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Iraqi security forces attempting to retake control of the western city of Ramadi were routed in heavy fighting Sunday, the worst defeat for Iraq’s central government since Islamic State militants stormed across the country. In a replay of last year’s military debacle, elite units abandoned their U.S.-provided equipment to Islamic State fighters and fled the area, leaving several hundred soldiers surrounded in the last government-held enclave in the city. Multiple security sources, none of whom agreed to be identified, speaking from both within the besieged Anbar Provincial Operation Center as well as with the units fleeing the city, described the...

Russia has deployed hundreds of troops for drills in Central Asia with its ex-Soviet allies in a show of force as anxiety grows over a surge in fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan. Around 2,500 personnel from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are taking part in joint exercises due to run to Wednesday in Tajikistan. The move is seen as re-enforcing Moscow's role as the main guarantor of the fragile region's security after US troops leave Afghanistan. The Russian deployment of about 500 troops for the drills started last week, bolstered by soldiers from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus....

Iraqi state television is reporting the country's prime minister has ordered security forces not to abandon their positions in Anbar province to the Islamic State group. The order Sunday by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi came as some Iraqi forces retreated from Ramadi, the provincial capital. It wasn't clear whether Iraq still maintained any control of the city, which the Islamic State group seized much of in recent days. Already Sunday, coordinated suicide bomb attacks targeted Iraqi forces in Ramadi. Some Iraqi forces apparently left behind their weapons and vehicles. Earlier, al-Abadi ordered Shiite militias to prepare for going into the...

The Iraqi government and army officials have sent a plea to United States officials in Baghdad, asking for military support as soon as possible to prevent Ramadi, the largest city in Anbar Province, from falling to Islamic State (IS). At a meeting held in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss the latest advances of IS in Anbar, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi warned that the jihadists may take the western Iraqi province. The meeting was attended by Iraqi army commanders, the Parliament Speaker, US Ambassador Stuart Jones and a number of Iraqi political leaders. They discussed a plan to repel the IS...

Islamic State militants overran one of the last remaining districts held by government forces in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday and besieged a key army base on the edge of the western provincial capital, security sources said. The militants seized most of Ramadi on Friday, planting their black flag on the local government headquarters in the center of the city, but a contingent of Iraqi special forces was holding out in the Malaab neighborhood. Those forces retreated on Sunday to an area east of the city after suffering heavy casualties, security sources said, bringing Ramadi to the brink...

Ramadi, the provincial capital of western Iraqi Anbar, fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Friday, May 15 after its inhabitants were put to mass flight. The town, 110 km west of Baghdad, controls the traffic on the Euphrates River. Small pockets of Iraqi troops are still stranded there after taking hundreds of casualties. The jihadists are in mid-momentum of a fresh multi-pronged offensive, which they launched shortly after they lost Tikrit last month to the biggest counter-offensive they had faced since seizing large tracts of land in Iraq nearly a year ago. This momentum has carried...

Ah. That’s just great: ISIS terrorists don’t have to “sneak” into the West, they’re able to move around freely. The reason? They stole passports and other ID-documents from average Westerners and are using them as travel documents. [VIDEO] When will President Obama take the threat these radical-Islamic butchers pose seriously and destroy them? If nothing is done, it’s only a matter of time before these genocidal maniacs commit a massive terrorist attack in the West. And with massive I mean: a second 9/11. Does the Radical-in-Chief hate his own country so much that he’s willing to let that happen?

The United States is “expediting” shipments of weapons to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in light of recent gains by the terror group. Vice President Joe Biden told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-abaci on Friday the U.S. will rush the weapons to Iraq to help them try to hold the city of Ramadi, CNN reported Friday night. ISIS raised its flag over Ramadi on Friday after capturing the city’s provincial government building and police headquarters, CNN said. The shipment reportedly includes AT-4 shoulder-held rockets and ammunition.

I spent about 20 years getting people ready to answer questions from tough and even hostile inquisitors. It is what trial lawyers do. I can thus attest that over-preparing a witness can be worse than failing to prepare the witness at all. Ironically, this is especially so with a smart witness. A person of merely average intelligence is apt to follow advice. A seasoned lawyer can quickly demonstrate how foolish he can be made to look if he doesn’t listen carefully to the questions, or if he readily accepts a loaded question’s premise. The smart guy who radiates self-confidence is...

Sister Diana Momeka, OP appeared before the House of Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington D.C. on May 13, 2015. Credit: Matt Hadro/CNA. Washington D.C., May 13, 2015 / 03:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Having lost their homes, their heritage and their sense of dignity, Iraqi Christians victimized by the Islamic State feel abandoned by earthly powers, but their faith in God has only grown, an Iraqi nun told members of Congress May 13. The faith of homeless Iraqi Christians is “increasing more and more,” Sister Diana Momeka, O.P., told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. Many of the displaced lived in...

It’s not just Iraq: Bush repeatedly insists he won’t yield to popular pressure, until he does.After a week of misinterpreting, misspeaking and mismanaging the media over his position on the Iraq war, Jeb Bush’s hoped-for shock-and-awe campaign-in-waiting looked nothing like a political juggernaut. “It’s the Bad News Bears,” quipped Dave Bossie, president of the Citizens United conservative group. “The problem for Jeb Bush is he didn’t look very agile. He didn’t look smart in the sense of a rapid-response communications system that could get him out of the trouble he was in.” More troubling for Bush is that many supporters...

Islamic State Crisis: Militants Seize Ramadi Stronghold The BBC's Caroline Hawley: "Iraqi forces have lost men, morale and important ground, though they insist they will battle on" Islamic State Islamic State militants have seized the main government building in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's largest province. As many as six suicide car bombs and mortars were used in the assault on the compound that houses the main police HQ and governor's office. At least 50 police officers are reported to have been taken prisoner at the site. IS and Iraqi troops have been battling for months to take control of...

Military spouses could be able to purchase a handgun in any state without first becoming a resident if recently proposed legislation is passed into law. Under current federal law, active duty service members can purchase handguns in any state without proving they are state residents. But that law does not extend to their spouses, who must first establish state residency before making a firearm purchase. The legislation, offered by Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Va., would change that. His proposed rules would put active duty service members and their spouses on equal footing when purchasing a firearm. Rigell drafted the legislation in...

Jeb Bush has an explanation for his Iraq war flub - it's that he has a 'hard time' criticizing his family. Bush made the admission on Thursday at the Republican National Committee's spring meeting, held this year in Flagstaff, Arizona, according to ABC News. Acknowledging that 'there's a lot of interest out there' from press in determining how he's different from his ex-president brother George W. Bush, the White House hopeful and son of former president George H.W. Bush said: 'I'm not going to go out of my way to say that, you know, my brother did this wrong or...

There are numerous reports from Ramadi, Iraq that US troops have fled from the nearby Habbiniyya Base east of the city. The Ramadi city center was taken by ISIS today.

Islamic State fighters took over the main government compound in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday, giving them nearly full control over Anbar's provincial capital, the group and officials said.

“I would have invaded Iraq, and you would have too.” That is literally what Jeb Bush told Megyn Kelly in an interview set to air tonight on “Fox So-Called News.” Amazing, right? Up until this point, Jeb has done everything he can to separate himself from his brother George W. Bush’s disastrous eight years as president. Just a few months ago, for example, he went out of his way to say during a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that he was his “own man” and that his family’s track record didn’t say anything about what he would...

RENO, Nev. — “Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread. Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?” Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada....

Christians in Iraq are “on the edge of a terrible catastrophe,” an Iraqi nun said in May 13 testimony before the foreign-affairs committee of the US House of Representatives. Sister Diana Momeka, a Dominican sister who was forced to flee from Mosul, testified in Washington pleaded for help for Iraqi Christians, saying that persecution by the Islamic State has been more brutal than any suffering endured by the country’s Christians in over 1300 years. She also testified that the help furnished by Iraqi government officials for Christian refugees has been “at best modest and slow.” The Dominican sister told...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to draw a bright line between himself and Jeb Bush on the Iraq War in a CNN interview on Tuesday, definitively stating that given the absence of weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't have authorized the war. "I think President [George W.] Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was (weapons of mass destruction) and that there were other threats right there in Iraq," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "But I don't think you can honestly say that...