This seems like a rather sudden and major increase in 'insurgency' capability - where did it come from?
Will Iran come to the 'rescue' (subjugation) of the Iraqi Shia? Or have they been spread too thin by Syria/Lebanon, Pakistan, & internal troubles?
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 to Iraq's teetering stability.
Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.
The speed with which one of Iraq's biggest cities has fallen under militant control is striking and suggests the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces are even more vulnerable than had previously been thought.
The capture of the airport, which had served as a major hub for the U.S. military, could not be independently confirmed, but Nujaifi said it had been seized and that all of the aircraft there also were captured.
| This is very bad: the Iraqi soldiers broke and ran. They left behind a large cache of American-supplied weapons which now are in the hands of the ISIS. And Mosul is a big city; hard to write this off. |
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