Category: Terror War

We talked about Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh about a year ago when the Air Force mechanic tried to join ISIS. CNN reports that he was convicted in the Eastern District of New York yesterday;

This conviction is the first time a jury has found an individual guilty for attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS, according to Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin.

“Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh was willing to become a martyr, using his U.S. military training as a weapon for ISIL. Instead, found guilty of his crimes, he is facing a lengthy incarceration,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Diego G. Rodriguez.

Yeah, I’m not sure how marketable his military training was to ISIS. They don’t seem to have a very large air force or much of a need for an avionics guy. I think they would have had some regrets for accepting him into their ranks. He would have had the ISIS folks standing around with their hands in their pockets and complaining about the chow within moments after his arrival.

Pugh won’t be sentenced until mid-September.

Chief Tango sends us a link to the New York Times which, thanks to anonymous sources, lays out the pentagon’s strategy for fighting ISIS in Libya.

Airstrikes against as many as 30 to 40 targets in four areas of the country would aim to deal a crippling blow to the Islamic State’s most dangerous affiliate outside of Iraq and Syria, and open the way for Western-backed Libyan militias to battle Islamic State fighters on the ground. Allied bombers would carry out additional airstrikes to support the militias on the ground. The military option was described by five American officials who have been briefed on the plans and spoke about them on the condition of anonymity because of their confidential nature.

[…]

Indeed, the reason so many military officials were willing to discuss classified war planning, including the option of aggressive airstrikes, was to show that the administration was taking the ISIS threat in Libya seriously. At the same time, though, the administration hopes to show that it is exercising restraint…

I’ll bet that by the time they get around to launching these airstrikes, the targets will have fewer targets. I’m also prretty sure that any of these “military officials” have any military rank attached to their names.

CNN reports that B-52 bombers are being moved into position near the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq next month.

The bombers would deploy in April to take part in the air campaign against ISIS, according to Air Force Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, who announced the deployment while speaking at the Air Warfare Symposium 2016 in Orlando, Florida, in February.

It looks to me like the Pentagon and the White House are hoping to make the Democrat party appear as if they’re serious about prosecuting the war against terrorists and ISIS in the months leading up to the election.

The Pentagon claims that a combined airstrike of US fighters and drones took out more than 150 Shebab terrorists at Camp Raso, Somalia according to AFP.

“We know they were going to be departing the camp and they posed an imminent threat to US and (African Union) forces,” [Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman] said, noting that as many as 200 fighters had been using the camp.

The US military has a small and secretive presence in Somalia, with a defense official estimating the current number of American troops in the country on an advise-and-assist mission at 150.

This exceeds the total number of fighters who were killed in the entire US mission to Somalia since 2003. Davis claimed that the unit had just finished their training and that they planned to put that training to use against the small and secretive US presence in Somalia, estimated to be 150 US military advise-and-assist troops in the shit hole.

CNN reports that the Australian Navy’s HMAS Darwin intercepted a shipment of more than 2,000 weapons, AK 47s and RPG rocket launchers that appears to have originated in Iran and it was headed to Somalia, you know, like they don’t have enough guns in that ravaged country, or it was bound for Yemen by way of Somalia.

On board they found more than 2,000 pieces of weaponry — including 1,989 AK-47 assault rifles and 100 rocket-propelled grenades.

According to a U.S. assessment, the weapons were believed to be initially sent from Iran and were likely intended for Houthi rebels in Yemen, Lt. Ian McConnaughey with the U.S. Navy told CNN.

U.S. Central Command is still gathering more information to determine the arms’ final destination, McConnaughey said.

An Australian Defense Ministry spokesman told CNN there were 18 people of various nationalities on board the ship, but officials could not initially confirm that their identification documents were valid.

This makes me trust John Kerry’s nuclear deal with Iran even more, or not.

The New York Times reports that special forces soldiers have captured an ISIS official, and now that US has engaged ground forces in the war against the Islamists in Iraq and Syria, they figure on taking more captive. Now, the anti-Bush administration faces the prospect of employing more Bush policies in Iraq, like holding prisoners.

The American military has largely fought the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from the sky, and large numbers of Islamic State fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria by American airstrikes. The 200-member Special Operations team, made up of many Delta Force commandos, arrived in Iraq in recent weeks and is the first major American combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.

[…]

Officials said the detainee, whom they declined to identify, was being interrogated by American officials at a temporary detention facility in the city of Erbil in northern Iraq. They said the plan was to eventually turn him over to Iraqi or Kurdish officials.

Several Defense Department officials declined to say how much information or cooperation they have received from the detainee. They said it could take weeks or months to finish questioning the operative.

[…]

Defense Department officials said that the United States had no plans to hold the detainee or others indefinitely, and that they would be handed over to Iraqi or Kurdish authorities after they have been interviewed. The officials said they did not intend to establish a long-term American facility to hold Islamic State detainees, and Obama administration officials ruled out sending any to the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The current administration has done their best to do the opposite of what their predecessors did to fight terrorists, but then avoiding the previous policies only create more difficulties for them. They do their best to avoid fighting a war and the more convoluted their strategy becomes. Of course, in this particular instance, they could avoid taking prisoners at all, you know, like they avoided taking bin Laden prisoner.