Iraq & ISIL.

This is coolbert:

Is everyone following events in Iraq?

That collapse of the army loyal to the central government in Baghdad rather precipitous and unexpected.

The lightly armed but inspired highly motivated Sunni rebels [ISIL] now capturing and occupying that center of the nation.

The cities of Ramadi, Fallujah, Tikrit, and now Mosul and perhaps Kirkuk. Mosul the second largest city in the country.

Years of training the Iraqi National Army [regular forces] seems to have gone for naught.

NO MATTER that degree of training and equipment as supplied by American forces, the Iraqi regular forces seem to have just melted away and vanished. The rebels now having gotten their hands on heavy equipment.

The situation so dynamic and fast-changing even the proverbial score-card is not of help in this instance.

Almost seems too like Vietnam was in 1975. Those many of thousands or tens of thousands of Americans remaining in the country had better be prepared to flee for their lives. Or so it seems.

From a source however who knows this stuff we have a less depressing assessment:

"The radicals, I think, have shot their bolt.  They are strong, have control of much territory, and have captured heavy weapons, but I think they will end up like the radical Islamist groups in Lebanon, Somalia, and Syria: controlling a segment of a country but unable to take over, leaving what is like a festering, unhealing wound for years or decades.  At that point, one might consider Iraq a failed state, if ISIL [the rebels] stays in a portion of the country. "

That combination of Kurd militia [much more than a mere militia], Shia militia, and various Iranian factions to include regular army units if needed able to stop the forward progress of these Sunni fighters. The whole place NOT GOING DOWN THE DRAIN!

But a failed state nonetheless.

And failure for U.S. policy and efforts too.

coolbert.