IS fighters were based. After the Islamic State group overran Ramadi in May, storming and then largely destroying the city's symbolically important central government complex, fighters quickly fanned out into the city's dense neighborhoods. Using civilian homes as bases, IS turned living rooms into operations centers and bedrooms into barracks.

Brig. Gen. Muhammad Rasheed Salah of the Anbar provincial police said if civilians don't start receiving compensation soon, tribal violence will quickly follow liberation. "Listen, I am a son of this land," he said explaining he is from a village on the outskirts of Ramadi still under IS control. "My house was destroyed by someone I know. He was my friend, my neighbor. In cases like this, you need to be able to provide people with something," he said referring to government help for rebuilding.

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UN panel: $40 billion needed to aid people in war, disasters
Jan 17,`16 -- An estimated $40 billion is needed annually to help the rapidly growing number of people needing humanitarian aid as a result of conflicts and natural disasters - and one possibility to help fill the $15 billion funding gap is a small voluntary tax on tickets for soccer games and other sports, concerts and entertainment events, airline travel, and gasoline, a U.N.-appointed panel said.

The panel's report on humanitarian financing, launched Sunday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at an event in Dubai, says the world is spending around $25 billion today to provide life-saving assistance to 125 million people devastated by wars and natural disasters - more than 12 times the $2 billion that was spent in 2000. "We have an exponentially growing problem," said panel co-chair Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commission's vice president for budget and human resources. "The good news is that the world has never been so generous to people in need. The bad news is that never has our generosity been so insufficient."

The nine-member panel calculated that an additional $15 billion is needed annually to reduce suffering and ensure that no one in need dies or has to live "without dignity" for a lack of money. "This is a lot of money, but not out of reach for a world producing $78 trillion of annual GDP," the panel said in the report to the secretary-general released Sunday. In Dubai, Ban met with the panelists to thank them for their work and discuss their recommendations to tackle the shortfall in humanitarian funding. "Since they began their work the needs created by the demand for humanitarian aid have continued to rise dramatically. We are living in the age of the mega-crises. But, as this report clearly demonstrates, the gap in funding is a solvable problem," Ban said at the launch event, according to the U.N. spokesperson's office.

At a news conference, Ban noted that three out of four U.N. appeals for humanitarian funding for more than a billion dollars are in the Middle East and North Africa. He added that "Globally, the world is shattering records we would never wish to break." The 31-page report focuses on three inter-linked solutions to address the widening financial gap: mobilizing additional funds, shrinking the need for aid, and improving the efficiency of humanitarian assistance. The report says that today's massive instability and its capacity to cross borders, demonstrated by the flight of people from Syria and other conflict areas to Europe, "makes humanitarian aid a global public good that requires an appropriate fundraising model."

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ISIS apparently just siezed Ramadi... Now trapped with 300 US Marines.

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ISIS apparently just siezed Ramadi... Now trapped with 300 US Marines.

Defengar New Member

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Wehrwolfen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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Dutch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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