Photo Credit: MOHAMMED SAWAF / AFP / GettyWith the crisis in Iraq worsening by the day, a ranking Pentagon official with knowledge of the situation has shed some light on the Obama administration’s inaction in an exclusive statement to TheDC.

“The Pentagon is split and the administration is paralyzed,” he said, calling the gridlock “horrendous.”

“Joint Chiefs Chairman [Martin] Dempsey is an asshat yes man,” he continued. “We have congressional authority to use force for the Iraq War, as it never expired, but people are putting targeting packets through unnecessary bureaucracy to slow events to the point that — they hope — the situation is overcome by events. Bad call. So fucked. Reads like another chapter in [Robert] Gates’s book.”

While the Iraqi government is accepting military assistance from Russia and Syria, the Obama administration has yet to authorize the airstrikes Iraqi officials have repeatedly asked for.

“Time is not on our side,” Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. said Tuesday. “Further delay only benefits the terrorists.”

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Photo Credit: AP / Maya AlleruzzoBy Lara Jakes and Sameer N. Yacoub.

They were known as the Sahwa, or the Awakening Councils — Sunni militiamen who took extraordinary risks to side with U.S. troops in the fight against al-Qaida during the Iraq War. Once heralded as a pivotal step in the defeat of the bloody insurgency, the Sahwa later were pushed aside by Iraq’s Shiite-led government, starved of political support and money needed to remain a viable security force.

Now, the Obama administration is looking at the Sahwa, which still exist in smaller form, as a model for how to unite Sunni fighters against the rampant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that has swept across most of the nation’s north. Also known as the Sons of Iraq — “sahwa” is Arabic for “awakening” — U.S. officials say they hope Sunnis will be similarly stirred to fight back against the new insurgency.

As many as 3,000 core ISIL fighters, many of them foreign, are believed to be in Iraq. But U.S. intelligence officials fear twice that many Iraqi Sunnis are vulnerable to being lured into the violence — pushing the country into an outright civil war. That has prompted the White House, State Department and CIA to look for incentives to keep as many disgruntled Sunnis as possible from joining the fight.

Being Sahwa can be dangerous. One Sunni militiaman, Abu Ahmed, said he began receiving text messages from Iraqi insurgent groups four months ago, threatening him if he remained a Sahwa member. He said he reported the threats to security forces, “but nobody cared.”

“The security officials told me that the safety of my family is my own responsibility, not theirs,” said Abu Ahmed, a father of five in Muqdadiyha, a Sunni enclave outside Baghdad. Like many Iraqis, he would only identify himself by his nickname out of fear for his family’s safety. “It seems that both the government and the insurgents hate Sahwa.”

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Photo Credit: Reuters / Lorie Jewell / Multi-National Forces Iraq Public AffairsObama’s Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy

By Peter Beinart.

Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their own, far greater, failures is infuriating.

But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the president took office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has grown ever more tyrannical and ever more sectarian, driving his country’s Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama took office, Iraq watchers—including those within his own administration—have warned that unless the United States pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to put Iraq in America’s rearview mirror that, publicly at least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass. Until now, when it may be too late.

Obama inherited an Iraq where better security had created an opportunity for better government. The Bush administration’s troop “surge” did not solve the country’s underlying divisions. But by retaking Sunni areas from insurgents, it gave Iraq’s politicians the chance to forge a government inclusive enough to keep the country together.

The problem was that Maliki wasn’t interested in such a government. Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening fighters who had helped subdue al-Qaeda into Iraq’s army, Maliki arrested them. In the run-up to his 2010 reelection bid, Maliki’s Electoral Commission disqualified more than 500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party…

In recent days, many liberals have rushed to Obama’s defense simply because they are so galled to hear people like Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol lecturing anyone on Iraq. That’s a mistake. While far less egregious than George W. Bush’s errors, Obama’s have been egregious enough. By ignoring Iraq, and refusing to defend democratic principles there, he has helped spawn the disaster we see today.

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Photo Credit: AFP / Getty ImagesIn the wake of the growing crisis in Iraq, a plea for prayer and help has been issued by the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf and the Anglican vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad.

An estimated half a million people, including hundreds of Christian families, are fleeing the area with many attempting to find refuge in the nearby Kurdish provinces of Northern Iraq. At least one Assyrian church in Mosul has been burned down in the recent violence.

A statement from the diocese said that Christians are feeling particularly vulnerable, “especially in light of the treatment of Christians in the Raqqah province of northern Syria where ISIS* has also established its authority.

“Recall that, in February 2014, ISIS commanders in Raqqah forced Christian community leaders to sign a contract agreeing to a set of stringent conditions. These included the payment of a special tax (known as jizya), conduct of Christian rites only behind closed doors so as to be neither visible nor audible to Muslims, and adherence to Islamic commercial, dress code and dietary regulations.

“Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh plain is the traditional heartland of Iraq’s Christian communities. Many Christians fled to this region when forced to leave Baghdad and other areas in recent years. Christians are alarmed at the ISIS take-over of Mosul, fearful that this will further accelerate the decline of the Christian presence in Iraq.”

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