by Owen | 2200, 7 Mar 1515 | Foreign Affairs | 1 Comment
So now IS is a bi-continental organization. Wonderful…
(CNN)Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based Islamist terror group, has pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to an audio message purported to be from Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.
In the audio, which was posted online Saturday, the speaker says Boko Haram is announcing its “allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims, Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Husseini al-Qurashi,” which is another name for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
by Owen | 1131, 19 Feb 1515 | Culture, Foreign Affairs, Politics | 1 Comment
It seems that Obama is far more interested in deflecting any responsibility for IS to others and denying that religious fervor is a primary motivation than in actually dealing with the problem.
Turning to Islamic State, Obama said the governments of Syria and Iraq should bear some responsibility for the group’s emergence.
“In Iraq, the failure of the previous government to govern in an inclusive manner helped to pave the way for ISIL’s (Islamic State’s) gains there.”
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s “war against his own people and deliberate stoking of sectarian tensions help to fuel the rise of ISIL,” he said.
by Owen | 2058, 4 Feb 1515 | Foreign Affairs | 0 Comments
Good. It is clear that nothing with stop the Islamic State except eradication. It’s good to see someone in the region taking on that responsibility.
King Abdullah has promised a strong response, saying that ISIS isn’t just fighting his nation, but warring against “noble Islam” itself.
The country now wants to step up airstrikes against the terrorist organization, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation.
by Owen | 1323, 20 Dec 1414 | Foreign Affairs | 0 Comments
Good. The more of their own that IS kills, the fewer there are.
London (AFP) – The Islamic State extremist group has executed 100 of its own foreign fighters who tried to flee their headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Financial Times newspaper said Saturday.
An activist opposed to both IS and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is well-known to the British business broadsheet, said he had “verified 100 executions” of foreign IS fighters trying to leave the jihadist group’s de facto capital.
IS fighters in Raqqa said the group has created a military police to clamp down on foreign fighters who do not report for duty. Dozens of homes have been raided and many jihadists have been arrested, the FT reported.
by Owen | 2006, 12 Dec 1414 | Culture, Foreign Affairs | 1 Comment
“If she is a virgin, (her slave owner) can have intercourse with her immediately,” ISIS explains, according to the MEMRI translation. “However, if she isn’t, her uterus must be purified.”
There are other rules as well, like that two men who co-own a captive can’t both have sex with her and that a man can’t have intercourse with his wife’s slave.
As to girls: “It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse,” the document reads, according to MEMRI. “However if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse.”
The Q&A is clear that, young and old, the captors have full control of their captives.
by Owen | 1955, 7 Dec 1414 | Culture, Foreign Affairs | 3 Comments
True evil. And the feminists in America get outraged when other people don’t want to pay for their birth control…
A young Yazidi woman forced into sex slavery by the Islamic State begged the West to bomb the brothel where she was being held after militants raped her 30 times in just a few hours, it is claimed.
The unidentified woman is understood to have been kept as a prisoner of the jihadists somewhere in western Iraq having been captured by ISIS during the Sinjar massacre in early August.
A group raising awareness of ISIS’ persecution of women in the vast swathes of the Middle East under its control said the woman had contacted Kurdish peshmerga fighters by telephone to plead for the brothel to be bombed to put the women held as sex slaves out of their misery.
She allegedly told the fighters she had been raped so frequently that she could no longer use the toilet, adding that the ordeal has been so harrowing that she plans to commit suicide even if freed.
by Owen | 2108, 12 Nov 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
Ohhhh… so THAT was our strategy. Glad to know we had one. Stinks that it isn’t tenable.
“Developments on the ground have caused the national security team to collectively conclude we may not have time for Iraq first. In an ideal world you would drive ISIL out of Iraq and pivot to Syria. But if by then the moderate opposition has been smacked and ISIL is still there, that doesn’t help,” a senior administration official said.
by Owen | 1946, 7 Nov 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
Sadly, Koffler is right.
And so we have war fought on the fly – ill-planned, ill-conceived, and tentatively executed. If we are going to defeat ISIS, we should defeat ISIS. We have tried this kind of incrementalism before, and it fails.
When we introduce enough of our superb troops into battle, we win. It’s the doctrine of overwhelming force. I thought we had already learned it. In the end, we will get even more American fighting men and women killed with a bad, prolonged approach.
by Owen | 2133, 14 Oct 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military | 0 Comments
We should be more worried about the more functional chemical weapons from the Assad regime that IS has access to, but 2,500 old chemical rockets makes for a dangerous stockpile in the hands of the Islamic State.
Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s.
Since June, the compound has been held by the Islamic State, the world’s most radical and violent jihadist group. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras.
Soldiers in chemical protection gear, including Sgt. Eric J. Duling and Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, examining suspected chemical munitions at a site near Camp Taji, Iraq, on Aug. 16, 2008.The New York TimesThe United States government says the abandoned weapons no longer pose a threat. But nearly a decade of wartime experience showed that old Iraqi chemical munitions often remained dangerous when repurposed for local attacks in makeshift bombs, as insurgents did starting in 2004.
And it is worth noting that these were once secured by American blood.
by Owen | 2051, 12 Oct 1414 | Culture | 0 Comments
This is worth remembering when folks start considering a separate Shariah law system for Muslims in western countries.
(CNN) — In a new publication, ISIS justifies its kidnapping of women as sex slaves citing Islamic theology, an interpretation that is rejected by the Muslim world at large as a perversion of Islam.
“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar — the infidels — and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law,” the group says in an online magazine published Sunday.
by Owen | 1310, 12 Oct 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
If America actually wants to succeed.
But he said that when Iraqi forces are ready to take the offensive against the Islamic State jihadists who have overrun swaths of territory in northern and western Iraq, as well as in Syria, that would likely change.
“Mosul will likely be the decisive battle in the ground campaign at some point in the future,” Dempsey said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the northern Iraqi city seized by IS militants in June.
“My instinct at this point is that will require a different kind of advising and assisting because of the complexity of that fight,” he said.
by Owen | 2037, 11 Oct 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 2 Comments
Obama’s war plan doesn’t seem to be working.
Baghdad (CNN) — ISIS fighters stood Saturday on the verge of taking not just a key Syrian town along the Turkish border, but also an entire province on Baghdad’s doorstep — spurring leaders of that province to urgently plead for U.S. ground troops to halt the Islamist extremist group’s rapid, relentless assault.
The situation in Anbar, just to the west of Baghdad, is “very bad,” said Sabah Al-Karhout, the president of Anbar Provincial Council.
ISIS, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” which also is referred to as ISIL, controls about 80% of the province. Reports Saturday suggest they have encircled Haditha, the last large town in Anbar province not yet in the militants’ hands.
Should all of Anbar fall, the Sunni extremists would rule from the perimeter of Iraq’s capital to Raqqa in Syria (at least), according to the provincial council’s deputy head, Falleh al-Issawi.
by Owen | 2046, 4 Oct 1414 | Culture, Foreign Affairs | 0 Comments
“UNAMI/OHCHR received a number of reports that an office for the sale of abducted women was opened in the al-Quds area of Mosul city,” says the report by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city, much of which is controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“Women and girls are brought with price tags for the buyers to choose and negotiate the sale. The buyers were said to be mostly youth from the local communities. Apparently ISIL [ISIS] was ‘selling’ these Yezidi women to the youth as a means of inducing them to join their ranks,” the report says.
The Yezidis, or Yazidis, are a religious minority in Iraq who have been targeted along with Christians and Shias by ISIS, a Sunni extremist group.
“Some women managed to inform UNAMI/OHCHR that they had been forced to convert [to Islam] and were to be married to ISIL [ISIS] fighters and would be taken to destinations unknown,” says the report, which covers alleged human rights abuses in Iraq from July to September and was released Thursday.
by Owen | 1946, 2 Oct 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
The Americans reported 200 airstrikes in two weeks, compared to 3,000 on the first day of the 2003 Iraq invasion. This is the foreplay version of war.
by Owen | 2141, 22 Sep 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military | 0 Comments
I guess we are at war… or not…
WASHINGTON — The United States and allies launched airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria early Tuesday, unleashing a torrent of cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs from the air and sea on the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa and along the porous Iraq border.
American fighter jets and armed Predator and Reaper drones, flying alongside warplanes from several Arab allies, struck a broad array of targets in territory controlled by the militants, known as the Islamic State. American defense officials said the targets included weapons supplies, depots, barracks and buildings the militants use for command and control. Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from United States Navy ships in the region.
by Owen | 2124, 19 Sep 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
Panetta has a mastery of the obvious.
Even as the administration attempts to deflect responsibility for the implosion of Iraq, Obama’s former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says he thought we left Iraq too early and waited too long to do anything about Syria. Basically, it’s all Obama’s fault.
by Owen | 2104, 19 Sep 1414 | Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics | 0 Comments
“The generals and the president can’t even agree on the strategy,” Krauthammer said, “and that’s the one country that’s supposed to be leading all this.”
by Owen | 0804, 13 Sep 1414 | Military, Politics | 0 Comments
There is something very odd about the way administration officials get so twisted around using the word “war.”
On Thursday, Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf sought to clarify the lexicon of the anti-ISIS campaign.
“Well, I know there has been a lot of questions about what words we use but as the president said the other night this is a very different campaign from the Iraq War, the last time we used that term,” she said. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. We utilize our air superiority and support for partner forces on the ground.”
Instead, she calls the action “a steady, relentless counterterrorism campaign to take out ISIL wherever they exist.”
“This is not also America’s war with ISIL,” she added. “The world is joining us in the fight because of the threat they pose to countries in the regions. So we are at war with ISIL in the same way we are at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates around the world.”
One may suppose that they are avoiding the word because they want to maintain the position that they do not need Congressional approval. But I suspect it is more cultural and political. These are lefties who can’t bring themselves to admit that they are starting a war. They are so twisted around being anti-Bush and anti-war that they don’t want to admit that they are beginning to follow the same policy – even if incompletely.
Really though, at the point you are actively in a campaign of using force to kill opponents on a large scale, you are at war.
by Owen | 2116, 9 Sep 1414 | Foreign Affairs | 1 Comment
by Owen | 0638, 8 Sep 1414 | Politics | 0 Comments
Yeah, that’s not going to fly.
With the passage of eight months, the president’s “JV” comment looks increasingly untenable, so we can understand why the White House spokesman would try to suggest that what is now known as the Islamic State was not the subject of the conversation.
But in quoting from the transcript, Earnest provided a selective reading of the discussion. In particular, he failed to provide the context in which Obama made his remarks — the takeover of Fallujah by ISIS. That’s fairly misleading. The interviewer was certainly asking about ISIS when Obama answered with his “JV” remarks.
