Category: Terror War

In addition to attacking ISIS last night, the US also struck at a terror cell in Syria that they suspect was plotting against targets outside of the current confines of the war zone, according to the Washington Post;

The Pentagon said in a statement early Tuesday morning that U.S. warplanes conducted eight strikes west of Aleppo against the cell, called the Khorasan Group, targeting its “training camps, an explosives and munitions production facility, a communications building and command and control facilities.”

The attacks bring broader attention to the group of clandestine al-Qaeda operatives, which U.S. officials first warned of last week. The group “has established a safe haven in Syria to develop external attacks, construct and test improvised explosive devices and recruit Westerners to conduct operations,” the Pentagon said.

The Post also reports that the Russians don’t like our strikes inside Syria, but that Assad approves;

“There’s quite widespread suspicion here that the U.S. will start to bomb the Islamic State but will end up bombing the Syrian army,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, a Moscow-based analyst and head of an advisory panel to the Kremlin on foreign and defense policy. “Russia is certainly not keen on making the situation in the Middle East more difficult for Americans than it is. But why help them? .?.?. It doesn’t seem to be in Russia’s interest to get directly involved.”

As JAGC noted in the comments of another post, the Israelis shot down a Syrian jet for the first time in decades last night over the Golan Heights;

Israel said the Syrian fighter jet had crossed the UN-patrolled ceasefire line on the Golan which it regards as its international border.

Pictures taken by AFP showed smoke rising from the Syrian village of Jubata al-Khashab which had been bombed by the warplane just moments before it was shot down by a Patriot surface-to-air missile fired by Israel.

The burning wreckage, also caught on camera, plunged down on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line.

The Israelis also launched a raid into the West Bank to take out two of the murderers of Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel which sparked the latest war between Hamas and the Israelis according to the Associated Press;

“We were determined in bringing the ruthless murderers of Gilad, Eyal and Naftali to justice,” Lerner said. “Today’s successful mission brings the long-term search to an end, and the perpetrators of the crime no longer pose a threat to Israeli civilians,” he said.

[…]

In Qatar, Hussam Badran, a spokesman for top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, praised the two militants on his Twitter account. “The martyrdom of Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh came after a long life full of jihad sacrifice and giving. This is the path of resistance, which we all are moving in,” he said.

One long, bloody night last night. Glad to see so many jihadists fulfill their destinies, though.

ADDED: Our buddy, Jeff Schogol at the Military Times sends us a link to a series of videos of the action overnight.

I’m watching the press conference at the Pentagon in which they’re telling us about last night’s attacks on Syria. Admiral John Kirby says that they struck targets in the oil fields in eastern Syria and that they hit ISIS headquarters. They also claim that two fighters from Bahrain appeared over Syria in the second and third waves of the attacks. That all of the munitions were guided munitions.

They say that the first wave included Tomahawk missiles from the USS Philippine Sea. The Pentagon admits that he hit some residential areas but that the ISIS folks were hunkered down among civilians. The media asked the general if they were going to required “boots on the ground”, his answer was that he believes the force is “appropriately sized” for current operations.

Kirby promised that this is “just the beginning” of airstrikes. The Pentagon says that their goal is to “disrupt” ISIS’ operations in Iraq.

Q: “Do you think you’ve had some success?”

A: Something about their goal is to “give the Iraqis some space…to get on the offensive…we did several strikes in support of the peshmerga.”

“The radar response from Syria was passive.”

“ISIS is very well-funded and adaptive…they will change and adapt to these airstrikes…they are already doing that. We’ve seen signs of that already.”

“You are seeing the beginnings of a sustained campaign.”

He wouldn’t comment on who is doing the target selection when asked if the president or Secretary of Defense was involved in that process.

The Pentagon is unaware of any confirmation of civilian casualties, despite ISIS claims.

Prayers out.

I just fought down my natural revulsion to anything that comes from the major networks to watch “Sixty Minutes.” Teased into it by the promise that former SecDef, Leon Panetta, was going to blow the whistle on his former boss, Obama, I allowed myself to be sucked in. Panetta did say that it was a mistake to remove all American troops from Iraq, but to characterize that as a denouncement of Obama’s foreign policy was a bit lame. What became more readily apparent was that Leon was speaking up and speaking out for that oldest and most venal of reasons, to sell his new book.

From the entire interview what came across to me as completely unbelievable – no, unacceptable — was the revelation that ISIS is a self-funding movement due to its control of producing oil fields in Northern Iraq. King Abdullah of Jordan estimated the ISIS revenues from energy production were approximately $6,000,000 per day, a helluva lot of income for a ragtag terrorist organization. He then went on to say that they are, in fact, bootlegging their product at well below the market price, as low as $30.00 per barrel at a time when legitimate product is moving through major markets at triple that figure.

When I heard that my immediate response was to look at my spouse in astonishment and yell, “What the hell? Why are we allowing them to do that?” That question should be one that every tuned-in citizen asks of his elected representatives in Washington. To gather production from an oilfield into a central, marketable product requires a well-engineered network of collection processes that are quite visible to aerial observation and equally vulnerable to aerial attack and destruction. If all that black gold is moving through underground pipelines, there still must be major gathering points and transshipment terminals.

So why are these key targets not being bombed into oblivion by our military, thus cutting off ISIS’ cash flow? An age-old tenet of war is to strangle your enemy’s economy. Why then are we allowing these murderous thugs to extract, transport and sell on the international market a product that feeds their murderous atrocities? I’ve spent a large portion of my life around west Texas oilfields and you can believe me when I tell you that while all the geological exploration takes place mostly underground, the actual drilling and the subsequent collection processes take place right out there in the open, totally vulnerable to attack from the air. Even underground pipelines have periodic, above surface pumping stations just sitting there waiting for a smart bomb.

So, Barack, why are you sitting on your butt and allowing ISIS to fill its coffers by exporting oil?

Crossposted at American Thinker

Folks are filling up my inbox with stories about these three Afghan exchange officers who are AWOL from Joint Base Cape Code. I guess that Central Command has stepped into the search;

Maj. Jan Mohammad Arash, Capt. Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, and Capt. Noorullah Aminyar were reported missing by base security Saturday night and have not been seen since.

The three men were on Cape Cod for training exercises and arrived at Camp Edwards on September 11.

They were supposed to leave later this week and I’m sure they’re just taking advantage of their current location to look at things they don’t see in their own country – grass, trees, virgin goats, you know stuff like that.

UPDATE; Fox News says they were apprehended on a bridge to Canada. Canada has more goats, I guess.

Yeah, I know, it shocks. According to Reuters, the French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche reports that more than half of the French polled support the war against the Islamic State;

The survey showed 59 percent of the 952 people interviewed supported international intervention, whilst 53 percent were in favor of French military involvement.

French jets struck a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time on Friday, expanding a U.S.-led military campaign against militants who have seized a third of the country and also control large parts of neighboring Syria.

Two French Rafale fighters carried out a further mission early on Saturday, looking out for possible targets in the northwest Baghdad region, although no strikes were made, the Defense Ministry said.

So, our President is going to the UN to ask for more support according to ABC News;

President Obama will appear in front of the United Nations General Assembly this week as he attempts to strengthen his case for international action against ISIS. Power told Stephanopoulos she believes the U.S. has the legal basis it needs to go forward with action against ISIS without a U.N resolution – one that Russia could potentially veto.

Yeah, well, if the French want war, the UN should be no problem, they’ll also be no help – the UN thinks it’s job is done once they vote. Same with the French.

The Washington Times reports that former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Conway, doesn’t give the President’s new strategy against the Islamic State much of a chance;

A former Marine Corps Commandant told an audience that President Obama’s strategy to defeat Islamic State militants doesn’t have a “snowball’s chance in hell” of succeeding.

Another link to the Washington Times reports that the President’s two previous Secretaries of Defense, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta are also taking their shots;

“I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq,” Mr. Panetta said in an interview set to air on “60 Minutes,” CBSreported Friday.

Mr. Panetta said the entire national security team urged Mr. Obama to give more support to rebels fighting in Syria against Bashar al-Assad.

“The real key was how can we develop a leadership group among the opposition that would be able to take control. And my view was to have leverage to do that, we would have to provide the weapons and the training in order for them to really be wiling to work with us in that effort,” Mr. Panetta said, CBS reported.

I don’t believe a word that comes out of Panetta’s mouth, for the record. I think he’s just trying to save his own image at this point. Like when Clinton left the White House, I wish I had a nickel for every liberal who told me they thought he was a scumbag.

I feel the same about Gates, who has taken every opportunity to try and salvage his image since he left the Pentagon and screwed the troops with his BS about lower wages and increased healthcare costs;

“I’m also concerned that the goal has been stated as ‘degrade and destroy’ or ‘degrade and defeat’ ISIS. We’ve been at war with Al Qaeda for 13 years. We have dealt them some terrible blows, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. But I don’t think anybody would say that after 13 years we’ve destroyed or defeated Al Qaeda. So I think to promise that we’re going to destroy ISIS or ISIL sets a goal that may be unattainable,” Mr. Gates said.

Of course, everyone is lining up to get their shots in, where the f*** have they been for the last five or six years to stop us from getting to this point? Where were they when Obama half-assed the surge? Why didn’t any of them speak out when he was unassing Iraq? Where were they six months ago when ISIS took Fallujah? There has been points during this thing that someone should have come forward and said something – any of those three could have changed the direction this administration was taking.

Now that the President’s polling is falling off a cliff, the rats are abandoning ship. They could have changed the course of history, but instead they just went along with the current.

Belgian police say that they’ve thwarted some jihadist terrorist plots there. According to Die Welt;

According to the sources of the Belgian newspaper report, authorities believe there are links between the planned terrorist attacks and the jihadist group “Islamic State,” which has taken over large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Roughly 400 Belgians are believed to have travelled to Syria to fight alongside jihadist groups, L’Echo wrote. Police have been surveilling several of the 90 who have returned so far.

“Our starting point is that among them, one out of nine aim to carry out an attack,” L’Echo quoted an unnamed source as saying. “That is a conservative estimate, if you also take into account the people who help them.”

You might remember that in May, a jihadist murdered four people outside the Holocaust Museum in Brussels – the gunman in that attack is believed to have trained in Syria for more than a year.