This video from yesterday shows the Iraqi Army being marched by ISIS out of Tikrit.
What fate awaits these Iraqi Troops?
(Via NRO) Did the Department of Defense just reveal that former President Clinton lied to America in 1993?
Could be.
At the Bergdahl/Hagel hearing going on in the House today, Democrat Rep. Adam Smith asked DoD General Counsel Stephen Preston for a specific example from the past where the United States “dealt with non-state actors who are holding a service member in order to achieve their recovery.” (more…)
IRAQ – The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is preparing contingency plans to evacuate its employees if necessary now that one of the deadliest Islamic militant groups in the region has taken control of large swaths of Iraq, a U.S. official told TheBlaze.
The State Department also warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Iraq, following several days of bloody clashes between insurgents with the Al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Iraqi military forces.
ISIL has taken control of Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah and aims to create an Islamic state across the Iraq-Syria border. (read more)
“Hey I’d really like to stay and have lunch with you guys but, ..um, .. well, I’ve seen how this ends before.” – “But, hey, thanks anyway”….. “TTFN”
Blow by Blow Recap (more…)
WASHINGTON DC – The White House plans no discipline in connection with the accidental release to the press last month of the identity of the CIA’s station chief in Afghanistan, but is planning more safeguards to prevent such a mistake in the future, a White House spokesman said Wednesday.
“In all of these circumstances we are balancing our commitment to transparency with the need to protect some information for national security reasons,” spokesman Josh Earnest said, briefing reporters on a review conducted by White House Counsel Neil Eggleston. (more…)
IRAQ – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham continues its lightning advance southward after seizing control of Mosul, the country’s second largest city, and the province of Ninewa and other areas of Salahaddin and Kirkuk provinces yesterday. ISIS has now captured the Salahaddin cities of Bayji, which has Iraq’s largest oil refinery, and Tikrit, the provincial capital.
ISIS units traveling in a convoy of more than 60 vehicles advanced into Bayji last night, and torched several government buildings, court houses, and police headquarters, according to ITAR-TASS and Reuters. ISIS fighters are said to have surrounded the refinery and sent a delegation to security forces who are holding out in the complex.
After seizing Bayji, ISIS fighters moved to take control of Tikrit, the provincial capital and home town of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
Tikrit is now said to be effectively under ISIS control. According to Samarra Al-Gharbiyah News, the provincial government center in Tikrit was overrun by ISIS fighters and Governor Ahmad Abdallah is reported to have been captured… (more…)
(Via FOX News) The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.
The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.
Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks – then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – as well as the assault’s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.
In an exclusive interview on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier:
“Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”
A separate U.S. official, one with intimate details of the bloody events of that night, confirmed the major’s assertion. (more…)
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…)
Beep Beep * Beep Beep * Beep Beep * {{backing up}} Chuck Hagel testifying on the distinct premise “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission“…..
Full statement video below (more…)