Category: Terror War

So, it was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau who murdered a Canadian Army reservist, Corporal Nathan Cirillo, while the corporal was guarding the War Memorial in Ottawa today. According to the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau was a recent convert to Islam and he was being “watched” by US and Canadian authorities;

Authorities did not immediately release details about the suspect in Wednesday’s shooting or his possible motives. But the Globe and Mail newspaper, citing federal sources, said he was Michael Zehef-Bibeau, a man in his early 30s who had recently been designated by the Canadian government as a “high-risk traveler” and had his passport seized.

Two U.S. officials said that U.S. agencies have been advised that the shooter was a Canadian convert to Islam. One of the officials said that the man was from Quebec.

Similarly, the Canadians were “watching” 25-year-old Martin Rouleau who sat outside a veterans’ support center for two hours before he ran down two soldiers on Monday. Canada says that they’re “watching” 90 other people who traveled to the war in Syria and returned. If these attacks sound familiar, you probably read about Mehdi Nemmouche who gunned down some folks at the Brussels Holocaust Museum earlier this year. And there was Carlos Bledsoe back in 2009 who gunned down two soldiers, killing one, in Little Rock at a recruiting station.

In 2012, two French paratroopers were gunned down in Toulouse, France. Then there was Drummer Rigsby who was stabbed to death in England. I’m seeing a pattern here. All of the murderers came back from the various wars in the middle east.

Maybe it’s that the war is following our troops home. We weren’t willing to fight it over there, so now it’s here. It’s a war that must be fought, given the enemy and his 11th century mentality, I guess we chose to fight it here.

This whole reassurance from the government in regards to “watching” these guys when they come back from Syria is starting to ring hollow. Well, with me, anyway. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider our policy of letting them come back. Ample evidence exists to prevent it.

The Associated Press reports that ISIS claims that the air-dropped weapons and supplies intended for the Kurds landed in ISIS’ laps instead;

The cache of weapons included hand grenades, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, according to a video uploaded by a media group loyal to the Islamic State group.

[…]

On Tuesday, IS loyalists on social media posted sarcastic thank you notes to the United States, including one image that said “Team USA.”

I don’t put a lot of stock in what ISIS say – They’re like the Triad of Bernath, Wickre and Wittgenfeld – whenever they get slapped down, they call it a great victory. Did you see those grenades? Those things are older than Islam. Is it possible? Sure. Airdrops are imprecise, especially with no controllers on the ground and in the fluid battle situation that exists in Kobani/Kobane.

The Pentagon admits that they lost control of one bundle of stuff, but they claim that the rest made it into Kurds’ hands.

CBS reports that there is at least one more American fighting against ISIS with the Kurds by the name of Jeremy Woodard. Woodard claims that he was a veteran of the “US military” and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars.

A month ago, after he was angered by news reports about atrocities committed by ISIS, he paid his own way to Turkey and was smuggled into the war zone.

“I can’t really understand them, but sign language is everything,” he said of working with his new comrades. Woodard told CBS News he’s been involved in several battles against ISIS, including one close to Syria’s border with Iraq that he said raged for 24 hours.

“I’ve killed two, in my first battle in Jezaa, and that’s it so far,” he told Williams. “Hopefully my numbers will go up. I never thought I’d be over in Syria killing people, but they’ve killed innocent people.”

I don’t know if he legit or not, since just announcing that he’s “US military” makes it more difficult to get a FOIA on his records. I know he’s not in AKO, but that only means that he wasn’t in the Army in 2012 when he claims he was discharged, of course, he could have been in the Army and let his AKO account expire.

But he says that he’s saving one bullet for himself so he won’t be starring in a YouTube beheading video if he’s captured by ISIS, so he has that going for him.

Fox News reports that fellow who was “radicalized by Islam” ran over two Canadian soldiers in a mall parking lot yesterday, one died from his injuries;

The suspect in the attack, which took place in a mall parking lot near Montreal, has been identified as 25-year-old Martin Rouleau. Police fatally shot Rouleau after a car chase that ended with the suspect losing control of the car and rolling over several times in the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, about 25 miles southeast of Montreal.

Quebec provincial police Lt. Michel Brunet said Rouleau exited the car and was shot. He said police found a knife on the ground, but could not say if he had it in his hand when police fired their weapons. Television images showed a large knife in the grass near his flipped over car.

Nice to see that gun control in Canada is working so well.

UPDATED: From Associated Press, the Canadians have been watching him for a few months;

Couture-Rouleau, 25, was one of 90 people in the country suspected of intending to join fights abroad or who have returned from overseas, according to Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson.

He first came to attention of authorities in June because of Facebook postings that showed he had become radicalized and wanted to leave the country to fight, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Martine Fontaine.

Police seized his passport at the airport in July when he tried to travel to Turkey, Fontaine said. He was arrested and questioned but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with a crime, she said.

[…]

Lapointe said the suspect sat in his car in the parking lot outside a veterans’ support center for at least two hours before the hit and run. He said the other soldier is in stable condition with minor injuries.

So, watching someone isn’t the same as preventing them from harming someone, I guess.

The only fellow that we in custody in regards to the horrendous attack on the Benghazi consulate compound on September 11th, 2012, Ahmed Abu Khattala, has pleaded not guilty, according to the Associated Press;

Abu Khattala’s lawyer, federal public defender Michelle Peterson, said she is waiting for the Justice Department to turn over additional material – much of it classified – on the charges her client faces. The next court date in the case was set for Dec. 9.

Abu Khattala’s lawyer has said previously that the government has failed to show Abu Khattala was connected to the attacks.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo said the government so far has provided the defense with 150 hours of videotape and 4,000 pages of documents.

The charges against Abu Khattala include murder of an internationally protected person, murder of an officer and employee of the United States and killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility.

I don’t see the poor innocent terrorist getting the death penalty, not in our justice system these days. I see the lawyer is already setting up the government for withholding “classified” documents. I wouldn’t give a lawyer any classified documents, either. Informants in Libya would start turning up dead. And that’s the problem of putting these guys through the justice system. Did ISIS put those people who they executed by beheading last month through their courts? Yeah, I know we’re better than they are – but if we treated them like they treat us, this war would be over.

The politics of involving Turkey in the war against ISIS are complicated. The Turks joined in the airstrikes last week and sent their first load of ordinance at the PKK – the Kurdish organization which has been at war with the Turkish Government, the Iraqi government and the Iranian government for decades, but the PKK’s main focus these days has been against ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State troops.

The PKK and the Kurds have been trying to reinforce beleagured defenders of that town in Syria, alternately called Kobane or Kobani by the media. Turkey hindered that reinforcement. According to the Associated Press, that has put US interests at odds with Turkey’s interests;

Kobani desperately needs troop reinforcements, but because the Islamic State controls the Syrian territory between Iraqi Kurdistan, which might be willing to provide them, and Kobani, there’s almost no way to send in additional forces except via Turkey.

And this is where Obama’s second confrontation comes in—with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two now are in flat disagreement over the fate of the enclave, which lies directly on the Syrian-Turkish border. Ankara is willing to let it fall, and Washington clearly isn’t.

The rulers of Kobani, the Democratic Union Party or PYD, are affiliated with the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party or PKK, which has waged a 30-year guerrilla war against the Turkish state. Turkey, the United States and the European Union all have labeled the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Yeah, well the fight against ISIS has become a mess, what with Iran and Hezbollah joining the war, but Turkey may have relented says Reuters;

Turkey said on Monday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to reinforce fellow Kurds in the Syrian town of Kobani, while the United States air-dropped arms for the first time to help the defenders resist an Islamic State assault.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington had asked Ankara to help “get the peshmerga or other groups” into Kobani so that they could help defend the town on the Turkish frontier, adding that he hoped the Kurds would “take this fight on”.

If the reinforcements come through, this may mark a turning point in the battle for Kobani, a town that has become a frontline of the battle to foil Islamic State’s attempt to reshape the Middle East.

According to the Washington Post, the US air-dropped weapons and ammunition to the fighters in Kobani/Kobane;

Turkey had opposed delivering weapons to Kobane’s Syrian Kurds because of their affiliations with a Kurdish group in Turkey that began an insurgency three decades ago.

But the U.S.-dropped supplies and possible fresh fighters are expected to give a big boost to the battle against the Islamic State advance on Kobane, which is within sight of the Turkish border and has been the target of escalating American-led airstrikes.

So I watched Pentagon spokeman, Admiral Kirby on Fox this morning and he says that the only reason Kobane/Kobani is important to us is because it’s important to ISIS. That makes no sense to me. We should be choosing targets to destroy or “degrade” ISIS instead of fighting the war they want us to fight. And soothing Turkish sensibilities shouldn’t be part of that war. We’ve poured billions into the Turkish Armies and Air Forces with no real return on our investment. We should clamp down on our assistance to them until they wholeheartedly engage with ISIS instead of pursuing their own agenda to wipe out the Kurds.

The Associated Press reports that 200 special forces troops from Australia have joined US troops in Iraq, along with six F/A-18F Super Hornets;

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement from Baghdad that she had secured the necessary legal guarantees from the Iraqi government to go ahead with the deployment of the elite troops.

The Australian special forces arrived a month ago in the United Arab Emirates to participate in the multi-national coalition put together by the U.S. to battle the Islamic State group.

So I guess we aren’t going to be alone. The Australians participated in the second Iraq with a couple of thousand troops.

AFP reports that the US and it’s coalitions are targeting the Islamic State’s oil production capability in it’s latest round of strikes. I guess ISIS has been making about $3 million/day in that endeavor;

Of 15 air strikes in Syria, 12 were aimed at “degrading and destroying their oil producing, collecting, storage and transportation infrastructure,” the US Central Command said in a statement.

The jihadists control a swath of territory straddling northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, home to most of Syria’s main oilfields.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that the Pentagon is settling in for a years-long fight in the region;

In his first public overview of the campaign he leads from the Florida headquarters of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin cautioned against expecting quick progress. He said he cannot predict how long it will take to right a wobbly Iraqi army and build a viable opposition ground force in Syria.

“The campaign to destroy ISIL will take time, and there will be occasional setbacks along the way,” Austin told a Pentagon news conference, “particularly in these early stages of the campaign as we coach and mentor a force (in Iraq) that is actively working to regenerate capability after years of neglect and poor leadership.”

I guess the lessons of warfare from the last century are lost on this Pentagon and the politicians. The opening airstrikes of Desert Storm practically won the war because of the destructive force that was applied to the battlefield. It wasn’t pin-prick bombings like this one reported by AFP;

Another five [bombing attacks] west of the strategic Mosul Dam destroyed vehicles and damaged a building occupied by militants.

Oh, no! How will the ISIS fellows get to 7-11 in the morning for their coffee and crullers if their vehicles are destroyed?