May 21, 2015 p.m.

We keep hearing from this administration about this coalition our leader has put together and then the news is reporting about all of the towns in the Middle East that ISIS is rolling through and claiming victory – sure they are victorious because they are fighting a paper tiger.  None of this coalition they keep talking about has shown up – yet.  We keep giving them equipment,  guns, and the news reports about how we are training them to fight; but, in the end, they either join the opposition or run for their lives.  And the leader keeps telling the American well that everything is in control.  Remember, the story the leader told us way back yonder, “you can keep your doctor and your insurance.”  Didn’t we learn something from that – or are we that stupid?

May 21, 2015 a.m.

Why do we continue to rely on troops in Iraq who are not trained and their leadership is not holding up when the fighting gets tough?  Now the people are having to abandon their homes and the ones who stay are killed.  This is what happens when you gut the American Military like our leader has done.  There is no qualified leadership left who know how to plan and execute the war.  Is this his strategy to deliberately lose?  It seems the White House is not concerned about losing Ramadi or any of the other cities – their side is winning.

Iraqis abandoned US-supplied equipment in Ramadi

By:   ROBERT BURNS

Civilians flee their hometown of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Monday, May 18, 2015. Islamic State militants searched door-to-door for policemen and pro-government fighters and threw bodies in the Euphrates River in a bloody purge Monday after capturing the strategic city of Ramadi, their biggest victory since overrunning much of northern and western Iraq last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraqi troops abandoned dozens of U.S military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Islamic State fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees. He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not because they had not been moved for months.

This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year, left behind U.S.-supplied military equipment, prompting the U.S. to destroy them in subsequent airstrikes against Islamic State forces.

Asked whether the Iraqis should have destroyed the vehicles before abandoning the city in order to keep them from enhancing IS’s army, Warren said, “Certainly preferable if they had been destroyed; in this case they were not.”

Warren also said that while the U.S. is confident that Ramadi will be retaken by Iraq, “It will be difficult.”

The fall of Ramadi has prompted some to question the viability of the Obama administration’s approach in Iraq, which is a blend of retraining and rebuilding the Iraqi army, prodding Baghdad to reconcile with the nation’s Sunnis, and bombing Islamic State targets from the air without committing American ground combat troops.

The president’s plan isn’t working. It’s time for him to come up with overarching strategy to defeat the ongoing terrorist threat,” House Speaker John Boehner said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama has always been open to suggestions for improving the U.S. approach in Iraq.

“It’s something that he’s talking about with his national security team just about every day, including today,” Earnest said.

Derek Harvey, a retired Army colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency officer who served multiple tours in Iraq, says that while the extremist group has many problems and weaknesses, it is “not losing” in the face of ineffective Sunni Arab opposition.

“They are adaptive and they remain well armed and well resourced,” Harvey said of the militants. “The different lines of operation by the U.S. coalition remain disjointed, poorly resourced and lack an effective operational framework, in my view.”

One alternative for the Obama administration would be a containment strategy — trying to fence in the conflict rather than push the Islamic State group out of Iraq. That might include a combination of airstrikes and U.S. special operations raids to limit the group’s reach. In fact, a Delta Force raid in Syria on Friday killed an IS leader known as Abu Sayyaf who U.S. officials said oversaw the group’s oil and gas operations, a major source of funding.

Officials have said containment might become an option but is not under active discussion now.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, issued a written statement Monday that suggested Ramadi will trigger no change in the U.S. approach.

“Setbacks are regrettable but not uncommon in warfare,” Dempsey said. “Much effort will now be required to reclaim the city.”

It seems highly unlikely that Obama would take the more dramatic route of sending ground combat forces into Iraq to rescue the situation in Ramadi or elsewhere. A White House spokesman, Eric Shultz, said Monday the U.S. will continue its support through airstrikes, advisers and trainers.

The administration has said repeatedly that it does not believe Iraq can be stabilized for the long term unless Iraqis do the ground fighting.  (How can they do the ground fighting when they can’t even hold down the fort – they just drop their guns and run when the fighting gets tough – they take nothing with them.  So how can anyone trust them.  I would not want any American’s fighting with the Iraqs.)

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