For those who caught Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) on our statewide radio talk show, your ears might have perked up when he said that Iraq may not continue as a unified country. He had similar remarks in an interview with Breitbart News.
Plus, 9 years later and Ramadi, Iraq still matters to American veterans and their families. This, as special operations soldiers tell The Daily Beast that a small force simply allowed to do their jobs would have stopped ISIS from taking over control of Ramadi.
Breitbart.com- Rep. Ryan Zinke: ‘I’m Not Sure That Iraq Can Sustain Itself as a Unified Nation’
This past weekend, Congressman Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) joined Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow for a special Memorial Day edition of Breitbart News Radio. Zinke shared with the listening audience his insights into the fall of the city of Ramadi, Iraq, to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and the release of information about documents from the Navy SEAL Team Six Osama bin Laden raid.
Responding to Marlow’s question of what would happen if Iraq did devolve further, Zinke said:
Much [of] what we’re seeing. You have a Sunni, primarily the Anbar province and perhaps Mosul, becoming the Shia area. You have the eastern side of Iraq all the way down to Basra as a heavily Iranian influenced Iraq and the north Kurd area. You know they’ve challenged the Kurd state as Mosul would attack is [sic] you could have up to 700,000 refugees. Turkey has had about 2 million refugees, and there’s some problems in Turkey with refugees competing for jobs. The economy in Turkey isn’t great. So there’s tension not only in southern Turkey, but across Turkey itself to include the capitol–and Kurds, which oddly enough now, is a sanctuary for the Christians. Given that backdrop again, it has been an absolute nightmare for our foreign policy.
MilitaryTimes.com: Nine years on, Ramadi still matters to troops, vets, families
For a time, Ramadi was widely considered the most dangerous place in Iraq, if not the world. At least 70 U.S. troops lost their lives during the time dubbed the “Battle of Ramadi” that ran from roughly April through November of 2006. Hundreds of others died in the city and its surrounding environs during other periods of the war.
The Daily Beast- Special Ops to Obama: Let Us Fight ISIS, Already
But many special operations officers and troops both in Tampa and Washington don’t want to wait that long to take the fight to ISIS. They were eager to talk about their aggravation over fighting by remote in Iraq and Syria: having to advise Iraqis, Kurdish Peshmerga, and rebel Syrian fighters from afar instead of joining them in battle.
“We are doing everything through cellphones… It’s hard to do much when you can’t go outside the wire,” said one special operator, using the military jargon for the perimeter of a base.
He and many other officers, current and former, at the conference believe both Mosul and Ramadi could have withstood the assault of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, if a small number of U.S. military advisers had been working with Iraqi forces at the front lines.
In all, more than 1,000 Americans died in combat in Anbar province, where Ramadi is situated.
The Hill- Bolton: ‘We are losing’ to ISIS
Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Sunday that the Obama administration is getting beaten by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Breitbart.com- Woodward: Bush Did Not Lie About WMD, He Was ‘Skeptical’
Washington Examiner- House chairman: Hillary Clinton ignored Iraq, helped create ISIS
A top Republican House chairman on Thursday implicated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “disengagement” with Iraq for helping to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Middle East terror group.
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that the situation in Iraq is a “complete disaster” partly because President Obama and Clinton pulled out too quickly, leaving a home for the terror organization.