This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Assailant shoots police officer, claims allegiance to Islamic State

    Assailant shoots police officer, claims allegiance to Islamic State

    ISIS shooting

    3E9 sends us a link to an article about Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett who shot three times by an unnamed assailant. Miraculously, Officer Hartnett survived the encountered and managed to return fire and wound the assailant 3 times. The gun man fired 13 times.

    The gunman has claimed that he owes his allegiance to the Islamic State;

    The alleged assailant appeared to be targeting a police officer, Ross said. “He was trying to assassinate this police officer.”

    James Clarke, Philadelphia police homicide captain, told CNN the suspect said to investigators: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State and that’s why I did what a did.”

    The picture at the top of this page is from surveillance video, so yeah, it’s a miracle that the officer is still with us. Fox News says that the firearm was a stolen police weapon, stolen more than two years ago. That might make the President cry.

  • Zinke questions ROE in Afghanistan

    Zinke questions ROE in Afghanistan

    Mick sends us a link to Virginian-Pilot which reports that Ryan Zinke, former Navy SEAL and current Congressman is questioning whether the rules of engagement under which the troops there labor are the cause of Army Staff Sergeant Matthew McClintock earlier this week;

    Zinke, who said he has been in touch with Special Forces soldiers close to the operation, said that the quick-reaction force was delayed by hours along with close air support sent to help the beleaguered troops. Zinke said that an AC-130 gunship was deployed to support the special forces troops, but was not allowed to fire on the enemy because of concerns of collateral damage. Instead, he said, the aircraft was only allowed to fire into a field.

    In light of these reports Zinke has called for a hearing for the Pentagon to explain the exact circumstances of what happened on the ground in Marja. “There is every indication,” he said, that air support and rescue efforts were “arbitrarily delayed.”

    It wouldn’t be the first time. You might remember the story of Marine Corporal Dakota Myer’s and Army Captain William Swenson’s Medals of Honor. The pair recounted how their higher headquarters wouldn’t release air and indirect fire assets to the situation which brought about their gallant efforts to rescue the Americans trapped in the village of Ganjgal on September 8, 2009.

  • Trudeau won’t bomb ISIS if attacked

    Trudeau won’t bomb ISIS if attacked

    Justin Trudeau

    The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed a suicide pact today with ISIS, well, not literally, but rhetorically, when he promised that Canada will not attack the terrorist thugs even if they succeed in killing Canadians at home according to The Guardian;

    The decision to end the combat mission against Isis was one of Trudeau’s first policy announcements after his election but it is unlikely to create much tension in the Canada-US relationship, said Andrew Finn, with the Canada Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center.

    “Canada is still going to be involved in the intelligence sharing, they’re still going to have their trainers there,” he said. “There’s still a commitment to the fight.”

    From Israel National News;

    Trudeau argued that the greatest threat to ISIS is a tremendously open and diverse society in which Muslims and other minorities are fully integrated into mainstream secular society, and that compatibility between extraordinary diversity and a successfully safe society is Canada’s greatest strength and that that is what needs to be highlighted.

    […]

    Trudeau said that “Canada is committed to having a military engagement in the fight against ISIL (ISIS) but in a helpful and substantive way.”.

    All Canadians are looking forward to their government supplying them Skittle-shitting unicorns by Spring.

  • Special forces troops surrounded in Marjah

    Fox News reports that several special forces operators are surrounded by Taliban in a compound located in Marjah. One soldier has been killed and two more wounded in a crashed helicopter;

    “On the map there is one green dot representing friendly forces stuck in the compound, and around it is a sea of red [representing hostile forces],” the official told Fox News.

    […]

    Earlier in the day, two USAF HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters were sent to rescue the U.S. special operations team. One of the helicopters took fire and waved off the mission and flew back to base.

    The other helicopter’s blades struck the wall of the compound while attempting a rescue of the special operations team, according to defense officials who compared the scene to one similar to the helicopter crash inside Usama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on the mission to kill the Al Qaeda leader in May 2011.

    The joint U.S. and Afghan special operations team was sent to Marjah to clear the area of Taliban fighters, who have retaken most of the town since November.

    There were nine airstrikes on Tuesday in support of a clearing operation.

    I’m sure that our guys are sending loads of Taliban to their virgins’ waiting arms.

  • Saudis break diplomatic ties with Iran

    According to the Associated Press, the Saudi Arabian Kingdom has severed some diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran because the Iranians got upset with then over the execution of Shi’ite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for his terrorist activities during the brief and weak “Arab Spring” uprising in the kingdom.

    The execution Saturday of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges — the largest mass execution carried out by Saudi Arabia since 1980 — laid bare the sectarian divisions gripping the region. Shiite protesters took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan, while Arab allies of Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia lined up behind the kingdom.

    The escalating tensions between the two longtime regional rivals looks to further imperil efforts to end the wars in Syria and Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and Iran back rival sides.

    Of course, it complicates a lot of things going on in the region. Iranians attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, but the government there condemned those attacks. The Germans and Russia have stepped up to offer their services for mediation in the dispute.

  • Emanuel Lutchman arrested for planned Rochester attack

    Emanuel Lutchman arrested for planned Rochester attack

    Emanuel Lutchman

    NBC News reports that Rochester, New York resident, Emanuel Lutchman was arrested for plotting an attack on a Rochester bar tonight to punctuate his support for ISIS. His plot was discovered by an FBI informant;

    When Lutchman allegedly said he hates it in the United States and was ready to “give everything up” to join ISIS abroad, the overseas individual told him, “For now do wat you can over there.”

    Lutchman met with another FBI informant he assumed was a supporter on Monday and indicated he wanted to target a club or bar, suggesting he could sneak a bomb inside the facility, according to court documents. The complaint says Lutchman also said they should kidnap a couple of people and kill them. He said they should wear masks to avoid being identified by law enforcement officials.

    From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle;

    In late December, authorities began monitoring Lutchman and connecting him with three informants that Lutchman was led to believe would help him carry out a New Year’s Eve attack in Rochester.

    Lutchman has past arrests, including mental health arrests. As well as his robbery conviction in 2006, he served several months in local jail this year for petit larceny and menacing.

    He also has a pending domestic violence case involving the same woman whom he admitted to criminally menacing, records show.

    A product of the entitlement generation, Lutchman went begging for guns and bombs, his back-up plan was to use knives and to kidnap people from the bar and kill them. He said that he knew where he could beg for a machete to use from a friend. Pretty soon these guys are going to learn to avoid FBI informants and do their own work.

  • Truman has trouble with Iranians

    Truman has trouble with Iranians

    truman

    Yesterday, Mick sent us a link to the news that the USS Truman carrier group arrived in the Persian Gulf and immediately began joint operations against ISIS in conjunction with the French Charles deGaulle carrier.

    Today, Mick sends us a link to the story that the Iranians didn’t waste anytime raising a ruckus with the Truman by firing missiles near the ship;

    Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said in a statement that Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval vessels fired “several unguided rockets” about 1,370 meters (1,500 yards) from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, the USS Bulkeley destroyer and a French frigate, the FS Provence. Raines said commercial sea traffic also was nearby, though the missiles weren’t fired in the direction of any ships.

    Raines said the Iranian vessels announced over maritime radio that they’d carry out a live fire exercise only 23 minutes beforehand.

    Iran’s “actions were highly provocative,” Raines said. “Firing weapons so close to passing coalition ships and commercial traffic within an internationally recognized maritime traffic lane is unsafe, unprofessional and inconsistent with international maritime law.”

    Historically, the Iranians have threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz to strangle commercial (oil) traffic going back to the Carter years which is why we now have the Carter Doctrine (the free flow of oil through the Persian Gulf at market prices being a national security interest) which has embroiled us in the region’s politics for the last 40 years.

    So, yeah, I’m not feeling very confident about that agreement that we just signed with Iran. My own dealings with amateur terrorists in Florida leads me to an uneasy feeling about Iran.

  • Afghans disappointed with Taliban gains

    Afghans disappointed with Taliban gains

    A year ago, most US forces withdrew from the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Afghans are disappointed that they haven’t been able to fight off the resulting Taliban surge in their country, according to the Washington Post;

    As of last month, about 7,000 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed this year, with 12,000 injured, a 26 percent increase over the total number of dead and wounded in all of 2014, said a Western official with access to the most recent NATO statistics. Attrition rates are soaring. Deserters and injured Afghan soldiers say they are fighting a more sophisticated and well-armed insurgency than they have seen in years.

    […]

    U.S. Special Operations troops are increasingly being deployed into harm’s way to assist their Afghan counterparts. Since Nov. 4, four members of the U.S.-led coalition have been wounded in Helmand, said U.S. Army Col. Michael Lawhorn, a military spokesman. Officially, U.S. military personnel have a mandate only “to train, advise and assist” Afghan forces.

    It should be no surprise that the Taliban limited their contact with US troops over the last few years as they waited for the scheduled withdrawal last year. Now with fewer US troops in the theater, the Taliban can use their fresh troops against the Afghan government which still suffers from corruption and deceit. The government misspent millions of dollars earmarked for defense to instead line their own pockets and now the Taliban chickens are coming home to roost.

    Any more leftist ideas we want to try out that we know will fail, but we’ll do it anyway?