A report from the National Post tells us than Canon White has “has quit Iraq after death threats and the beheading of children attached to his church by Islamic terrorists.” Although Andrew White is travelling in the US at the moment, his Facebook page doesn’t mention anything about quitting – suggesting a permanent departure – Iraq.

Nevertheless, the article is interesting in that it has Andrew White placing blame for the present mayhem not on the initial invasion – something he supported – but on Obama’s premature withdrawal of troops:

Asked whether ISIS could be reasoned with, Canon White said, “No.” He added, “ISIS is driven by that passion that Iraq has gone very, very wrong. Among terrorists, often they have lost something big. And the Sunnis have lost ultimately their power, their responsibility and their significance. Under the Saddam Hussein regime they had essence; now they have nothing.

“We can kill a few ISIS people from the clouds; we can kill some of our innocent civilians; but we can’t really bring about change” until the ground troops enter the fray. “American ground troops,” he said.

Canon White said U.S. President Barack Obama made the mistake of pulling out of Iraq before the country could guarantee the safety of the people.

“ISIS are going around causing their chaos with American weapons, in American tanks, in American armored vehicles and their Humvees because that man Obama left us. And we are seeing our people killed because of that mistake,” he said.

In a Facebook post from October 16^th Andrew White also reiterates that Saddam had chemical weapons; now ISIS has and is using them:

Chemical Weapons Did Exist
For years I had been saying that Chemical Weapons did exist. Even before the war in 2003 I was saying that Saddam had the weapons and was removing them to Syria. Now ISIS have done what the coalition could never do. They have found the weapons but they are using them. The battle has just begun, but there is know body fighting the evil. What do we do. Praying is half the battle but we have to keep the people of G-d strong and able to keep eating and coping and surviving with G-d’s help we can.

Even though military action is “a terrible thing to wish”, he wishes it.

Canon Andrew White writes:

I have just returned from a secret visit to Qaraqosh – once the largest Christian town in Iraq, but no longer.

Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town’s 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.

The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches.

My visit, under the noses of the gunmen, was frightening – but that is nothing to the terror of the poor souls left behind.

Since I went to St George’s Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003 – the only Anglican church in the city – I have seen countless terrible things. Many of my congregation have been killed or mutilated in the years of violence.

But I have never witnessed anything on the scale, or which has affected me quite so dreadfully as on this visit to the north of Iraq

In the nearby city of Irbil, I found many of those Christians who had fled. Some 30,000 refugees are packed into the Kurdish capital, forming a new Christian suburb.

I spoke to one woman who had survived the massacres in Qaraqosh. She had a bandaged left hand. When IS soldiers could not remove her gold wedding ring, they had simply hacked off her finger. She wept as she told me.

The refugees are now penniless, robbed of their homes and possessions. Christian houses were daubed with the letter ‘N’ for Nazere and given to Muslim families.

I met Hana, who used to be the caretaker of my church in Baghdad, and fought to stay dry-eyed as he told me the fate of his youngest son, aged five. The boy was chopped in half in front of Hana’s eyes during an IS attack.

[…..]

Where is their protection? It is a terrible thing to wish, but I now believe that military action of some sort is necessary, if only to reduce the movement of IS tanks, their soldiers, and their power and authority on the ground.

Even this is not the solution in the long run. We need money, and we need prayer. Without those we have nothing.

Those wanting to donate can do so at the website of the Foundation For Relief And Reconciliation In The Middle East: frrme.org

Andrew White was in favour of the US’s removal of Saddam Hussein even after the persecution of Christians had begun. It is to the West’s shame that what was begun in Iraq was not completed and that it has taken the horrors mentioned above to stir us into action again; I fear we will still lack the resolve to see it through to the end.

Demonic evil at work.

From here:

The five-year-old son of a founding member of Baghdad’s Anglican church was cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State¹ on the Christian town of Qaraqosh.

In an interview today, an emotional Canon Andrew White told ACNS that he christened the boy several years ago, and that the child’s parents had named the lad Andrew after him.

“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptised his child in my church in Baghdad². This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew.”

Canon Andrew White interviewed by the BBC:

To donate go to Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East.