Iraq Claims to Have Repelled ISIS Militants at Oil Refinery
BANFIELD: It's been a bad week, concedes the embattled prime minister of Iraq, but now -- and I'm going to quote him -- "We're on the rebound. " The government claims it has repelled an attack on Iraq's main oil refinery by the Sunni Islamist militants called ISIS, better known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Iraqi forces supposedly killed 40 of them -- 40 attackers -- at the Baiji site, about 140 miles north of Baghdad. And we also heard today from the president of neighboring Iran, who is vowing to safeguard the Shiite Muslim shrines in Iraq and, get this, at any cost. No more description on that. It's unclear whether Iranian revolutionary guard troops are on the way or already inside Iraq or even planned, although reports certainly do suggest so, and President Obama plans to call in the leaders of Congress this afternoon as he decides whether and how to help turn back the ISIS advance, which has been alarming. Ask anyone, they will suggest so. It does appear that the militant's momentum, though, has slowed, if not somewhat stalled, as fighters push out of Sunni-dominated northern Iraq and into the tougher lands, the Shia heartland. Our coverage begins this hour with my CNN colleague Arwa Damon who's in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil. And I'm also joined here in New York City by CNN military analyst and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona. And from Washington, Ryan Cooper is the national correspondent for TheWeek.com and had some pretty interesting perspective on how all of this could go down without American shots being fired. Get to that in a moment. First, right in country with Arwa Damon, Arwa, let me just get to something that happened specifically today, and that was a bombing inside of Baghdad, which has alarmed a lot of people, perhaps many Baghdad residents not so surprised by that kind of thing. But what Nouri al-Maliki said in response to that attack, and here's the quote, "What happened was a catastrophe, but not every catastrophe is a defeat." So what exactly is he saying, that they are not only stabilizing but on the offensive, or that they can just withstand this kind of thing?</s>DAMON: Well, that's effectively what the prime minister is at the very least trying to claim at this stage, that, yes, the ISIS offensive may have caught them by surprise, and, yes, it may have started out as a catastrophe, but now the Iraqi Security Forces are basically on the rebound from that. He was talking much before about the bigger picture of what's happening, seemingly trying to put forward a solid position, perhaps even ease the fears of so many of his citizens. But those words are not going to mean much unless the situation is brought under control, and that most certainly is not going to be achieved by mere military means. And the statements by the Iraqi government do need to be taken with a grain of salt. Despite regaining control over the oil refinery in Baiji, two employee tell CNN that there are still heavy clashes ongoing there, and that it is, in fact, under the control of is and the other Sunni groups here. A population in Iraq that has not really been spoken about, Ashleigh, have to say, Iraq's Christian minority, we just visited a small Christian enclave that is just 10 minutes away from the ISIS front line, outside of the city of Mosul, where this all began. Their shops are mostly closed. Their owners either fled or they haven't bothered to open because there's no business and no power. Citizens themselves have begun arming themselves, trying to conduct their own patrols to secure the town, because they don't believe anyone is going to come to their assistance at this stage, although they are also being protected by the Kurdish force, the Peshmerga. You have an entire nation at this stage, Ashleigh, that is living in complete and total fear of what the future may hold, a nation that has already been through so much violence.</s>BANFIELD: Arwa, stand by with that exact comment, I want to turn now to Colonel Francona with regard to this, because, Colonel, look, we've watched this very fast march towards Baghdad. And there are a lot of security analysts who say ISIS doesn't have any interest in controlling Baghdad; they just want to wreak havoc. They just want to pour guerrilla warfare throughout that city and make that place completely miserable.