Category: Terror War

According to Catherine Herridge, at Fox News, the Army is warning servicemembers to “be vigilant” after the Islamic State folks issued orders to their foot soldiers to “slaughter” them in their homes;

The assessment, obtained by Fox News, came from the Army Threat Integration Center which issues early warnings of criminal and terrorist threats to Army posts worldwide.

The advisory warns military personnel and their families about the Islamic State, or ISIS, calling on supporters to target their homes.

While there is no independent intelligence to corroborate the ISIS threats, the bulletin recommends more than a dozen precautions to military personnel to protect their homes — and their online profiles.

“Given the continued rhetoric being issued by ISIL’s media services and supporters through various social media platforms the ARTIC is concerned of the possibility of an attack,” the bulletin says. “Soldiers, Government Civilians and Family Members are reminded to be vigilant of their surroundings and report suspicious activities to their respective military or local law enforcement.”

I’m pretty sure that is an ill-advised course of action for those Islamic State folks. I’m pretty sure that a soldier defending his family and his home isn’t restricted by those pansy-assed rules of engagement that restrained him in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Andy11M sends us a link to the Reuters article about Jordan Matson, from Sturtevant, Wisconsin, who the Kurds say joined them in their fight against ISIS with the People’s Protection Units (YPG);

“Yes it is true,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said in an online message. “He is fighting in the Jazaa area.”

Jazaa is a town in Syria’s northeastern Hasaka province, close to the Iraqi border and has been the site of heavy fighting between the two groups.

[…]

A friend of Matson’s said he told online gaming friends about two months ago that he was joining a “private army” to fight Islamic State.

“He told us in the community that he was getting hired by a private army and he let us know two to three months in advance,” said Miguel Caron by telephone from Montreal.

The article says that Matson was in the military at some point, but there’s no record of him in AKO. He graduated from High School in 2005, so that makes him about 27 years old, I guess. If the Kurds want some volunteers, we have a thousand or so prospective recruits in our Stolen Valor page where they can start. Many of them are “Call of Duty” trained killers and I’m sure they’d jump at the opportunity.

UPDATE: Our buddy Jeff Schogol at Military Times says that Matson spent a year in the service according to the Army’s Human Resources Command;

Matson served as an infantryman from May 2006 until November 2007, attaining the rank of private first class, according to HRC. His record does not indicate why he left the Army after little more than a year, and command spokesman William Costello said he was unable to comment on Matson’s “character of service.”

During his brief tenure in the Army, Matson trained at Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; and Fort Polk, La., according to his record. His military awards include the National Defense Service Medal; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Army Service Ribbon and Parachutist Badge.

From the AFP comes news that the Turkish government, you know, those same guys who won’t let us fly operations from our airbases there, want us to do more than just drop bombs on the ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State fellows;

“Dropping tons of bombs from the air is only a temporary solution and only delays the threats and the danger,” [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan told parliament in a keynote address on the opening day of its new session.

“The world should know that Turkey is not a country that will allow itself to be used in the search for a palliative solution,” he added.

Yeah, so whatcha got, Recep? While I agree that if the Syrian question had been solved a year ago, that might have uncomplicated things, but without US leadership and with Russian resistance, that hasn’t been possible. Turkey, on the other hand, has the horsepower to be a leader in the region, but, I guess they’d rather engage in back-bench sniping.

They wouldn’t even let us run the 4th Infantry Division through their country in 2003 during the 2nd invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. When I see Turkish ground troops in Iraq with some of the equipment we’ve given them over the last few decades, I’ll be convinced they’re serious.

The folks at Vocative went out hunting jihadis with their reporters across the country. They found several and they also found a common link to this fellow Ahmad Musai Jibril, an imam in Dearborn, Michigan;

A decade ago, he was kicked out of a mosque for urging his followers to kill non-Muslims. He later spent six years in federal prison for crimes including money laundering, tax evasion and trying to bribe a juror. He was released in 2012.

What sets Jibril apart from other radical clerics is his sizable social following. He has racked up over 220,000 likes on his Facebook profile and more than 26,000 followers on Twitter, where he communicates with some of them (and their families) one-on-one. On YouTube, Jibril’s sermons average several thousand views each.

Jibril has been whipping up support for extreme Sunni Islam for years from his Michigan base—and according to eyewitnesses, his approach at times has been highly confrontational, even violent.

[…]

In an effort to neutralize Jibril’s hate speech, the Muslim Student Association at the college in 2004 organized a rotation of speakers so that Jibril would have to share the podium on Fridays. The former student tells us that this infuriated Jibril. Later, when a nearby mosque banned Jibril for trying to proselytize, the preacher began hosting fireside chats in his Dearborn basement. But again, says the former student, it went from “really nice talks” about doctrine in the Quran to labeling certain Muslims as apostates.

He’s created quite a following, especially among new converts, like Alton Alexander Nolen, the fellow who beheaded a woman in Oklahoma last week. But then you know that if he’s too radical for the Muslim Student Association which supports Hezbollah and Hamas.

Another student at the university stood up to Jibril—and paid dearly for it. “Three people attacked me,” the second former student tells Vocativ. He says they punched and kicked him while he was helpless on the ground, sending him to the hospital with cracked ribs and a broken arm.

Yet they still give him a platform from which he can poison minds.

Earlier today, Afghanistan’s new government signed a deal with the US to leave ten thousand troops in that country after the “withdrawal” of US forces later this year According to Stars & Stripes;

In a ceremony attended by Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, and other officials, Ambassador James Cunningham inked the accord on behalf of the United States. Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s national security adviser and former interior minister, signed for the Kabul government.

“We have signed this looking to the needs of Afghanistan, and the needs of the international community,” Ghani said during the ceremony. “It is a very balanced agreement.”

NATO representatives signed a separate Status of Forces agreement to allow a contingent of several thousand more allied soldiers to train and assist the Afghan army in 2015.

It probably would have been a little tougher to get the deal signed if the example of the alternative hadn’t existed in the form of Iraq.