https://twitter.com/Nyghtewynd/statuses/478193646328881152

Thank God our independent media is there to grill Mitt Romney and hold him to account for Iraq.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 15, 2014

Oh the Irony !!

Pres Obama playing a round of golf toay at Porcupine Creek in Rancho Mirage, a 249-acre private club owned by Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 15, 2014

Funny, well sort of, “it takes a Bush to protect vital U.S. interests” ie. American Citizens…. (the headlines write themselves) ….

WASHINGTON DC […] Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush to move from the North Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, which CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported Friday was expected to happen. The Bush is carrying fighter jets that could easily get to Iraq.

“The order will provide the commander in chief additional flexibility should military options be required to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq,” Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement Saturday.

A guided-missile cruiser, the USS Philippine Sea, and a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Truxtun, would accompany the carrier, Kirby said.  [*NOTE* The ships carry Tomahawk missiles… /SD]  The ships were expected to arrive in the Gulf later Saturday.

Fighters from the al Qaeda splinter group, drawing support from former Saddam Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis, have made dramatic gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday. Soldiers and policemen have melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have fled to the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq. (more…)

Nero fiddles…

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — President Barack Obama is spending a long Father’s Day weekend in the California desert oasis of Rancho Mirage.

The president and first lady arrived at the Palm Springs airport Friday night after visiting an Indian reservation earlier in the day.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, are greeted on the tarmac by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., second from left, and her husband Stewart Boxer, left, as they arrive on Friday, June 13, 2014, in Palm Springs, Calif.

They are staying with White House decorator Michael Smith and his partner, U.S. Ambassador to Spain James Costos, at their vacation home. (more…)

Alarming to YOU, but not necessarily to the White House fundraising team headed to Palm Springs.

Against the videos of thousands of Iraqi troops being road-marched by ISIS islamists fighters, new reports outline 1,700 of them may have ended with a mass execution:

Screenshot official ISIS account that claims they executed 1700 Shiite soldiers. They surrendered in #Tikrit ystrdy pic.twitter.com/7QyMnEuAAo

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) June 13, 2014

Additionally WND is reporting the U.S. security contractors in Baland Air Force Base are surrounded by thousands of the islamists and are fighting them amid the chaos. (more…)

It’s always the “also attending’s” that tell the story:

Click to SuperSize  😉

President Barack Obama convenes an Oval Office meeting with his national security team to discuss the situation in Iraq, June 13, 2014.

Seated with the President from left: Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration; Vice President Joe Biden; National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, and Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns.

Also attending the meeting were Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Tony Blinken, Deputy National Security Advisor; and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

(more…)

Back in 2011, amid the discussions of withdrawal from Iraq, and the debate over how many troops would be needed to maintain a stable environment, two influential names rose to the surface, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough. Both Donilon and McDonough overrode the Pentagon advice, and advised President Obama to dismiss the military and heed their counsel instead.

New York Times October 2011:

In August [2011], after debates between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the Americans settled on the 3,000 to 5,000 number, which was reported in August. According to two people briefed on the matter, one inside the administration and one outside, the arguments of two White House officials, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, and his deputy, Denis McDonough, prevailed over those of the military.

Intelligence assessments that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces were a factor in the decision, an American official said.  (link)

(more…)

This video from yesterday shows the Iraqi Army being marched by ISIS out of Tikrit.

What fate awaits these Iraqi Troops?

-warning graphic imagery below-

(more…)

Mass beheadings reported in northern Iraq as al-Qaeda forces take Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town – LIVE LINK UPDATES HERE

Tikrit, Iraq (AFP) – Militants took control of the Iraqi city of Tikrit and freed hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, police said, the second provincial capital to fall in two days.

“All of Tikrit is in the hands of the militants,” a police colonel said of the Salaheddin provincial capital, which lies roughly half way between Baghdad and Iraq’s second city Mosul which fell on Tuesday.

A police brigadier general said that the militants attacked from the north, west and south of the city, and that they were from powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A police major said the militants had freed some 300 inmates from a prison in the city. (more…)

If Eli Lake leaves the Daily Beast you will see this level of exposition stop immediately.  Despite his leftist leanings on the subject of Libya and Islamic extremism Mr. Lake is perhaps the most accurate of all reporters on the specifics.  We  give him props for swimming against the tide of his colleges and outlining the falsehoods present in the Obama ‘head-in-the-sand’ hypocrisy around Islam.  -SD

(Via Eli Lake – Daily Beast) In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.

But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’” (more…)