This is a man who perpetrated a terrorist regime and a genocide of non-Islamists. Thanks to our Special Forces for getting this job done.
The fugitive leader of the Islamic State (IS) group has been killed in a US military operation in northwest Syria, President Donald Trump has said.
Speaking from the White House, Mr Trump said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi detonated his suicide vest after being caught at the end of a tunnel by special forces.
Baghdadi came to prominence in 2014, when he announced the creation of a “caliphate” in areas of Iraq and Syria.
In one Facebook post Dais wrote in part, “…I was and I continue to be on the doctrine of the Islamic State,” according to her plea agreement.
“She spread ISIS’ message of violence to numerous individuals in countless places,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Krueger said.
This included sharing step-by-step videos for making bombs and poison with potential ISIS attackers.
“Without people like Dais to perpetuate extremism online, ISIS’ reach would be much more constrained,” he said.
Two years earlier, Yosvany Padilla-Conde of Milwaukee conducted similar acts by helping a man named Jason Ludke try to provide materials and resources to the Islamic State Group.
Krueger said both cases reveal the continuing threat of homegrown terrorism.
“While ISIS no longer controls any significant parts of Iraq or Syria, they continue to exist online and in the hearts and minds of those who believe that violence against innocence is an acceptable means to an end,” he said.
A jubilant President Trump tweeted on Thursday to announce that five of the ‘Most Wanted leaders of ISIS’ have been captured after they were lured from Syria to Iraq with fake Telegram messages.
Iraqi officials used the cell phone of already captured ISIS lieutenant Ismail al-Eithawi to send instructions via the app for the four other leaders to come to Iraq, where they were seized.
The encrypted app was officially named by ISIS as one of its favored mobile messaging services in 2015 and has been regularly used by the terror group for private communication and to spread propaganda.
(CNN)The Iraqi military has “fully liberated” all of Iraq’s territory of “ISIS terrorist gangs” and retaken full control of the Iraqi-Syrian border, it said Saturday in a statement.
“Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said on his Twitter account. “We defeated Daesh (ISIS) through our unity and sacrifice for the nation. Long live Iraq and its people.”
The success of the Syrian government forces inevitably raises the potential for clashes between them and US-backed, predominantly Kurdish units who hold a significant swathe of northern Syria.
It is a powerful reminder that while the war against the IS “caliphate” is well on the way to being won, the situation on the ground in Syria is becoming ever more complex.
With Iran eager to consolidate its influence, questions remain as to the Trump administration’s future policy direction now IS is collapsing. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has consolidated his position and looks to squeeze opposition forces in the months ahead.
ISIS’s reign of terror is rapidly coming to an end. Within a matter of days, the jihadist menace that shocked the world for years with its pathological sadism will lose its final strongholds within the Syrian city of Raqqa. It has taken 5 months of bloody struggle but the de facto capital of the Islamic State will soon be entirely in the hands of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Across the border in Iraq, the process of rebuilding the devastated city of Mosul is underway after its liberation from the so-called caliphate in July. There are still areas of ISIS control in both Iraq and Syria, but the jihadists have lost over 60 percent of the territory they once held. Their sources of funding are drying up, hostile forces surround them, and ISIS can no longer count on tens of thousands of recruits to flood into Syria to replenish their ranks.
If the Islamic State’s fanatics were running an actual state instead of a glorified death cult, they would be negotiating terms for surrender and laying down their arms already.
The U.S. and its allies have effectively beaten the Islamic State. While the process has been slow and riddled with setbacks and restarts, this is a substantial accomplishment. In 2014, ISIS seized Mosul in a blitzkrieg and was threatening to march on the Kurdish city of Erbil.
Iraqi troops have seized the ruins of Mosul’s grand mosque from Isis, the military said in an announcement, declaring the extremists’ reign in the country to be over.
“Their fictitious state has fallen,” military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told state TV on Thursday – three years to the day since Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of the so-called caliphate from the same spot.
(CNN)ISIS rounded up and killed 284 men and boys as Iraqi-led coalition forces closed in on Mosul, the terror group’s last major stronghold in Iraq, an Iraqi intelligence source told CNN.
Those killed Thursday and Friday were used as human shields against attacks forcing ISIS out of southern parts of Mosul, the source said.
ISIS dumped the corpses in a mass grave at the defunct College of Agriculture in northern Mosul, the intelligence source said.
The victims — some of them children — were all shot, said the source, who asked for anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. CNN could not independently confirm the killings.
A sharpshooter killed a top ISIS executioner and three other jihadists with a single bullet from nearly a mile away — just seconds before the fiend was set to burn 12 hostages alive with a flamethrower, according to a new report.
The British Special Air Service marksman turned one of the most hated terrorists in Syria into a fireball by using a Barett .50-caliber rifle to strike a fuel tank affixed to the jihadi’s back, the UK’s Daily Starreported Sunday.
The pack exploded, killing the sadistic terrorist and three of his flunkies, who were supposed to film the execution, last month, the paper said.
The ISIS butcher — who reportedly delighted in burning hostages alive — had been on a US “kill list” for several months, sources told the paper, which did not identify the sniper or the executioner.
He and his band of wicked men had been traveling around ISIS-held compounds in Syria slaughtering civilians labeled as spies.
Their prisoners were tied to stakes or thrown in cages before being torched by the executioner, according to the report.
ISIS started using flamethrowers after the torture method was popularized in North Korea.
But he said, as in Orlando and the attack in San Bernardino, California, last December, Islamic State is attempting to inspire attacks by sympathizers, even as it explores ways to send operatives to the West via refugee flows, smuggling routes and other methods of travel.
Orlando, Florida (CNN)A gay nightclub here was the scene early Sunday of the worst terror attack in U.S. history since 9/11.
* 50 people were killed inside the Pulse club and at least 53 people were injured, police say.
* The gunman was Omar Mateen of Ft. Pierce, Florida, a law enforcement source told CNN.
* Orlando police shot and killed Mateen
* Mateen called 911 around the time of the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mention the Boston bombers, according to a U.S. official.
“It appears he was organized and well-prepared,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said early Sunday. The shooter had an assault-type weapon, a handgun and “some type of (other) device on him.”
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on jihadi forums, but ISIS sympathizers have reacted by praising the attack on pro-Islamic State forums.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Army captain sued President Barack Obama on Wednesday, alleging that he doesn’t have the proper congressional authority to wage war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
Capt. Nathan Michael Smith filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Washington as the president is deploying more special operations forces to the region — and a day after a Navy SEAL was killed in combat in Iraq, the third since a U.S.-led coalition launched its campaign against the Islamic State in the summer of 2014.
Smith supports the war on military and moral grounds and considers the Islamic State an “army of butchers.” But he wants the court to tell Obama that he needs to ask Congress for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
The White House did not comment on the lawsuit.
To fight IS, Obama has been relying on congressional authorizations given to President George W. Bush for the war on al-Qaida and the invasion of Iraq. Critics say the White House’s use of post-9/11 congressional authorizations is a legal stretch at best.
I suspect that the courts will be very reluctant to intervene in this separation of powers issue.
Key Takeaway: ISIS is executing a sophisticated, multi-front campaign against Libya’s oil facilities, demonstrating the organization’s growing capability abroad. President Obama reportedly ruled out significant military intervention against the group as of February 18. The administration opted to continue intermittent strikes against ISIS leaders in Libya instead, such as the strike on an ISIS leader in western Libya on February 19. This surgical approach is unlikely to defeat the group, which maintains more than 5,000 fighters and is reinforced by leadership sent from Iraq and Syria. Libyan ground forces are also unlikely to expel ISIS from its areas of control. ISIS’s safe haven in Libya will allow it to survive even if it is defeated in Iraq and Syria. ISIS will use its Libyan base to exacerbate regional disorder and likely to attack Europe.
Fueled by Libyan and Iraqi oil, ISIS is doing nothing but growing stronger.
by Owen | 0737, 21 Dec 1515 | Politics | 5 Comments
Once again, this president blames others for his failures. It is not that he is wrong… it’s that the American people are too stupid to appreciate his brilliant strategy and the media isn’t helping.
“We haven’t on a regular basis, I think, described all the work that we’ve been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL,” Obama told NPR in an interview taped before he departed for his holiday vacation in Hawaii. He called the communications blunder a “legitimate criticism of what I’ve been doing and our administration has been doing.”
But he also pinned Americans’ renewed unease about terror attacks on U.S. soil to blanket media coverage of ISIS attacks. The November ISIS terrorist massacre in Paris, which left 130 people dead, led to “a saturation of news about the horrible attack there,” Obama said in the interview.
“If you’ve been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you,” he said in the NPR interview. “So I understand why people are concerned about it.”
“Look, the media is pursuing ratings,” he added later. “This is a legitimate news story. I think that, you know, it’s up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things.”
DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia on Tuesday announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a joint statement published on state news agency SPA.
“The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” the statement said.
A long list of Arab countries such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, together with Islamic countries Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and Gulf Arab and African states were mentioned.
And America largely ignores. What strikes me most about Obama’s speech last night is how little people are noticing today. Part of that is because he mostly just reiterated what he’s already said. Part of it is because America has tuned out the president and his professorial lectures about what he perceives as our “shared values.”
The only tangible thing I can see from his speech was this:
And he called on Congress to take several steps: Prohibit people on the so-called “no-fly” list meant to keep terrorists off airplanes from buying a gun; curb Americans’ access to “powerful assault weapons”
No. The no-fly list is useful, but it is a list that the government puts people on without any due process. We can not strip people of constitutional rights just because the government puts them on a list on suspicion of criminal activity. Imagine, if you will, if Obama was advocating people on the no-fly list being stripped of their 1st or 4th Amendment rights… we wouldn’t stand for it. We shouldn’t stand for stripping people’s 2nd Amendment rights on that basis either.
SIS has recruited experts with chemistry, physics and computer science degrees to wage war with weapons of mass destruction against the West, a shocking European Parliament report has claimed.
The terror organisation, according to the briefing document, ‘may be planning to try to use internationally banned weapons of mass destruction in future attacks’.
The document, which was compiled in the aftermath of the deadly attacks on Paris claimed that ISIS has already smuggled WMD material into Europe.
Doesn’t the Islamic State’s success validate the strategy of President Bush? After 9/11, Bush’s strategy was to launch a war to kill the terrorists in their strongholds. The theory was to take the battle to them in their home to prevent them from bringing it to our home. In the case of the Islamic State, we have allowed them to grow in strength and capability with only a limited effort to mitigate their spread. The result is that they have grown in strength to the point that they are launching attacks in Europe and America.
The Austria Press Agency cited German federal police chief Hans-Georg Maasen as saying that some who blend in with the migrants fought with IS and are planning a “combat mission” once they arrive in Europe. He said Thursday that his office knows of 7,900 Islamic radicals in Germany who advocate violence to advance their goals, with some trying to win migrants to their cause.
He said German authorities receive one or two “fairly concrete tips” a week of planned terrorist activity. And he described IS extremists as “combat-hardened professionals” more dangerous than those from al-Qaida
The United States has 900 investigations pending against suspected operatives it says ISIS inspired. There is at least one investigation in every state.
Apparently, Obama’s harsh tone is supposed to make our enemies think he’s serious this time.
(CNN)U.S. President Barack Obama toughened his rhetoric against ISIS at a weekend press conference in Malaysia that concluded his nine-day trip abroad.
The group responsible for the Paris terror attacks is “a bunch of killers with good social media,” he said. “They are dangerous and they’ve caused great hardship to … an overwhelming majority of people.”
The global coalition formed to destroy ISIS “will not relent,” he vowed. “We will not accept the idea that terrorist assaults on restaurants and theaters and hotels are the new normal, or that we are powerless to stop them.”
