Category: Terror War

Yesterday, François Hollande, the French president promised that the attacks in Paris on Friday night would earn ISIS a “merciless response” from the French people. So, according to the Wall Street Journal, they dropped 20 bombs on ISIS last night;

For France, the strikes were a major escalation in its air campaign. While involving far fewer aircraft than the U.S. used in the opening night of the American-led strikes in Syria last year, the bombing campaign was a significant use of the combat power France has in the region.

Sunday’s strikes followed a U.S. decision to expand intelligence sharing with France in support of the retaliatory bombings of Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, officials said.

So, let me get this straight; the US knew where these targets were on Thursday, but they hadn’t taken action? See, that’s not how you fight these animals of ISIS. When you verify a target, you destroy it, right then. You don’t wait around until it gives you a political advantage to destroy it. Also, the US hasn’t been sharing targeting information with the French until now? WTAF? And, by the way, 20 bombs is not “merciless” – unless the media misinterpreted the president’s speech and he meant that he wasn’t going to say “merci”.

So, while France was dropping their twenty bombs on actual ISIS personnel, what was the US doing? According to AFP, they took out 116 fuel trucks – not a very cost-effective endeavor.

Strikes by the US-led air coalition fighting the Islamic State group destroyed 116 fuel trucks used by the jihadist organisation in eastern Syria, the Pentagon said on Monday.

In a statement, the Pentagon said the trucks were destroyed in a single strike on Sunday near Albu Kamal, an IS-held town in Deir Ezzor province along Syria’s border with Iraq.

[…]

“Our spokesperson Colonel (Steve) Warren previously stated that we were going to start going after ISIL’s financial abilities,” the spokesman said.

“This strike was part of that strategy to start degrading their financial ability.”

Unless those fuel trucks were bound for Europe and to be used a bombs, I have to ask “why?” Sure I understand how cutting their supply systems makes fighting against ISIS easier for the peshmerga and Iraqi troops, but, so does killing huge numbers of ISIS soldiers. Obviously, if we know where the fuel trucks are, we know where the staging areas for ISIS soldiers are located. The war won’t end until all of the ISIS troops are dead. Every last one. Destroying fuel supplies worked against mechanized units of the Germans in World War Two, but it will do little to stop the foot soldiers of the Islamic State.

The death toll from the attacks in Paris Friday has risen to 129 souls. That count includes one American, Nohemi Gonzalez, a student who was visiting Europe from California. US intelligence services are blaming Edward Snowden for their failures to detect these types of attacks, according to Yahoo News;

Over the past year, current and former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News, IS terror suspects have moved to increasingly sophisticated methods of encrypted communications, using new software such as Tor, that intelligence agencies are having difficulty penetrating — a switch that some officials say was accelerated by the disclosures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The result played out in deadly fashion in Paris: At least eight terrorists, armed with heavy weaponry and suicide vests, and most likely aided by a support network, plotted and executed a highly elaborate mass casualty attack on multiple targets without the French or any other Western intelligence agency having a clue.

Well, see, I disagree. It looks like a fellow was arrested in Bavaria on Friday morning. He was carrying weapons and explosives in his car from Montenegro. His GPS was set to an address in Paris.

The Belgians have arrested three more folks in Brussels who may be connected to the attack in Paris. You might remember that there was a mass shooting in Brussels this last Spring at the Holocaust Museum there. From Reuters;

A French prosecutor said a car hired in Belgium was linked to the attacks and that a Frenchman living in Brussels rented it and was later stopped early on Saturday at the Belgian border.

A parking ticket issued in Molenbeek was found in the hire car in Paris. Officials declined comment on reports that the attacks may have been largely plotted in Brussels, that one of three attack teams came from there and that at least three of the attackers were based in the European Union capital.

Proportionately, Belgium has contributed more Europeans to ISIS’ war in Syria than any other EU country – about 300 by the last count.

U.S. officials have tended to describe the threat as mostly coming from “lone wolves” — what one described as disgruntled “glory seekers.” They have downplayed the idea that IS had either the intention or ability to carry out the sort of spectacular attacks such as 9/11 that had been the hallmark of al-Qaida.

“They had made blustery statements in the past,” said Matthew Olsen, who until last year served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), about IS.

But the group had not shown they could execute highly sophisticated attacks on Western soil. “We hadn’t seen that,” said Olsen. “They hadn’t proven they could do that.”

While he said the Paris attacks — similar in some ways to the 2008 attack on multiple targets in Mumbai, India, by an al-Qaida allied Pakistani terror group — “shouldn’t be a surprise,” Olsen said U.S. intelligence agencies will now have to reassess their judgment of what IS is capable of. “They’ll have to recalibrate the assessment,” he said. And that inevitably means the prospect of a similar mass casualty strike inside the United States.

Yeah, well, it doesn’t take much to coordinate a large scale attack like the one in Paris with just a few people – all you have to do is give them each a watch. I’m only surprised that it took them this long to use this particular mode of terrorizing the West.

The Associated Press reports that Terrence McNeil of Akron, Ohio was arrested recently for advocating the murder of US troops by passing along their personal information to prospective fellow jihadists in support of his ISIS buddies;

A federal affidavit filed in the case accuses McNeil of repeatedly exhorting violent action online over the last year and a half, saying in one May 2014 post that “I can’t wait for another 9/11, Boston bombing, or Sandy Hook!!!”

At another point, federal authorities allege, he suggested that “Somebody should park a car bomb in front of a church, school, or mall.”

More recently, prosecutors say, McNeil posted on his Tumblr account that “until our brothers and sisters are free from imprisonment, harassment, torture, bombs, and bullets American will bleed inshallah,” using the Arabic for “God willing.” He also offered online praise for the gunman involved in the deadly July shootings of Marines at a military installation in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the affidavit states.

According to the International Business Times he created a .gif file that he emailed around;

The .gif file, which plays a series of images on a loop, read, “O Brothers in America, know that the jihad against the crusaders is not limited to the lands of the Khilafah , it is a world-wide jihad and their war is not just a war against the Islamic State, it is a war against Islam…Know that it is wajib (translated to “necessary”) for you to kill these kuffar ! and now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for? Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe…” according to the Justice Department. The file then allegedly showed photographs of purported members of the United States military, along with their name, address and military branch.

From The Guardian;

One gif dated to 24 September shows members of the US military, a handgun, and the command “kill them wherever you find them”. Text that appears in the gif reads: “O Brothers in America, know that the jihad against the crusaders is not limited to the lands of the Khilafah,” an allusion to the so-called caliphate under the rule of Isis in Syria and Iraq.

The gif then shows the names and addresses of purported US military personnel, and has text that reads: “Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe.”

Yeah, well, he sure was brave to tell other people to do it from the safety of his Mom’s basement.

Brown Neck Gaiter sends us the video of a jihadist who was filming an interview that was rudely interrupted by karma…karma and a little mortar fire. From Daily Caller;

The whistling artillery strike, which hit the Jihadist right in the middle of an interview while in Tall Sukayk, Syria, apparently came from the Syrian Arab Army.

Also hit and killed by the strike was Syrian media activist Ahmed Abu Hamza, who was filming the interview.

Derka-derka-boom!