by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

The American-led air campaign over Iraq has a pattern — and patterns change. What the Pentagon sees as the most important part of the battlefield is what it’ll bomb the most. As the lines shift, so do the air strikes.

What we’ve seen this month is a radical shift in the air campaign away from the oil refinery of Beiji — and the Kurdish ground war in northern Iraq to a lesser extent — to Ramadi.

Which makes sense. Iraqi forces defending Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, collapsed in the face of a massive Islamic State assault on May 17. The militant group took the city in a lightning assault after a months-long siege, and has carried out summary executions. Around 55,000 civilians have fled.

But before the collapse, the U.S. didn’t view Ramadi as very important. From March 1 to the city’s fall, the coalition carried out 17 air strikes on Islamic State in Ramadi, according to Pentagon news releases. In nearby Fallujah, the coalition launched 26 strikes.

Moving to northern Iraq, the coalition bombed Islamic State 34 times in Mosul, 14 times in Tal Afar and 13 times in Sinjar during the same period. These are areas contested between Islamic State and Kurdish fighters.

But in Beiji, the coalition carried out 57 air strikes — sometimes as many as eight per day. The central Iraqi city of Beiji contains a strategic oil refinery which produced as much as one-third of Iraq’s oil before the war.

But after the fall of Ramadi … things changed. Since May 17, air strikes in Beiji plummeted to 18, and rose to 29 in Ramadi — and it’s still rising. There are now more air strikes happening in Ramadi than anywhere else in Iraq.

Air strikes also fell in Mosul and Fallujah. The air strikes have risen slightly in Sinjar and Tal Afar — again in the north. The largest shift, however, has been away from Beiji and to Ramadi.

It’s an interesting fact — considering that the Pentagon and the White House have downplayed Ramadi’s loss. Pres. Barack Obama characterized it as a “tactical setback.” For his part, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter blamed the Iraqi military for the loss, suggesting they don’t have enough guts to fight.

Iraqi forces in Ramadi “were not outnumbered,” Carter told CNN. “In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.”