There is the USA view of events and then there is the Iraqi view of events.

Staff writer, Al Arabiya News
Sunday, 15 June 2014

Iraq’s former Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi (click here) described what is happening in the country as an “Arab Spring uprising” aimed at ending Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “sectarian” regime, in an interview with Al Arabiya News Channel’s sister channel al-Hadath on Sunday. 

“I am being frank when I say that I know what’s happening in my country; therefore I am careful when I say that this is a revolution who all Iraqi people contributed in,” said Hashimi, who fled Iraq in 2012 after he was given a death sentence for two murder cases.

The former vice president, who has resided in Turkey since leaving Iraq, rejected how media outlets portrayed what had happened initially in Iraq's second largest city of Mosul late Monday, when fighters from the jihadist militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took the city and its province in a offensive.

“The media today is promoting that what’s happening today in Mosul and beyond is driven by al-Qaeda and ISIS, I strongly believe this is a big lie and the evidence is that the previous days in Mosul were peaceful which allowed Maliki’s army to go home safe,” he said....