ISIS militants march closer to Baghdad. Iraq is falling apart.

Things continue to spiral out of control in Iraq.  This coming in from ITAR-TASS News Agency:

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) organization have seized the Iraqi town of Baiji in the north of the Salah-a-din province (located around 200km to the north-west of Baghdad). Iraq’s Interior Ministry said the extremists had destroyed several government buildings and surrounded a local oil refinery.

The police said the militants put on fire the Interior Ministry’s facilities and the city court and seized army weapons caches. Security forces continue to defend the refinery. Security services say the extremists are gradually approaching oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan.

Heavy fighting is underway in the regions where the terrorists have established their control, and Iraqi law enforcers continue to resist the ISIS forces and plan a counter-attack. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced a universal mobilization and urged the parliament to introduce emergency rule.

All this follows yesterday’s take over of Mosul, a major Northern Iraq city and commercial center, confirming that Iraqi’s security forces are indeed weak and disorganized since the U.S. forces withdrew from the country in December 2011.  

This summary of events from Zerohedge:

The biggest irony here is that while the US is arming “rebels” in neighboring Syria, among which numerous Al-Qaeda rebels, the weapons and the trained “fighters” then promptly make their way across the border and continue fighting the US-blessed government in Iraq!

Jessica Lewis, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, said ISIS fighters won a notable victory in Mosul.

“ISIS is designing its campaign around the state that it believes it has already created,” said Ms. Lewis, currently research director for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.

“I think that means that Iraq is going to start to look more like Syria. It’s a gauge of the severity of the conflict and the trajectory that it’s on. That’s a very bad sign.”

Obama’s foreign policy is a complete mess and disaster.  Just when you thought things could not get any worse, past missteps come back to haunt a troubled, misdirected and mismanaged geo political strategy.  Maybe its time for Obama, Kerry and Co. to play nice with Assad so as to stitch up the power vacuums in the region and squeeze al-Qaeda from the west.  Its time to start playing chess, not tic tac toe.

References:

http://en.itar-tass.com/world/735709

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-10/al-qaeda-militants-capture-us-blackhawk-helicopters-iraq