Running

What does hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars "training" the Iraqi military get you?

Not much.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters.

So many soldiers had fled Mosul that the price of firearms plummeted as troops flooded the market with their service weapons, said Shirzad, a taxi driver at the border of Iraqi Kurdistan, who had been ferrying Iraqi army deserters from the checkpoint towards Kirkuk.

Gotta hand it to the bad guys. At least they know what they are trying to do.

Statements released by the group claimed that the assault on Mosul was the beginning of the end of the Sykes Picot agreement - the post-colonial settlement which in 1916 enshrined the nation states of Syria and Lebanon and influenced the drawing of the Jordan and Iraq borders. Isis commanders say they are fighting to destroy the post-Ottoman nation state borders and restore a caliphate that submits to fundamentalist Islamic law.

A new "Baghdad Bob".

"Mosul is capable of getting back on its feet and getting rid of all the outsiders …and we have a plan to restore security," he said. "We have taken practical steps in order to restore order … by mobilising people into public committees that would retake the city."

Let me know how that works out.

Orders are orders?

Tikrit is located, said in an interview Wednesday: “We received phone calls from high-ranking commanders asking us to give up. I questioned them on this, and they said, ‘This is an order.’

Residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.

U.S. response?

The expanding muscle of the Islamic extremists should inspire the Obama administration to put the Middle East back on its foreign policy priority list and step in with military aid and guidance, said Patrick Johnston, a counter-terrorism analyst with Rand Corp.

Sure. Because D.C. leadership has being going from victory to victory in the M.E. That will strike fear into the incoming new management for Iraq.

The fat lady is warming up:

U.S. officials in Washington said they have been increasing deliveries to the Iraqi government of military equipment, from F-16 fighters and Hellfire missiles to small arms and ammunition. But they concede that the materiel is likely to have little influence on the immediate fight; the first delivery of an F-16 was made only this week.

Few who monitor the insurgency expect the Maliki government to prevail on its own.

"If the insurgents are able to take control of the Baiji oil refinery, they will be able to raise more funds and that should help them become stronger in the short term," Johnston said. "ISIS is going to control a large chunk of the country for quite some time."

Maybe a few rapid response brigades of hash tags will turn back the tide?