It looks like ISIS sent three suicide bombers to Istanbul, Turkey and they successfully murdered more than 30 people, according to the government last night, they expect even more to die from their injuries and the toll could be as high as 50. Hundreds were injured in the blast. From Fox News;
“According to the information I was given, a terrorist at the international terminal entrance first opened fire with a Kalashnikov and then blew himself up,” Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told Turkey’s state-run news agency earlier in the evening.
NTV reported that one of the explosions occurred at the international terminal while another took place at the domestic terminal. However, that report was not immediately confirmed by Turkish authorities.
A Turkish official told The Washington Post that the bombers blew themselves up after police shot at them. Another official told Reuters that the bombers detonated their explosives prior to passing through a X-ray security checkpoint.
The attack comes after the Iraqi government declared that Falujah was liberated from ISIS and the Iraqis are turning their attention to Mosul. It’s also the second anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the Caliphate.
Reuters seems to think that the Caliphate is crumbling;
On a front south of Mosul, a group of women displaced by the offensive said Islamic State fighters’ grip had begun to loosen as Iraqi forces advanced, to the point that they no longer punished people for not wearing the full face veil.
The number of foreign fighters has fallen significantly, and renewed efforts by the group to recruit locals have proven largely unsuccessful, except amongst the young and destitute, according to people who recently fled, including three repentant Islamic State members.
Unfortunately, they’re terrorists and they’ll probably get worse and bloodier in their death throes.
John Kerry said they’re resorting to attacking airports because they’re getting desperate, a sign they are becoming weak.
…whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
Any creature in its death throes can be a fearsome thing, wreaking havoc and destruction before it dies. To paraphrase, “it does not go gentle into that good night”. The prevailing attitude is, if I can’t have it, no one can.
John Skerry said something both true and useful? That is news!
Stopped clock principle: “Even a stopped clock is right twice daily.”
“Reuters seems to think that the Caliphate is crumbling…”
Let us hope so, but given what we know that the Islamists have done-throwing “gays”* off of building, burning captured pilots alive, stonings-all of which apparently perfectly acceptable under Sharia, we ought to really think hard about how Islam might be reformed and what our alternatives might be if it can’t.
*-because who knows what they actually did to piss off the bearded lunatics.
Oh, and happy ramadamadingdong (PB&J)
I need love, love
To ease my mind….
The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
More than a feeling that’s the power of love….
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need…
http://youtu.be/E0LAs7X5ybE
“At this point, what difference does it make!?”
Jonn, it was Istanbul, not Ankara.
Unless I missed another attack in Turkey last night.
Thanks, I don’t know why I thought it was Ankara
Ataturk airport. On quick glance it puts the word Ankara into your brain. Happened to me to, dunno why.
One analyst this morning said ISIS really hates moderate Muslims.
The violence they’ve used seems to be designed to make US lump all Muslims into one group of nasty bastards whose only purpose is destruction of us.
Well, it’s working, but you have to be careful what you wish for. It might explode in your face.
ISIS and the West should heed that warning.
Lumping all muslims as complicit is likely to lead to this becoming much bigger than it already is.
And the only people that can defeat ISIS are Muslims.
All the West can do is help ISIS volunteers become martyrs, but then only to be replaced by more recruits.
Turns out bombing people and putting foreign troops on their streets makes them mad at you.
Yeah, and flying planes into our buildings makes us mad at them.
I don’t want to go to war with 1.8B muslims, mind you, and I agree that it will be they who defeat ISIS and the crazies – but I’m absolutely going to kill the motherfuckers who attacked us, and those who support them.
It has been 14 years. And Iraq did not attack us. Neither did Syria. In fact the attackers were mostly Saudi with a few Egyptians, a Lebanese, and a guy from UAE.
At this point we are not fighting the people that attacked us.
We are fighting a new generation of extremism, some motivated by many of the issues that led to extremism of the 1990s and Al Qaeda as an international network and many due to new motivations.
Not the least of which is the fallout from 14 years of destabilizing conflict after we invaded Iraq.
While 9/11 was “personal” in that it was an attack on the US for who we are in global politics and our financial influence in the world, ISIS is not personal.
ISIS is a response to who Muslims are in the world.
It is an attempt to reclaim their past influence and power as a Caliphate. A struggle that they believe is both demanded and prophesied by their religion.
The invasion and destabilization set the conditions for ISIS but it would have occurred eventually anyway. With the eventual death of Saddam, Iraq would have devolved into civil war eventually. His sons would have been incapable of maintaining the regime.
Invading accelerated the inevitable.
Bush’s Surge = MANY boots on the ground, patrolling the streets. That took AQI from dominant to completely destroyed, in spite of their re-branding as ISI. There were a few remnants, but their heads were close to the ground.
Obama’s pull-out (which we can debate elsewhere, but leave that aside) = ZERO foreign boots on the ground. And ISI regrew. At the same time, Syria imploded, and there were again ZERO foreign boots on the ground. ISI became ISIL, and took territory. And took Fallujah, while Obama wouldn’t send troops because they were the JV squad. And then took friggin’ MOSUL. All with ZERO foreign boots on the ground.
And they triggered waves of refugees to destabilize Europe. And they slaughtered Yezidi and took them as slaves. And they declared a Caliphate, which inspired loony tunes the world over. All with zero boots on the ground.
And yet you say that’s it’s foreign troops on the ground causing this? Seriously? Were you paying attention in 2007/2008? Were you paying attention in 2014?
If you bothered to read the Reuters article, it says that ISIS is not getting a far lower number of recruits now than they had in the beginning, their hold on Mosul IS crumbling and they are no longer as vehement about enforcing dress rules such as women covering their faces.
They are beginning to crumble internally because the mystique of their jihad is not just wearing thing, but is full of holes and those foolish enough to be part of it in the first place want out.
Let’s not forget what the mayor of the Islamic state of London said yesterday, if we vote for trump and not Billary, and he cuts off Muslim emigration to the US expect this to happen here more often… here in america?????
Fuck that goat raping son of a bitch!
Was a discussion this morning on expanding security zones past baggage claim or ticketing areas, I guess to make it a Dublin-style deal where your bags are scanned before you ever enter the airport. Apparently no one has noticed that they try to shoot and detonate wherever the most people are, and if they move the checkpoints outward that will just shift the target are outward too.
Have you run into that in Dublin, Ireland? I just don’t remember that ever happening to me and I fly there about once a year to see family. Maybe they just started it. I was last there in March of this year. Then again, I may have early onset of dementia. 😉
You are absolutely right about the terrorists not giving a shit where the victims are, just that there are lots of them.
However, one thing I did notice was how they created a distraction with one bomb in the parking lot, which pulled security away from the entrance, the second hit the entrance, then the third was able to enter the building.
Luckily, the security was strong inside too, though I would have liked to see the their guy get a round right in the middle of his forehead before he exploded his sorry ass.
About the only thing I can think of to make places like airports less inviting is to somehow spread out the incoming people along a perimeter so that there aren’t many people at any one place at any one time. They can still kill and maim, but the impact is not as great.
We learn, but unfortunately, they learn too.
Flew in and out of Dublin maybe 30 times in the ’90s and you had to get your bag run through an Xray scanner to get it into the terminal starting it about ’94. (Too, the Irish have had a little longer experience with amateur bombers than most.)They may have altered the process since then. Been a while.
I think it’s important to remember that we are used to an open society, able to come and go as we please, and have evenings outside in the summertime, because the majority of us don’t live in bad neighborhoods like Englewood on Chicago’s south side.
But no one in this country who values his or her freedom should take that openness for granted. If you can’t learn that lesson from the Reuters article and other sources, you aren’t paying attention. They want us to be as paranoid as possible, and lump ALL Muslims under one label of evil, and that includes moderate Muslims, whom they despise.
I think it’s up to us to distinguish between the real bad guys and the rest of the crowd, and NOT let the bad guys goad us into turning on each other.