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As U.S. and Iraqi forces prepare to launch an offensive to retake Mosul, we found out this week that 615 more troops will be deployed to assist in intelligence gathering for the Iraqi government forces that will be spearheading the attack. The number of U.S personnel already in Iraq is estimated between 4,900-6,400 men (via NBC News): The Department of Defense is preparing to dispatch 615 more U.S. troops to Iraq to help government forces oust ISIS from the city of Mosul, the White House announced Wednesday. The soldiers will provide logistics support for the Iraqi forces and not spearhead...

Presidential candidate Donald Trump's continued condemnations of former President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 have irritated many of his political opponents, including Bush's younger brother and Trump's rival for the Republican nomination, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. During the recent Republican candidates' debate in Greenville, South Carolina, Trump, in addition to calling the invasion of Iraq "a big fat mistake," responded to Jeb Bush's defense of his brother's record by reminding listeners that the 9/11 attacks had occurred while George W. was president.The heated exchange was prompted by a question posed to Trump by moderator John...

The relationship between money supply growth and economy became truly tenuous during the housing mania of the middle 2000’s. The reason was simply that asset bubbles (inflation) are highly inefficient and so produce great imbalances in the liquidity and monetary structures that link money to economy. Banks were making money in money dealing activities based solely on the premise that the entire system could and would continue expanding on that insane baseline as if permanent; and if it were ever interrupted by recession, as 2001, then that would be a trivial and temporary deviation. This was the outlook of not...

Washington -- Jurors in the murder and manslaughter trial of four Blackwater Worldwide security guards concluded their 15th day of deliberations on Thursday with no verdict in sight, showing that the group of 12 is painstakingly considering the issues of the complex case, which may work in the defense's favor, experts say. For 10 weeks, the Blackwater jury heard testimony alleging that Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and some other members of Blackwater's Raven 23 convoy fired shots in Baghdad's Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, killing 14 Iraqis and injuring 18 others. But the 12-person jury...

Iraqi security forces backed by US advisers have captured the head of the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al Islam. Abu Abdullah al Shafi, the leader of Ansar al Islam, or Partisans of Islam, was detained along with seven "criminal associates" during raids in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Mansour and Adhamiyah on May 3, US Forces Iraq reported in a press release.

Iraq’s president snubbed incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and picked another politician Monday to form the next government, setting up a fierce political power struggle even as the country battles extremists in the north and west. The showdown came as the United States increased its role in fighting back Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group that is threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in the north. Senior American officials said U.S. intelligence agencies are directly arming the Kurds who are battling the militants in what would be a shift in Washington’s policy of only working through the central government in...

We may as well finish up the weekend on yet another inexplicable appearance by the Commander in Chief. And this one is a doozy, picked up by Joel Gehrke at The Corner. The President, during his brief, pre-tee off time availability this weekend, chose to address what a mess Iraq currently is and whether or not our lack of presence there had anything to do with it. Well, it did, but it obviously wasn’t his fault. He never really wanted to leave in the first place. President Obama refused to take responsibility for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Marine who was declared a deserter nearly 10 years ago after disappearing in Iraq and then returning to the U.S. claiming he had been kidnapped, only to disappear again, is back in U.S. custody, officials said Sunday. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 34, turned himself in and was being flown Sunday from an undisclosed location in the Middle East to Norfolk, Va. He is to be moved Monday to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to a spokesman, Capt. Eric Flanagan. Maj. Gen. Raymond Fox, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Lejeune, will determine whether...

BAGHDAD — American and Iraqi officials have completed nearly the last chapter in dismantling Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program with the removal of hundreds of tons of natural uranium from the country’s main nuclear site. The uranium, which was removed several weeks ago, arrived in Canada over the weekend, according to officials. The removal was first reported by The Associated Press. [snip] American military personnel helped move about 600 tons of uranium in the form called yellowcake. It had been stored at Tuwaitha, an installation 12 miles south of Baghdad, which had been the site of Iraq’s nuclear program. [snip] This...

Americans are tired of war. For the 17 members of Congress who served in Iraq, that means watching helplessly as the cities they fought for fall once more to extremists. Militants believed to be associated with al-Qaida overtook Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on Tuesday. The group then seized Tikrit, hometown of former President Saddam Hussein, on Wednesday.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that she “could not have predicted” the effectiveness of the al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group that seized control this week of two major Iraqi cities. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaida since 2004, captured the western Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Mosul, expanding its influence across the entire Sunni-dominated western region of Iraq in addition to Syria — where it remains one of the strongest rebel factions fighting dictator Bashar al-Assad. The group, led by enigmatic terrorist Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, evolved out of al-Qaida’s Bush-era...

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. The U.S. official told TheBlaze that...

And not just Mosul, according to some reports, but the entire northern province of Nineveh has now fallen into al-Qaeda’s control. Parliamentarians from the region want a declaration of emergency and immediate government intervention, but the forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists...

Adam Banotai was a 21-year-old sergeant and squad leader in the Marine Corps during the 2004 invasion of Falluja, a restive insurgent-held city in Iraq. His unit — which had seven of 17 men wounded by shrapnel or bullets in the first days of the invasion — seized control of the government center early in the campaign. So when Sunni insurgents, some with allegiances to Al Qaeda, retook the city this month and raised their black insurgent flag over buildings where he and his men fought, he was transfixed, disbelieving and appalled.

I have a friend who fought in Fallujah. He is boisterous and confident and full of life. He has the can-do spirit that defines himself and all who have worn the blue cord of the Army Infantry. But yesterday he was broken. As he talked about the Iraq war, and specifically the fight for Fallujah, there was a sadness that doesn’t come out in the speeches and books. There wasn’t the never-say-die confidence of a veteran non-commissioned officer, there was instead the dazed uncertainty of a man who looks back and wonders what the hell it was all about. Why...

<p>Facing a deadly resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq, President Barack Obama signaled Friday that he will begin increasing U.S. military support for Baghdad after five years of reducing it.</p> <p>The new U.S. plan represents a remarkable shift for Obama, whose administration trumpeted the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq as a major achievement and has since shifted its attention to other regional challenges, such as Syria, Egypt and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>

The unpopular war hurt Republicans, but Obama’s failures could help. Is the Iraq War to blame for the mess we are in?Now, I should qualify that question by explaining “mess” and “we.” By “mess,” I mean the dawn of Barack Obama’s second term, the predictably catastrophic rollout of Obamacare, the exploding debt and deficit, the stimulus boondoggles, etc. By “we,” I mean conservatives (particularly those, like me, who supported the war), but also anyone else who doesn’t think Obama has done a bang-up job.There seems to be a growing consensus that the answer to that question is “yes.” In a...

I’d like to think the ranks of constitutional conservatism were immune to the scourge of “trendiness” — but, embracing the biblical concept of man’s fallen nature, I know better. Even “right-wingers” like myself can be susceptible to societal fads. For a few years, for instance, it’s been au courant in some precincts to claim political conservative bona-fides while trashing the incomparable Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. More common is the growing, “edgy” tendency to own “fiscal restraint” and “small government” convictions while junking traditional “social issues”. This past week, marking the tenth anniversary of America’s Iraq invasion, another example of...

FORT HUACHUCA — Army Capt. Christopher Seifert was in his mid-20s and the father of a son, who was born about four months before a fellow soldier killed Seifart and Air Force Maj. Gregory L. Stone on March 23, 2003, at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait. Friday, a day before the 10-year anniversary of Seifert’s death, he was remembered on this southern Arizona Army post — the home of the Intelligence Center — in front of a building named after him on the fort where he received his intelligence training. Although he never had the opportunity to cross the berm into...

WASHINGTON — It's the question asked by Gold Star families — the loved ones of our fallen — when I meet them at funerals or public events. It is spoken quietly by the spouses of grievously wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines when I visit military and veterans hospitals. And it's in the correspondence I receive from parents and friends of those who have left something on the battlefield: "Was it worth it?" A decade ago this week, when Operation Iraqi Freedom began, this wasn't a question posed to our Fox News team. While cameras in Baghdad captured the...