Iraq Crisis threatens to Ignite Regional War | Global Research
After overrunning Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city with a population of roughly 2 million, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a Sunni militia that is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, has continued its offensive, taking Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and a number of other towns in the Tigris River valley on the road to Baghdad.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has thrown Iraqi special forces units along with volunteers raised from the Shia population into a defensive line north of the capital in hopes of breaking the ISIS advance.
The US is reportedly beginning to evacuate some of the thousands of military and intelligence contractors deployed in the country, and there are discussions over what will be the fate of the giant US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world. What is unfolding is a monumental debacle engendered by the entire policy pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations over the course of more than a decade.
