SEAN HANNITY

Leadership Vacuum The Obamas are headed to Palm Springs for the weekend, where Obama will attend a fundraiser, give a commencement speech at UC Irvine and likely participate in a round or two of golf.  Meanwhile, the most dangerous and ruthless breed of Islamic terrorists are tearing down Iraq, a country our men and women sacrificed to secure. The ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – continues to push towards Baghdad.  These terrorists, an offshoot of al Qaeda, are splintering off because they were considered too ruthless even for al Qaeda!  That's what we are dealing with here.  And the group has managed to take control of the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, and the city of Tikrit.  Things have become so bad that the senior Shiite cleric in Iraq has issued an urgent call to arms for anyone who can hold a weapon, to step up and defend the country, according to the New York Times. With their sights set on Baghdad, the Iranian National Guard has sent in support for the Iraqi government.  So now we have Iran helping the government we helped to establish and stabilize not long ago.  This means that Iran may likely gain access to American weaponry in the process.  The ISIS, by the way, already claims to have captured American military equipment.   Will The ISIS Stop Soon? Right now, the ISIS is dominating in Syria and Iraq, but they have their sights set on more on the region.  Breitbart reports that the ISIS “are reported to be planning to take their jihad to Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula -- after having already captured large parts of Syria and Iraq.” The Wall Street Journal outlined possible consequences of ISIS's dominance: “No one should underestimate the danger this presents to the stability of the region and to America's national and economic security. An extended civil war seems to be the best near-term possibility. More dangerous is ISIS's ambition to establish a Muslim caliphate in the heart of the Persian Gulf, which would mean a safe haven for Islamic terrorism that would surely target the U.S. The danger to Iraq's oil exports of three million barrels a day is already sending prices up and global equities down.”  The New York Times reports on the oil prices today, “Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 1.2 percent to an intraday high of $114.20 a barrel in morning trading before falling back to $113.11. West Texas Intermediate, the standard in the United States, was up 0.5 percent, at $107.11 per barrel.” This is a disaster from a humanitarian standpoint and a geopolitical standpoint as well.  There are reports of close to a million Iraqi refugees fleeing the country and vulnerable Christians are in peril as jihadist gain in the region.  If I were a soldier who was hurt in Iraq, or the family of a loved one who was killed, I would be infuriated that those sacrifices apparently meant little to a president who has allowed this country to unravel.  You can't turn back the clock and argue “well we shouldn't have been there to begin with.”  The fact is that we were there and therefore we should finish in triumph, rather than wither in fecklessness. How Does This Happen? It's not terribly difficult to see how this was able to happen.  Barack Obama basically threw Iraq to the wolves by insisting that we withdrawal our troops.  In an effort to gain political points at home, Obama has sacrificed the stability of an important region of the world and made a mockery of those men and women who sacrificed for Iraq's freedom.  The New York Times reported that Iraq's government had been asking the Obama administration for help, but the administration declined to become involved.  This is, again, for the political purposes of Obama's legacy and not in the name of geopolitical obligation or strength.  As a result, it will likely be decades before other countries can trust that America will honor its security commitments.  Mr. Community Organizer managed to take a war we had won and turn it into a loss because he failed to end it properly and maintain credibility in the region.  Ending a war is not the same as winning a war.  >>TV Tonight (10pm ET on Fox News)  "A Bush Family Album," hosted by Brit Hume -- Fox News gets an exclusive peek into the Bush family archives and photo albums for an intimate portrait of the 41st president of the United States.