Iraq's Freedom and Dignity

"Ramadi has fallen to Daesh."
"There were many suicide bombers and many soldiers and officers are dead."
Iraqi military officer

"We welcome any group, including Shia militias, to come and help us in liberating the city from the militants. What happened today is a big loss caused by lack of good planning by the military."
Naeem al-Gauoud, tribal leader

"Victory will be in the side of Iraq because Iraq is defending its freedom and dignity."
Iraqi military statement 

Iraq security forces withdraw from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Iraq's premier special forces unit, the Golden Brigade, withdrew to the Stadium neighbourhood south of Ramadi, waiting for reinforcements, and to plan a counter attack. In so doing they abandoned their position, retreated from the area while under attack by Islamic State forces. One police officer affirmed that around 500 soldiers and police officers had fled the area, most of them on foot.

The main highway that links Ramadi to Baghdad roughly 100 kilometres' distance, now controlled by Islamic State.

Last year's military debacle might have been the practise run for this year's rout of the Iraqi military. Its premier forces, no less. Upon which the United States has once again lavished training exercises, and additional arms, to replace those lost at Mosul, when the Iraqi military forces turned tail and couldn't abandon their posts fast enough, in terrorized fear of the advance of Islamic State jihadists, welcomed by many of the Sunni residents of Mosul.

Ramadi, as the provincial capital of the country's Anbar province, has huge value both to the state and to the Islamic State. The battle for control of the capital of Iraq's largest province is now concluded. The Shiite militia reinforcements whom Prime Minister Haider al Abadi sent to the rescue of the Iraqi troops were completely crushed by Islamic State fighters.

"Only God can save us", wailed an officer from the operations centre.

This was the last government-held position within the city. Several hundred police and soldiers, according to the officer speaking by telephone, were surrounded inside the command centre, and being attacked repeatedly by suicide bombers and heavy artillery fire. Their last routes of escape were being completely cut off; Iraq's military not performing a very convincing role as defenders of the country's "freedom and dignity".

Those same Iraqi forces had been deploying themselves with the intention of retaking Ramadi when it was attacked late Thursday, falling into Islamic State's more martyrdom-capable hands by Saturday. The fleeing soldiers abandoned U.S.-supplied armoured vehicles, artillery, heavy machine guns and other war gear, all of which will prove, once again, to be extremely useful to their adversaries.