http://www.examiner.com/article/isis-five-miles-from-baghdad-international-airport-closing-fastTimothy Whiteman
July 5, 2014
A handful of American troops between thousands of ISIS forces and the American embassy ...
With events happening faster than they can be reported, terrorist fighters are rapidly closing in on Baghdad’s International Airport and its adjoining al-Muthanna Iraqi Air Force base. Both reporting on July 4, 2014, the Israeli news portal The Debka File and also CNN (via WCSC CBS of Charleston, SC) cite the al-Qaeda-allied terrorists have broken the military stalemate outside of Fallujah and are now much closer to Baghdad than previously reported.
A mere 25 miles west from Baghdad International Airport, the site of the hard-fought Marine Corps victory over insurgents in 2004, the city of Fallujah fell to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) terrorists earlier this year. Yet until recently the lines were static giving at least the outward appearance since winter that the Iraqi National Army had stopped ISIS in their march on the capital.
Seemingly ignored by the vast majority of the American media, ISIS fighters are now possibly just a five minute drive to the northern edges of the sprawling airport. As CNN stated matter-of-factly at the tail-end of their report, “One of the western gates of Baghdad faces toward Anbar province, the Sunni town of Abu Ghraib and areas in which it is understood there is a militant presence, if not militant control.” What CNN omitted from their reporting is that Abu Ghraib is a scant five miles from the airstrip.
Also receiving little ink in the American press is The Debka File noting that “three columns of 1,000-1,500 fighters each are descending on their target from the north and the west in US-made armored Humvees and APCs taken booty from the Iraqi army.” This comes in conjunction with Debka’s reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordering “his army’s 4th Division from the southern Shiite town of Karbala and deploying it in defense of Samarra 125 km (77 miles) north of Baghdad” essentially leaving the southern approaches into Baghdad defended by a handful of loyalist troops.
In a June 30, 2014 letter from Barack Obama to Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner (R-Ohio) and also to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the Commander-in-Chief gave the notification that he was ordering “approximately 200 additional U.S. Armed Forces personnel to Iraq” to not only bolster security at the American Embassy, but also to “reinforce security … at the Baghdad International Airport.” Earlier in the month Obama plainly promised the American people "We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq..."
