Pan-Islamic merged mega thread

[The Bread Guy]

Where the "Europe's Boat People" and ISIS problems intersect - this from the BBC ....

Islamic State (IS) fighters are being smuggled into Europe by gangs in the Mediterranean, an adviser to the Libyan government has told the BBC.

Abdul Basit Haroun said smugglers were hiding IS militants on boats filled with migrants.

Officials in Italy and Egypt have previously warned that IS militants could reach Europe by migrant boat.

However, experts have cautioned that it is very difficult to verify or assess such claims.

Mr Haroun based his claim on conversations with smugglers in parts of North Africa controlled by the militants.

He alleged that IS was allowing the boat owners to continue their operations in exchange for half of their income ....

.... and this elsewhere:

EU foreign and defence ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss their concerns about the Mediterranean migrant crisis and consider whether to step up efforts to seize the boats of human traffickers and sink them before they are put out to sea with their human cargo.

Over the weekend the French government joined Britain in rejecting EU plans for a quota system for sharing asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East.

The Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, and the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, will join their European counterparts at a session of the EU foreign affairs council – chaired by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini with Nato’s General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen sitting in.

It follows reports that Isis militants are exploiting the refugee crisis to smuggle fighters into Europe.

Unlike Britain, France appears to be open to some kind of EU agreement to relieve the burden of the thousands of migrants arriving in Italy after perilous voyages across the Mediterranean from Libya ....

Meanwhile ....

.... The latest plan to quell the flow of migrants is an EU naval operation to attack the shipyards of smugglers in Libya, where refugees board unsafe vessels to attempt the Mediterranean crossing. Under the plan, orchestrated by Britain and assisted by at least nine other countries, the Italian navy would enter Libyan territorial waters and use helicopter gunships to destroy the smuggling network ....

More on that option here.

 

[a_majoor]

Canada and the West simply should pack their bags and exit the region. There is no "Plan A", much less a "Plan B". The collapse of American foreign policy in the region is a danger to the region and enormously destabilizing, but we have neither the power or the will to impose any sort of satisfactory solution ourselves (even if anyone knew what a "satisfactory" solution would look like). Time to look for more profitable ways to spend our blood and treasure:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/05/obamas-middle-east-policy-is-in-a-state-of-collapse.php

OBAMA’S MIDDLE EAST POLICY IS IN A STATE OF COLLAPSE

You know it’s bad when even the Associated Press notices: “Rout In Ramadi Calls US Iraq Strategy Into Question.”

The fall of Ramadi calls into question the Obama administration’s strategy in Iraq.

Is there a Plan B?

The current U.S. approach is a blend of retraining and rebuilding the Iraqi army, prodding Baghdad to reconcile with the nation’s Sunnis, and bombing Islamic State targets from the air without committing American ground combat troops.

But the rout revealed a weak Iraqi army, slow reconciliation and a bombing campaign that, while effective, is not decisive.

On Monday, administration officials acknowledged the fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, as a “setback” in America’s latest effort in Iraq. They still maintained the campaign would ultimately bring victory.

But anything close to a victory appeared far off. The Islamic State group captured Ramadi over the weekend, killing up to 500 Iraqi civilians and soldiers and causing 8,000 people to flee their homes. On Monday the militants did a door-to-door search looking for policemen and pro-government tribesmen.

28D3FD9100000578-3085486-Parade_After_slaughtering_500_people_and_forcing_over_8_000_from-m-27_1431965893317

The Daily Mail has this map that shows ISIS closing in on Baghdad:

28D32BC000000578-3085486-image-a-1_1431958274225

The “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” that Barack Obama and Joe Biden hailed as one of Obama’s “great achievements” in 2014 has regressed into chaos as a result of Obama’s premature withdrawal of American troops. But it isn’t just Iraq. Syria is the closest thing to Hell on Earth. Iran is working away on nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Yemen has fallen to Iran’s proxies. Saudi Arabia is looking for nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s. ISIS occupies an area the size of Great Britain. Libya, its dictator having been gratuitously overthrown by feckless Western governments that had no plan for what would follow, is a failed state and terrorist playground.

It seems as though things couldn’t possibly get worse, but they almost certainly will. We are seeing the fruit of a set of policies that were based on the false premise that problems in the Middle East are mostly the fault of the United States. Not only were such policies misbegotten, they have been executed incompetently. The resulting collapse is occurring with sickening speed.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Its safe to say that the leadership of IS is no doubt reviewing their security TTP's. :camo:

Let intelligence leak that another important figure was passing information and let them eat their own. The Brits were very succesful at sowing the seeds of doubt in the Malay Emergency.

 

[a_majoor]

Looks like everyone is now running rings around this US Administration WRT nuclear proliferation:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/05/25/are-the-saudis-getting-their-nukes/

Are The Saudis Getting Their Nukes?

Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the Times of London is reporting that Saudi Arabia has in fact followed up on its threats and made the “strategic decision” to get nukes from Pakistan, whose nuclear program Riyadh has paid for through the years. Some highlights:

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former American defence official said last week.
“There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

While the official did not believe “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet”, it was clear “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say”, following last month’s Iranian outline nuclear deal. His assessment was echoed by a US intelligence official who said “hundreds of people at Langley”, the CIA’s headquarters, were working to establish whether or not Pakistan had already supplied nuclear technology or even weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

“We know this stuff is available to them off the shelf,” the intelligence official said. Asked whether the Saudis had decided to become a nuclear power, the official responded: “That has to be the assumption.”

If this story is just based on intelligence community assessments, there might not be that much actual ‘news’ here. But it does belie President Obama’s assurances in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that Saudi Arabia in fact does not intend to go down this road:

Part of the reason why they would not pursue their own nuclear program—assuming that we have been successful in preventing Iran from continuing down the path of obtaining a nuclear weapon—is that the protection that we provide as their partner is a far greater deterrent than they could ever hope to achieve by developing their own nuclear stockpile or trying to achieve breakout capacity when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Recent reports have indicated that King Salman has thoroughly lost confidence in America as a reliable partner. The Guardian, in its excellent piece from the weekend which detailed how the Saudis had taken matters into their own hands over Syria, had this nugget in it:

King Salman, who was formerly defence minister, is known to have railed against Barack Obama’s equivocation on Syria, especially his decision not to bomb Damascus in August 2013, after a sarin gas attack blamed on the Syrian regime. “That was the moment when we realised that our most powerful friend was no longer reliable,” the official said. “We had to step out from behind the curtain.”

In any case, the incentives are there for the Saudis to loudly talk up this option right up until the deadline for the Iranian nuke talks in hopes of nudging Tehran to walk away. What happens after July 1 if the accords are signed is anyone’s guess. But we are not necessarily convinced that the Saudis are just bluffing.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Reports are circulating that the Saudi king, who refused to attend the recent Camp David ("reassure the Arabs") meeting is now headed for Russia to be fêted by Putin.

Way to go, President Obama ...

 

[The Bread Guy]

More proof that keyboards DO kill (the dummies, anyway) ....

Carlisle: Air Force intel uses ISIS 'moron's' social media posts to target airstrikes

OPSEC isn't the Islamic State group's strong suit.

Airmen at Hurlburt Field, Florida, used social media posts by the insurgent group to track the location of an Islamic State group headquarters building. Twenty-two hours later, three joint direct attack munitions destroyed the target, said Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, at a June 1 speech in Arlington, Virginia.

"The [airmen are] combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command," Carlisle said at the speech, which was sponsored by the Air Force Association. "And in some social media, open forum, bragging about command and control capabilities for Da'esh, ISIL, And these guys go 'ah, we got an in.'

"So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three JDAMS take that entire building out. Through social media. It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours.

"It was incredible work, and incredible airmen doing this sort of thing." ....

 

[Kat Stevens]

And now that we and the rest of the world, bad guys included, knows this, that's one source of int that will be shut off PDQ.

 

[George Wallace]

Poking the lion:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Isis declares war on Israel: Islamic State affiliate in Gaza Strip threatens 'worse is coming'
International Business Times
By Arij Limam , Orlando Crowcroft
June 4, 2015 13:18 BST

An Islamic State-affiliated jihadi group in Gaza has declared war on Israel after claiming responsibility for two rocket attacks over the past two weeks.

A group calling itself the Sheikh Omar Hadeed Brigade in Quds claims that it fired a rocket on 26 May which landed near the Israeli city of Ashdod as well as another on June 3 that also hit the city. Israel responded with air strikes in Gaza on Thursday.

The first rocket was widely believed to have been fired by Islamic Jihad and the IS-affiliated Omar Brigade claim – which came in a statement on June 1 – cannot be independently verified. The group took responsibility for Wednesday night's rocket in a second statement.

It has warned Israel that there will be more attacks: "Ashdod is the beginning. What's coming is worse."

Gaza is currently embroiled in an internal power struggle between Hamas and various salafi groups, of which the Omar Brigades appear to be most prominent.

On June 2, Hamas security forces killed an IS supporter in a shoot-out at his home in Gaza City and in May the Palestinian Islamist group – which has controlled the strip since 2006 – demolished a salafi mosque in central Gaza near Khan Younis.

While the Omar Brigades latest statement is explicit in its threat towards Israel, the bulk of the group's anger is directed at Hamas, which it accuses of arresting and jailing salafis across the strip, as well as confiscating their weapons and torturing them.

"Seeing as Hamas has chosen to rage war against the salafi jihadis to appease outside foreign agendas against the Gaza citizens. We the Sheikh Omar Hadeed Brigade have chosen to keep our weapons pointed at the Israelis," the statement reads.

Israel has blamed Hamas for the rockets that were fired on 26 May and 3 June, arguing that it will hold the group responsible for all attacks from the strip. Following the second rocket on Wednesday, Israel bombed what it claimed were Hamas and Islamic Jihad camps in Gaza.

Gaza has struggled to recover from the mass destruction of homes and infrastructure during last summer's 50-day war, during which over 2,200 Palestinians were killed. Over $5bn was pledged to the strip by international donors last year but it was revealed recently that only a fraction of that money has been paid to the Palestinian Authority.

The reconstruction efforts have been hampered by an almost total blockade of Gaza on three sides by Israel and in the south by Egypt, as well as the fact that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has no jurisdiction in the strip.

Fatah fought a short but brutal civil war with Hamas in 2006 following elections that the latter is widely accepted to have won. As a result, Hamas was left in power in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank. The two parties signed a reconciliation deal in 2014 that has had little real success.

The rise of Isis/salafi groups in Gaza is a serious challenge to Hamas, which has long campaigned on its Islamist credentials and its opposition to peace with Israel. The groups has always used its ideology to persuade Palestinians to support it over Fatah and the PA, which is seen by many Palestinians as at best weak and at worst collaborators with the Israelis.

It also comes as Hamas and Islamic Jihad both are fast running out of allies. Hamas lost a powerful supporter in Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi, who was ousted in a coup in 2013 and is now on death row in Egypt, while there are reports that Islamic Jihad has fallen out of favour with its main sponsor, Iran.

With Gaza residents fast realizing that they gained little out of last year's brutal war other than over 2,200 dead, a tanking economy and destruction on a mass scale, Hamas is sure to face increasing opposition from both Isis pretenders and moderate Palestinians.

More on LINK.

 

[dimsum]

Poking the lion:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


More on LINK.

Another group threatening Israel?  Join the line.  :

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Poking the lion:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


More on LINK.

In response, Israel has launched Operation GET OFF MY LAWN.... I have provided a copy of their overlay order for everyones info:

 

[McG]

Poking the lion: Isis declares war on Israel

It is the same stunt Iraq tried to create a popular mulsim cause by lobbing Scuds into Isreal during the Gulf War.

 

[a_majoor]

A bit of subtle nudging and Hamas and ISIS can fight a nastly little civil war in the Gaza strip and leave everyone else alone....

 

[a_majoor]

ISIS ups the stakes considerably:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/060415-755847-sum-of-all-fears-is-a-nuclear-armed-islamic-state.htm

Apocalypse Now: ISIS Establishing Nuclear Caliphate
06/04/2015 06:35 PM ET

Jihad: In the latest edition of its propaganda rag, the Islamic State says it has enough cash to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and smuggle it into the U.S. through Mexico. This is the sum of all fears, and it's not overblown.

The new issue of "Dabiq," IS' English-language webzine, includes a chilling article, "The Perfect Storm," that claims the group has amassed enough funds to purchase a "nuclear device" from Pakistan.

"The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah (province) in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region," the magazine says. The weapon could be smuggled through drug-running routes from Islamist-controlled Nigeria to Central America to Mexico "and into the U.S.," it adds.

Far-fetched? Not when you consider that IS has the means to buy nukes or dirty bombs, and the opportunity to smuggle them through our porous borders.

A Rand Corp. study says IS has more than $2 billion in assets from seized oil fields and refineries, kidnap ransoms and taxation. The think tank figures the terror group now controls fields with a production capacity of more than 150,000 barrels a day. It smuggles this oil out in tanker trucks and sells it at steeply discounted rates to buyers in Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan and elsewhere.

Despite falling world oil prices that have slowed IS' energy revenues to about $2 million a week, the terror group is still raking in more than $1 million a day in extortion and taxes alone. IS has also stolen some $500 million from state-owned banks in Iraq.

This is far more cash than al-Qaida had access to before 9/11. And IS is more ambitious — and fanatical enough to actually detonate a nuke inside a U.S. city.

"ISIS has billions of dollars, and if they plan an attack from over there, it's going to be 75% successful and larger than 9/11," warns terror expert Jeffrey Addicott of St. Mary's University. Indeed, IS' magazine boasts that IS is "looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot."

In March 2011, long before IS announced the creation of its caliphate, we predicted that not only would a caliphate sprout from Barack Obama's feckless Mideast policies but that a "nuclear caliphate" would emerge.

Our piece, "Will A Nuclear Caliphate Rise From Unrest In The Mideast?" , warned that fanatics would try to bring the Mideast under a single Islamic ruler who could control "oil supplies and possibly even nuclear weapons." It further warned that this Mideast-based Islamic state would pose "a direct threat to the West."

At the time, the White House pooh-poohed the idea of any "caliphate" forming, arguing that Muslim terrorists could never exploit the power vacuum (which the White House helped create) in the Mideast because most reformers were "secular."

Ignoring Muslim polling to the contrary, then-deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough called it a "lie" that Muslims even desire a universal Islamic state. Now, thanks to such naivete, we're facing an Islamic state that could turn into the first nuclear terrorist state. And Obama's doing next to nothing to stop it.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/060415-755847-sum-of-all-fears-is-a-nuclear-armed-islamic-state.htm#ixzz3cJxVWaZ9
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

 

[Robert0288]

And now that we and the rest of the world, bad guys included, knows this, that's one source of int that will be shut off PDQ.

+1. 

I don't know what it is about the Americans, but they seem to like burning their sources and posting a lot of leaks from 'anonymous intel officials'

 

[Colin Parkinson]

or as mentioned elsewhere a cover for another leak they don't want found

 

[a_majoor]

ISIS suffers a defeat in Libya as people begin to revolt against the barbaric rules and actions of their oppressors:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/19/defeat-for-isis-in-libya/

Defeat for ISIS in Libya

A month after ISIS’s sudden and nearly simultaneous seizures of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria shocked the world, the Islamist group may be in retreat on its third major battlefield: Libya. According to sources on the ground and the Libyan army, forces loyal to the internationally recognized government in Tobruk have retaken towns surrounding the ISIS stronghold of Derna, while rival jihadi groups and residents enraged by ISIS’s stringent rule have rebelled against it inside the city. More, via the Times of London:

Fierce fighting erupted in the city last Wednesday when Isis militants killed three top commanders from the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council, a rival al-Qaeda linked umbrella group, and Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade, another Islamist militia. The killings angered residents already weary of the jihadists’ reign of terror, marked by public beheadings, enforcement of strict interpretation of Sharia and a steady stream of foreign fighters. […]

Witnesses told The Times that Isis militants have scattered into their residential neighbourhoods, fleeing so quickly that they abandoned their injured.

“They are being forced to defend their homes. People came out with weapons they had been hiding for many months, everyone came together against them,” said Ali, a 55-year-old resident.
On Sunday, a spokesman of the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council said on local Libyan TV that its forces had pushed Isis out of “90 per cent of the town”.

The Libyan military — who denied co-ordinating with Derna’s anti-Isis militias — said it would sweep in during the next few days and “finish the job”.

Though Western media frequently talk of its bases, strongholds, and even command structure, ISIS is not a traditional army in any sense, as Howard Gambrill Clark writes for our upcoming issue—and so defeats such as this may not be as devastating to it as they first appear. ISIS is excellent at fading into the local population after the loss of leaders or territory, then recalibrating and popping up elsewhere, exactly as it did has done in Syria and Iraq. Nor are any facts on the ground in war-torn Libya permanent, to say the least. Yet a blow to ISIS is something to cheer, especially as its toehold on Libya’s coast raises fears that it would sneak militants aboard refugee boats to attack European targets. A successful rebellion against ISIS’s unendurable rule is also heartening; as Clark points out (read the whole thing here) the greatest threat to jihadi rule is local intransigence.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I hope the animals the left behind in the panic to escape were dealt with as they deserved.  Might give the surviving cowards some thought of the lack of honour amongst thieves if they catch a bullet down the road.

 

[a_majoor]

Syrian Kurds take more territory from ISIS. I suspect the Turks, remaining Syrian government forces and their Iranian paymasters are not pleased:

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2015/06/23/Syrian-Kurds-on-the-offensive-push-deeper-into-Islamic-State-territory/

Syrian Kurds, on offensive, seize military base from Islamic State
by Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Kurdish-led forces said on Monday that they had captured a military base from Islamic State in Syria's Raqqa province, advancing deeper into territory held by the group and showing new momentum after they seized a border crossing from the jihadists last week.

The Kurds, aided by U.S.-led air strikes and smaller Syrian rebel groups, pushed on Monday to within 7 km (4 miles) of Ain Issa, a town 50 km (30 miles) north of Islamic State's de facto capital Raqqa city, said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Kurdish forces.

"They have been defeated," YPG spokesman Redur Xelil told Reuters.

Islamic State had held the military base, Liwa 93, southwest of Ain Issa, since capturing it from the Syrian military last year.

"This means that the Islamic State keeps collapsing inside its own stronghold," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict.

The rapid advance into Raqqa province has defied expectations of a protracted battle between the Kurdish YPG group and Islamic State fighters, who waged a four-month battle for the border town of Kobani, where the Kurds finally defeated the jihadists in January.

Raqqa is the main seat of power in Syria for Islamic State, the group also known as ISIS or ISIL, which has proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory it controls in Syria and Iraq.

The United States has been leading an air campaign against the group in both countries since last year. The Kurds have been the most important partner so far for the U.S.-led campaign in Syria, where Washington has far fewer allies on the ground than in Iraq.

The Kurdish front in northern Syria has been one of the few sources of good news for the global campaign against Islamic State since the jihadists made major advances last month in western Iraq and central Syria.

A spokesman for the Pentagon said last week that Islamic State forces had appeared to "crack" at the Turkish border town of Tel Abyad, which fell to the YPG in less than two days, cutting Islamic State's supply route from Turkey.

Thousands of people had fled from Ain Issa towards Raqqa city in the last two days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Some refugees from the Tel Abyad area had accused the YPG of driving Arabs and Turkmen from territory seized from Islamic State. More than 23,000 people had fled northern Syria into Turkey.

With the fighting having moved on and a border crossing reopening, some of the refugees were returning to Tel Abyad on Monday. Hundreds of Syrians, mostly women and children carrying bags of belongings, returned across the border from the Turkish town of Akcakale.

Kurdish officials denied forcing people out and said that such accusations were being made to stir up ethnic strife. The Observatory has said there has been no evidence of systematic abuses by the YPG, though there have been individual cases.

The Kurdish advance is alarming the Turkish government, which is worried the growing Kurdish sway in northern Syria could inflame ethnic unrest among its own Kurdish population.

Ankara has conveyed to Washington its concerns about signs of "a kind of ethnic cleansing" in areas captured by Kurds near Tel Abyad.

The Syrian Kurds have said they do not want their own state, but see their example of regional autonomy as a model for how to settle the war in Syria and elsewhere in the region. Their cousins in Iraq also have self-rule in an autonomous region.

The Kurdish administration's growing strength has led to friction with the Damascus government, which has tended to avoid direct conflict with the Kurds during the four-year war while maintaining a foothold in areas where the Kurds hold sway.

Tensions have flared in Qamishli, a northeastern city split between Kurdish and government forces. Kurdish forces seized several positions from government control there last week following clashes that Kurdish officials said the Syrian government had instigated to stir Arab-Kurdish conflict.

Syrian government officials did not comment specifically on the Qamishli events but have said they suspect some Kurds of harbouring separatist aims.

"In general, (the Kurds) and us are friends, but there is no state of permanent harmony," a Syrian government official said by telephone on condition of anonymity.

(Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan in Akcakale and Laila Bassamin Beirut; Editing by Peter Graff, Toni Reinhold)

 

[a_majoor]

From the WTF? newsfiles. American actions are becoming increasingly counterproductive, while regional actors are increasingly teaming up to oppose these actions. As an aside, our participation in the anti ISIS air campaign might not be looked upon very well in the Sunni world either:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/23/the-strangest-bedfellows-of-all/

The Strangest Bedfellows of All

As the U.S. ups “advisor” deployments to Iraq, some of them are sharing bases with Iranian-backed Shi’a militia. Eli Lake & Josh Rogin at Bloomberg report:

Two senior administration officials confirmed to us that U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the Taqqadum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the base have killed American soldiers in the past.

This is, to say the least, strange. And it won’t just look strange to Americans; alarm bells will be ringing all across the Sunni world. Angry Sunni allies are already accusing the United States of acting as ‘the Shi’a air force’ for the duration of the fight against ISIS; the news that we are now sharing bases with them is going to confirm a worst-case scenario in many Sunni minds, and the word on the street will be that the infidel Americans are in bed with the heretics of Tehran.

This perception is not going to stabilize the Middle East. It’s going to make it easier for ISIS and Al-Qaeda linked groups to recruit. It’s going to increase the flow of money and arms from the Gulf to radical jihadis in Syria and beyond. And it’s going to add new urgency to the drive by Israel and Saudi Arabia to work together against American policy in the region. We can send as many officials as we want to the Gulf to tell the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Emiratis how much we love them; it won’t do much good.

Lake and Rogin go on to point out that some Obama Administration officials have privately expressed worries that the Shi’a might, gasp, spy on U.S. troops at the facility, and that the troops are “at risk”. As for the spying, two can play at that game, and let’s hope the Americans on the base are keeping their eyes and ears open. As for the risk question, who knows? Let’s just hope that the White House knows what it is doing.

For better or for worse, the administration is doubling down on its bet that making friends with the Shi’a is the best way to defend American interests at the least risk and cost. And maybe it thinks that displays of good will and support will win some points with the Supreme Leader as the nuclear talks near yet another ‘deadline’. We root for the home team at The American Interest, so we hope this all somehow turns out for the best; we can’t help but wonder, though, what will come next. An American honor guard for the Supreme Leader as he leads the chants at the next big “Death to America” rally?

 

[The Bread Guy]

While the old Cracked magazine may be better known for satire, it now appears to be doing more (in their own smart-ass way) news & pop culture coverage.  Sweary words aside, here's a pretty easy-to-understand piece on how ISIS came to be.

We Built Their Death Squads: ISIS's Bizarre Origin Story

ISIS -- the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria -- is one of the least funny organizations on the planet. From child trafficking to attempted genocide, everything they touch turns into a big steaming pile of tragedy. Things seem to be going pretty well for them, too. The West's new boogeymen captured the city of Ramadi, Iraq, last month, and they appear to be drawing in new recruits slightly faster than American airstrikes can kill them.

But, the truly scary thing is that they seem to have just popped into existence overnight. How many of you had never even heard the term "ISIS" before last year? How is such a spontaneous mass of organized terror even possible? We were wondering that, too, so we sat down with a few people who were on the ground in Iraq during ISIS's real-life supervillain origin story. We learned that, if we're not the father of ISIS, the United States is at least some sort of uncle.

It started when ...

#5. We Put All Their Leaders In The Same Camp ....

More on Camp Bucca & ISIS, in more mainstream media language, here, here and here.