Obama Surrenders Iraq

**American Patriot** · June 23rd, 2014, 15:11

Sunni Militants Seize Crossing on Iraq-Jordan Border

By SUADAD AL-SALHY and TIM ARANGOJUNE 23, 2014

BAGHDAD — Sunni militants seized the border crossing between Iraq and Jordan late Sunday night as they consolidated control of Iraq’s vast western region. The seizing of the crossing, known as Turabil, raised the specter of the insurgency’s becoming a menace not just to Iraq and Syria, where they already control territory, but also to Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The advance by the militants followed their seizing of an important border crossing with Syria at Qaim, allowing them to move fighters and supplies almost unimpeded between the areas they control in Syria and Iraq. A third border crossing, Al Waleed, was also said to be in militant hands on the Iraqi side, though officials said the Syrian army still controlled the Syrian side of that crossing, indicating that at least for now, the militants could not cross freely there.
The Iraqi government said it had abandoned the Qaim crossing as a “tactical” decision as it concentrates its forces — Iraqi army units and Shiite militias — around Baghdad and in the Shiite heartland of Iraq.

Iraqi security forces patrolled the outskirts of central Iraq's Shiite holy city of Karbala on Monday.

Credit Mohammed Sawaf/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Baghdad on Monday morning for talks with Iraqi leaders, urging them to form an inclusive government, as they face the grave threat from Sunni insurgents, many of them fighting under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS. In recent weeks the militants have gained control of large areas of northern and western Iraq, including Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, as the government’s forces were routed or melted away.

**ISIS: Behind the Group Overrunning Iraq**

Background on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Islamist group that gained control of the second-largest city in Iraq.
Credit Uncredited/Militant Website, via Associated Press

Meanwhile, in Hilla, south of Baghdad, dozens of Sunni prisoners were said have been killed as they were being transported by security forces to a more secure prison. As the troubling news emerged about a new sectarian massacre, officials gave conflicting explanations.

Security officials said that at least 69 prisoners were killed, many of them senior leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the forerunner of ISIS. One account, given by an intelligence officer in Hilla who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the policemen who were transporting the prisoners “just stopped the buses on the highway before they reached their final destination and shot them dead.”

However, other security and local officials said the convoy was ambushed by militants, and that some prisoners died during the clashes.
Sadiq al-Sultani, the governor of Hilla, said at a news conference on Monday that “the convoy of prisoners was attacked by militants on the highway,” and that 10 militants and 15 prisoners were killed. “The rest of the prisoners were transported to another jail,” he said.
The episode in Hilla follows the discovery in a police station last week of the bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners who were held by the Shiite-led Iraqi government in Baquba, north of Baghdad.