Let’s get the McCain story out of the way first….

Back in May 2013 Republican Senator John McCain made a secret trip to Syria to talk to the forces fighting against Assad.

ANALYSIS – The uprising against the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad was still young when moderate rebels made their plea to Washington: Provide us with arms so we might fight the dictator — and prevent the rise of more extremist groups.
But President Barack Obama, who had come into office on the promise of drawing down American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, was reluctant. He was not getting into another Middle East mess.
Now, however, those same extremist groups feared by the moderates have gone on a murderous rampage through Iraq and Syria, slaying security forces and civilians and openly bragging about it on Twitter. After the fighters captured a strategic dam and sent tens of thousands of people on the run in northern Iraq, creating a humanitarian crisis, Washington was finally forced to respond. On Friday, U.S. forces bombed Islamic State positions near the Kurdish city of Erbil.
If the previous administration was too eager to get into Iraq; the current administration was all too hesitant.
(more…)

(Via Daily Beast)  In a major defeat for Kurdish forces the Iraqi town of Sinjar was captured Sunday by the group known as ISIS, now calling itself the Islamic State. This is the Kurds first major loss to ISIS and a catastrophe for the religious minorities who had taken refuge in the area and are now at imminent risk of being slaughtered.
Reports from the region describe an unfolding tragedy with young women being abducted, religious monuments destroyed, and the ISIS flag now hanging over government buildings. (more…)

If your children are old enough to be in college, they probably think the country they were born into is falling apart.  If you’re a Baby Boomer like myself, you know the country you were born into is already gone.  It’s a hard thing to thwart the general feeling of optimism shared by most Americans during a beautiful summer season.  But, if you stop and take a thoughtful assessment of the disasters currently befalling our world, perhaps you’ll see that the fall might be closer than you think.

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The summer of 2014 will go down in history as the season when America fell apart. Let’s take a tour of the disasters…

(Townhall)…Germany in 2008 enthusiastically hosted candidate Barack Obama for his so-called “Victory Column” speech. Now, Germans suddenly sound as if they are near-enemies of the U.S. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly was furious that her cell phone was tapped by American intelligence agents. She just kicked the top CIA official out of Germany, further enraged that the U.S. had recruited at least one German official to provide intelligence on the German government. Polls show that Germans find Vladimir Putin’s Russian tyranny almost as popular as Barack Obama’s America.
Japan is becoming similarly frustrated with the U.S. It is rearming like crazy to confront an aggressive China. Both Asian powers apparently assume that Obama won’t guarantee the security of the Japanese as America had in the past. (more…)

On the heels of finding out that ISIS leadership had developed their Jihad objectives in a Hello Kitty notebook, an enterprising researcher has uncovered video of the secret ISIS meeting on the border of Syria and Iraq.  (must watch video)

Baghdad (AFP) – The leader of the Islamic State jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, purportedly ordered all Muslims to obey him in a video released Saturday on social media.

The hitherto elusive Baghdadi, who on June 29 proclaimed a “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq, made his appeal in a sermon delivered on Friday in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, wearing a black turban and robe. (more…)

ISIS jihadists have declared the captured territories from Iraq’s Diyala province to Syria’s Aleppo a new Islamic State – a ‘caliphate.’ They removed ‘Iraq and the Levant’ from their name and urged other radical Sunni groups to pledge their allegiance.

ISIS announced that it should now be called ‘The Islamic State’ and declared its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as “the caliph” of the new state and “leader for Muslims everywhere,” the radical Sunni militant group said in an audio recording distributed online on Sunday.
This is the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 that a Caliph – which means a political successor to Prophet Muhammad – has been declared. The decision was made following the group’s Shura Council meeting on Sunday, according to ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani.  (link)

HatTip Weasel Zippers – This is the same thing that happened in Egypt under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood.
IRAQ – One of the last Christian strongholds in Iraq came under attack this week, and its last remaining citizens are making a desperate plea to the United States for help.
Until this week, Qaraqosh was a town where Christians from other parts of Iraq could find refuge. But late Wednesday night, ISIS rebels started shelling Qaraqosh, provoking a mass exodus on Thursday.
According to various reports, anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 citizens have fled. The Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Yohanna Petros Mouche, has remained behind with around 1,000 of the town’s inhabitants who do not have cars or other means of leaving. (more…)

This will throw a pickle in the grand scheme of Ketchup Kerry.  With al-Qaeda essentially conceding the more radical ISIL Army is the more powerful Islamist force – the Ideological alignment within Syria leaves barely a ‘smidgen’ of room for moderation.   Of course this merge begs the question how long will Russia stay de-facto aligned to Assad? 

SYRIA – A Syrian rebel group closely aligned with al Qaeda’s official central leadership has switched sides and is now supporting an ultra-violent offshoot, following the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’s blitzkrieg attack on Iraq, according to U.S. officials and reports from the region.
A local unit of the Al Nusra Front—the official rebel group of al Qaeda in Syria—agreed to back the ISIL on Wednesday.
The merger of one portion of al Nusra with ISIL is being viewed by government intelligence analysts and others as a troubling indicator that the inner battle between the two groups may be shifting in ISIL’s favor. (more…)