Operation Featherweight: Month 20, Week 3, Day 6.

The fundamental problem throughout the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is that US President Barack Obama looks at their actions and their ideology yet simply cannot see anything wrong.

Looking only at the events surrounding Sinjar/Shingal mountain and ISIL's treatment of the Yezidi ethnic group since August 2014 the group has massacred over 5,000 people. It has kidnapped in excess of 7,000 people - mainly women and young girls - in order to subject them cruel and inhuman treatment such as rape and sexual slavery. ISIL has forced more than 10,000 people from their homes and then destroyed those homes along with religious and cultural buildings in the area.

Throughout ISIL have taken great pride in explaining that their actions were done to erase the Yezidis from existence.

This makes ISIL's actions one of the clearest examples of genocide the world has ever seen. Even the Nazis tried to disguise their actions to some extent.

However Barack Obama refuses to acknowledge the crimes against humanity committed by ISIL. Last night the US House of Representatives - the lower House of Congress - passed a resolution by 383 votes to 0 giving the Obama administration until Thursday (17/3/16) to formally condemn ISIL's crimes against humanity. We await Obama's response.

Being unable to see that ISIL's ideology and actions are both wrong and indefensible Obama has equally been unable to see that granting ISIL and associated groups safe-haven in Iraq, Syria and now Libya is possibly the worst idea that the world has ever seen.

So when in August 2014 overwhelming public pressure forced Obama to take action his intention was never to defeat ISIL. Instead it was to re-brand them in a form that was palatable to the public.

The first step was that the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" suddenly became just "Islamic State."

Removing the word "Levant" from the name removed the biggest clue to the apocalyptic and nihilist objective of the group - to religiously and ethnically purify the medieval Levant region to trigger the final battle that would herald God's return to Earth. It also helped to disguise how this ideology is commonly shared amongst so many of the groups Obama likes to term "moderate."

One of ISIL's key allies is a group known as the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant (FML)/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham). After all what is a state if not a collection of freemen.

The reason why Ahrar al-Sham's close allegiance and shared ideology with ISIL had to be kept secret is that throughout 2014 and 2015 the US' main effort was not to defeat ISIL. Instead it was to train, equip and arm Ahrar al-Sham.

Despite this deceit Obama's support for extremist groups could not be kept secret forever.

On the night of September 18th 2015 (18/9/15) the US sent fighters it had trained and equipped into Syria. These are believed to be members of a group known as "Division 30 (D30)" and a group known as the "Falcons of the Levant/Suqur al-Sham."

Both immediately joined up with Ahrar al-Sham and took their weapons including BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles with them. This led to the US Train & Equip program being formally scrapped on October 9th 2015 (9/10/15).

Despite the suspension of Train & Equip the problems of the program continued to live on. Officially a ceasefire went into effect on February 26th (26/2/16).

However this has not stopped another US backed group - Division 13 (D13) - fighting alongside Ahrar al-Sham and Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front repeatedly attacking the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) within Aleppo City. The attacks have frequently involved the use of chemical weapons including chlorine gas and yellow phosphorus.

Amid mounting pressure on March 13th (13/3/16) D13 were forced to claim that their base had been overrun by Al Qaeda. This was a pretty pitiful attempt to explain why US supplied weapons were being used by extremist groups to commit war crimes.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one Ahrar al-Sham did not take all this international support and use it to fight against their main ally ISIL. Instead they used it to assist ISIL by heading in the opposite direction to fight the Syrian government. This removed the main pressure on ISIL and allowed them to advance including into the central ancient city of Palmyra in June 2015.

In a remarkable act of charity on September 30th (30/9/15) Russia decided to enter the conflict. It's objective was to push Ahrar al-Sham and ANF back to the positions they occupied when the US entered the conflict in August 2014. This would once again contain ISIL in the north-east of Syria and give the US time to push ISIL out of Iraq into that small area around Raqqa where they would be defeated.

While Russia was doing all this work to correct the west's mistakes for free all the west needed to do was a teeny, tiny little bit of work to protect itself.

Take for example these UN sponsored talks currently going on in Geneva, Switzerland. Although it pains me to say it aloud these are the absolute last thing that any rational person would want. They force everyone together in a high pressure environment denying them the space to perform the delicate tasks that need to be completed.

Therefore rather then howling from the rooftops about how these talks need to begin the west should have been trying to delay them. Rather than Saudi Arabia simply submitting a list of groups party to the talks and it being accepted you would think that this would be a process that would drag on for months. During that time Saudi Arabia would be repeatedly forced to explain why it thinks Ahrar al-Sham are in any way moderate or acceptable.

Likewise it shouldn't have been too difficult for western governments to give off the record briefings to domestic news editors explaining who all these groups are and why they're a problem. It certainly seems a lot easier than all the recent Belfast nonsense that just seems to be noise without purpose.

Unfortunately not only was the west unable to lift a finger to help itself it couldn't even maintain basic levels of diplomatic civility. For example US/NATO General Breedlove's accusation that Russia had weaponised the refugee crisis several months before Russia became involved in the conflict was as unnecessary as it was ridiculous.

Needless to say the Russians sense of charity eventually ran out. Yesterday (14/3/16) Russia announced that it was withdrawing forces from Syria starting today.

However I think the main reason behind the Russian withdrawal is that over the past nearly six months they have achieved 90-95% of their objectives.

Although they have not cut the supply line between Turkey and Aleppo City they have pushed ANF and Ahrar al-Sham allied forces out of Latakia province and pushed them back to Aleppo City in Aleppo province. Within Idlib, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Daraa and As Suwayda provinces the terrorist forces have been significantly depleted and denied access to the main supply routes.

This makes it extremely unlikely that they will be able to launch any significant new offensive in the coming months. In fact it is beacuse they were on the brink of total defeat they demanded the ceasefire to allow them time to re-group.

These gains have forced the Russians to take a look at what the US has achieved over the same time in Iraq. The answer is not much.

Back on December 28th (28/12/15) Ramadi which sits around 90km (55 miles) west of the capital Baghdad was liberated. Since then Iraqi forces have been slowly working to clear ISIL from the small towns and villages along the Euphrates River to Hit in the north and Fallujah to the east. Progress has been painfully slow with ISIL still able to mount attacks in and around Ramadi.

Not only has there been an agonising lack of progress around Ramadi there still seems to be the complete lack of any strategic plan to drive ISIL from Iraq.

This is really summed up by the sulphur mustard gas attack that ISIL launched against the city of Taza which sits around 10km (6 miles) south of Kirkuk on Saturday (12/3/16). This wounded 600 civilians and killed an infant girl causing mass protests calling for air-strikes against the ISIL firing positions.

Back at the end of February US Special Forces captured Sleiman Daoud al-Afari who is the head of ISIL's chemical weapons program. The reason why the US kept this quiet is that with al-Afari not being in regular contact with ISIL leadership they initially did not realise that he'd been captured. During this time the US were interrogating him to build up an intelligence picture of ISIL's chemical weapons capability.

This started to bear fruit when on Thursday (10/3/16) when the US was able to carry out air-strikes targeting that chemical weapon capacity. What the US wants to do now is continue to build up an intelligence picture in order to completely eradicate ISIL's chemical weapons. By launching the attack on Taza ISIL were trying to force the US' hand to get them to reveal what information they've already gathered.

Although the mustard gas attack was horrific it was really the final straw for the people of Taza because they've been coming under almost constant conventional artillery fire for almost two years now. This is really disappointing because Taza sits inside this triangle of territory that sits between Baiji, Tikrit and Kirkuk.

You may remember that in the spring of 2015 Iraqi forces launched an operation to liberate Tikrit. Having done that they then stopped rather than pushing ahead to clear ISIL out of that triangle of territory around Hawija. Since then ISIL have been able to once again seize territory around the main road linking Baghdad to Tikrit and continue their attacks on civilians in places such as Taza.

Therefore you would think that the priority would be quickly completr the clearance of ISIL from the areas around Ramadi before moving on to finally clear them out of the Kirkuk triangle. However with training bases being built troops being deployed all the military planning seems to be utterly focused on liberating the northern city of Mosul which will be the Iraqi forces toughest job.

As such the Russians have realised that while they've pretty much completed their task it could be as much as a year before the US is able to push ISIL out of Iraq if indeed that operation ever starts. While the Russians are waiting for the Americans to sort themselves out they may as well send their pilots home to sleep in their own beds and eat dinner with their families. After all they can be re-deployed to Syria in about six hours.

The Russian withdrawal has rather dumped the US in the sh*t though. In recent weeks the US has been coming under increasing pressure to restart the failed Train & Equip program. With Russia involved the US was able to brush of these calls as not to escalate the situation. Now that the Russians have withdrawn the US only option is to insist that the program stays closed because they want it to stay closed. And it must stay closed

Then of course there is the issue of "Erdogan's Pocket." This is a roughly 100km (60 mile) corridor of land in northern Syria between roughly the town of Azaz and the Euphrates River. It is being used by Turkey to supply weapons and fighters to ANF and Ahrar al-Sham in Aleppo City.

The US did have the option of quietly letting Russia support the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) liberate this area from the west. Now the US' only option is to support the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) to liberate it from the east. And it has to be liberated.

Of course this extra pressure being dumped on the US is a bit of a worry because at every point over the last 7 years whenever Obama has come under pressure he has simply crumpled like a paper bag.

17:50 on 15/3/16 (UK date).