Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey's told Marth Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" that ISIS fighters got to within 16 miles of Baghdad's airport in Iraq earlier this week. Framing that distance in a way those in the nation's out of touch Beltway political class will understand, that's the driving distance from the U.S. Capitol Building to Tysons Corner Mall in Northern Virginia. The U.S. had to call in Apache helicopters to prevent Iraqi forces from being overrun.
ABC's Benjamin Bell, in preparing his 12:50 p.m. report on the Dempsey interview, saved that startling piece of information for his fourth paragraph and kept it out of his headline. It's almost as if he was hoping that no one will want to watch the report's accompanying video, which is nowhere near as blasé about that news.
Here's most of Bell's report:
Dempsey: ‘Challenging Task’ Against ISIS Without Sunni Support for Iraq Government
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said today that the fight against ISIS would remain a “very challenging task” until the Iraqi government is able to win over the substantial Sunni population living between the capital cities of Iraq and Syria.
“The government of Iraq, which is moving but has not yet achieved a narrative that would cause the 20 million Sunnis who live between Damascus and Baghdad to believe that their future is with the government of Iraq, in the case of Iraqis, and certainly the Syrian regime is not reaching out to the Sunni population in Syria,” Dempsey told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz for “This Week.”
“Until those facts change, this is going to be a very challenging task. In other words, until ISIL [ISIS] doesn’t have, you know, freedom of movement in and among the populations of Al Anbar Province and Nineveh Province, and in Eastern Syria, this is going to be a challenge,” Dempsey said of ISIS, the extremist Islamist group also referred to as ISIL or the Islamic State.
During the interview for “This Week,” the general discussed an incident this week when ISIS fighters were within 20 to 25 kilometers of the strategically important Baghdad airport, where Apache helicopters were called in to assist Iraqi forces.
“Had they overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the airport. So we’re not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport,” Dempsey said.
That's the understatement of the year, General.
Here's the ABC video, in which Raddatz did not bury the lede:
Coverage two days ago at the Washington Times, which appears to describe the situation on the ground a couple of days after the event Dempsey described, indicates that ISIS is now "roughly eight miles from Baghdad’s international airport."
There's no lack of internationally significant news right now, but the U.S. press, certainly in comparison to the British press, whose UK Telegraph today reports that "US strategy (is) in tatters as militants march on," has seemed — perhaps until now, finally — relatively reluctant to relay the bad news.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
