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In late April, a commander for Islamic State said his forces were ready to launch an offensive to take Ramadi, and the group called for fighters to redeploy to Iraq from Syria.

Iraqi forces recaptured territory from advancing Islamic State militants near the recently-fallen city of Ramadi on Sunday, while in Syria the government said the Islamists had killed hundreds of people since capturing the town of Palmyra. The fall of Ramadi and Palmyra, on opposite ends of the vast territory controlled by ISIS fighters, were the militant group's biggest successes since a US-led coalition launched an air war to stop them last year. The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy, which involves bombing from the air but leaving fighting on the...

US Vice President Joe Biden on Monday sought to end an embarrassing rift between Washington and Baghdad after Pentagon boss Ashton Carter blamed Iraqi forces for the fall of Ramadi. The White House said Biden called Iraqi's prime minister Haider al-Abadi, just hours after the US Defense Secretary's suggested the Islamic State group won control of the city because "Iraqi forces showed no will to fight," according to AFP. Biden "recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past eighteen months in Ramadi and elsewhere," the White House said. As well as rowing back Carter's comments, Biden...

Ash Carter & the official WH line is that the Iraqis don't have the will to fight. The video doesn't quite agree. *No air support; *No ammunition

But it's not just Ramadi that Obama has neglected. Fact is, the so-called air war against ISIS is a fraud “The Cemetery of the Americans.” That’s what graffiti said in the western Iraq city of Ramadi when I first embedded there in 2006. Indeed, my two journalist predecessors in Camp Corregidor were both shot be snipers. Within weeks the first SEAL to die in Iraq would be killed, another mortally wounded. My own Public Affairs officer was killed, and later the first SEAL to win the Medal of Honor in Iraq would die there. It was the hardest-fought battle of...

Why Ramadi matters: The fall of Ramadi is highly symbolic and of substantial strategic significance, despite the protestations to the contrary of Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. In a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on April 16, Dempsey stated: "The city itself is not symbolic is any way. It's not been declared part of the (Islamic State) caliphate or central to the future of Iraq, but we want to get it back. The issue here is not brick and mortar, it's about defeating ISIL." In fact, Ramadi is considered by ISIS...

In April and May 2004, the 4th Marines—the very same units that stormed the beach at Iwo Jima—took heavy losses while engaging insurgents loyal to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party in heavy fighting for the city of Ramadi. USA Today posted this report, On April 6, Lance Cpl. Deshon Otey, 24, of Hardin, Ky., was the sole survivor of an attack on his Humvee that killed seven of his comrades in Echo Company. His only wounds were nightmares, Otey said later. "I always see these guys with turbans. They come up and just start slaughtering all of us," he said. A...

Global View Columnist Bret Stephens on President Obama's reaction to the fall of Ramadi and Palmyra. Video 3:28

WASHINGTON — THE fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday, and of the Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, is a big gain for the Islamic State, but not an utter disaster, as many observers fear. Rather than inducing panic in Western capitals, it should lead to a realistic assessment of the Islamic State’s strengths and weaknesses. One setback in a long war must not trigger hasty strategic shifts that lead to foreign countries’ becoming mired in Iraq once more. Palmyra has economic and cultural significance, as it sits among gas fields and is home to renowned ruins....

The US Department of Defense “Pentagon” accused the Iraqi army of leaving behind large quantities of weapons and ammunition when it pulled out of the city of Ramadi on Sunday. The weapons, which have been seized by ISIS, include tanks, armored vehicles and heavy guns. After the fall of the city of Mosul at the hands of ISIS last June, the latter have seized massive amounts of American weapons and sophisticated gear left by the Iraqi army. After this date ISIS became stronger; it doubled its strength and its fighters became roaming by “Humvee” vehicles and American tanks and they...

The White House description of the fall of Ramadi to ISIS forces we have supposedly been busy degrading and destroying as a “setback” is like the British calling Dunkirk in World War II a strategic withdrawal. Ramadi is a defeat, the result of the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by President Obama against the advice of military minds who know better about these things than the former community organizer from Illinois. It is a defeat for President Obama’s foreign policy, a rebuke of his fundamental transformation of America’s role in the world from a leader who shaped events...

Shiite militias have surged into Iraq's Anbar province, a largely Sunni region, in a government-sanctioned bid to recapture the provincial capital Ramadi, which was seized in its entirety by the jihadists of the Islamic State at the end of last week. Thousands have fled the city, which is about 80 miles west of Baghdad. Ramadi's fall poses a problem for U.S. officials, who have sought to paint a picture of a weakening Islamic State. One Pentagon spokesman told reporters that the city's capture was part of "complex, bloody fight" in which "there are going to be ebbs and flows." The...

Iraqi troops abandoned dozens of U.S military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Islamic State fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees. He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not because they had not been moved for months. This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year,...

ISIS held a massive parade in West Anbar province celebrating victory in Ramadi.

The Obama administration Monday called the fall of the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province to the Islamic State a temporary setback that Iraqi forces would reverse with U.S. support. Experts dismissed that assessment as ludicrous. “Delusional, really, is the better word,” Ali Khedery, a former U.S. official who served as an adviser to five U.S. ambassadors to Iraq and three heads of U.S. Central Command, said of the administration’s statement. “It’s unbelievable, frankly. I now know what it’s like to have lived through Vietnam, I guess.” Experts called the loss a stunning blow to the Iraqi government and U.S. strategy....

Of all of the questions Hillary Clinton will evade on the campaign trail this week, none are more important than those she will not answer on Iraq. Clinton holds the unique distinction in the 2016 field of having supported the unpopular Iraq policies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She supported Bush’s invasion and Obama’s withdrawal, and in both cases was tracking with public opinion when she started. After Bush’s war got unpopular, Clinton recanted. And one supposes that as Obama’s policy for that woe-begotten nation and its region continues to displease voters, Clinton will be tempted to...

ISIS held a massive parade in West Anbar province celebrating victory in Ramadi. ... So where is the Coalition of the Willing?

The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi'ite, to send in the militias to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq. Washington, which is leading a campaign of air strikes to roll back Islamic State advances and struggling to rebuild Baghdad's shattered army, played down the significance of the loss of Ramadi, the capital of the vast western Anbar province. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was a "target of opportunity," that could be retaken in a matter of days, and...

Via Islamic World News, this was Ramadi on Friday. The red represents Iraqi forces, the dark gray ISIS, and the magenta areas, including bridges, were contested. On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey was asked about Ramadi’s imminent fall. “The city itself is — it’s not symbolic in any way. It’s not been declared, you know, part of the caliphate, on the one hand, or central to the future of Iraq. But we want to get it back. I mean, the issue here is not — is not brick and mortar. It’s about defeating ISIL....

The posters of President Bashar al-Assad once hung proud in Syria’s capital. Supporters of the regime would confidently predict the defeat of the “terrorists” - the accepted term for the rebel opposition. In the last few weeks, however, the the insurgents have turned the tide of the civil war by winning a string of battlefield victories against Mr Assad’s forces. In the north, a newly unified rebel coalition called the “Army of Conquest” managed to capture Idlib, a provincial capital, and much of the surrounding territory.