Much has been made of the pending Iraqi offensive to retake Ramadi from ISIS but it may be that Iraq’s principle city is vulnerable.
As Samoa N. Yacoub of the AP writes that:
The death toll from car bombs that targeted two prominent hotels in Baghdad a day earlier rose to 15 people, with another 42 wounded, Iraqi officials said Friday, as the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
While ISIS may not be capable of overrunning Baghdad, it might be able to put the city under a kind of internal siege, as:
The ability of extremists to target heavily secured buildings in the heart of the capital brutally underscored the city’s lingering vulnerability. The IS group has been able to carry out regular attacks in and around Baghdad, mainly targeting the security forces and the country’s Shiite majority, while battling Iraqi forces on multiple fronts elsewhere in the country.
If the government cannot secure the country’s main city, one thinks, then most likely it cannot, itself, survive. And Iraq will, along with much of the rest of the mid-East, descend still further into chaos.
