411 replies to this topic

[Pak-Eye]

Intense fighting going on now in center of Ramadi city with media claiming ISIS now has overran Anbar Education Directorate Building

 

http://www.iraqinews...uilding-ramadi/

[Pak-Eye]

With this ISIS is now within 20 meters range of Anbar Provincial Council Compound, Police Directorate, Intelligence HQ and Prison

 

http://anbardaily.bl...4.html?spref=tw

[Pak-Eye]

Anbar Provincial Council claims the city would fall within 24 hours unless ISF reinforcements arrive and Iraqi air force steps up airstrikes

 

Fall of Ramadi would be significant as it would literally put the whole Anbar province under ISIS's effective control and the consequences of it would be far reaching; similar to what was witnessed when Mosul fell

[Pak-Eye]

Iran bombs Islamic State targets in Iraq, says Pentagon

 

http://www.bbc.com/n...e-east-30304723

 

Iran has conducted air strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in eastern Iraq during recent days, a Pentagon spokesman says.

 

Rear Adm John Kirby said the US, which has conducted its own air strikes in Iraq, was not co-ordinating with Iran. A senior Iranian military official also dismissed talk of co-operation between the two countries.

 

A US-led coalition has launched hundreds of air strikes against IS since August.

 

The US has said it would be inappropriate for Iran to join that coalition, even though the two long-time adversaries face a common enemy in IS.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the US and Iran have had a fraught relationship.

 

Washington severed ties the following year after Iranian students occupied the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage.

 

'Nothing changed'

 

Rear Adm Kirby's comments followed reports that American-made F4 Phantom jets from the Iranian air force had been targeting IS positions in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala.

"We have indications that they did indeed fly air strikes with F-4 Phantoms in the past several days," he said.

 

It was up to Iraq to oversee and co-ordinate flights by different countries in its airspace, he added.

"We are flying missions over Iraq, we co-ordinate with the Iraqi government as we conduct those," he said. "It's up to the Iraqi government to deconflict that airspace."

 

"Nothing has changed about our policy of not co-ordinating military activity with the Iranians."

 

The Deputy Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Brig-Gen Massoud Jazayeri also denied collaboration.He said Iran considered the US responsible for Iraq's "unrest and problems", adding that the US would "definitely not have a place in the future of that country".

 

Shia-ruled Iran has close ties to Iraq's Shia-led government, which has struggled to counter IS militants as they seized swathes of territory in eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq. Military analysts said earlier this year that Iran was supplying Iraq with Sukhoi Su-25 attack jets to help in the fight against IS.

 

Shia militias trained and funded by Iran have also been sent to Iraq to support Kurdish fighters battling IS militants.

[clutch]

Seems like the entire world is bombing these vermin ISIS... like cockroaches they seem to never go away!?!?

 

What I dont understand is.... why after over two months of global bombing of these isis terrorists... these guys are still around?

 

Any answers? Or are they all missing their targets?

[Krad]

Bombing is not a 100% substitute for action on the ground.

 

Yes you can contain the cancer and check its growth with selective radiation therapy, but to go in and remove it....that is the call few want to make given the expense that entails unlike a cancer surgery.

 

Even Iran is reluctant because it will probably turn into a quagmire for them....so they will just support their iraqi shia militias and the process will be long and drawn out.

[Pak-Eye]

U.S. and Iran Both Attack ISIS, but Try Not to Look Like Allies

 

http://www.nytimes.c...-iraq.html?_r=0

 

what a sight

[Pak-Eye]

This was logical and expected ever since the US attacked Iraq during first gulf war in 1991

 

The US's alliance with Iran is natural; throughout the history the foreign invaders have sided, supported and exploited "minorities" within Islamic world; and after occupation these minorities are direct beneficiaries

 

Iran has existential threat from the 90% sunni world and not from US, West or Israel

 

US, West, Israel face no existential threat from Iranian Islamic revolution based government which is representing only 10% of the entire Muslim world

 

But the fog in media is so glamorously thick, the above simple equation is difficult to comprehend

[cheif No 1]

Iran's Phantom jets

• Iran has several hundred F-4 Phantom jets, all bought from the US before the Islamic revolution

• At least one Phantom was apparently filmed in action over Iraqthis month

• The jet is "one of the most versatile fighters ever built", according to Boeing. It first flew in 1958 and was last produced in 1979
• The jets saw frequent combat in Iran's war with Iraq, and have taken part in fly-pasts in Iran in recent years
• Iran has struggled to find spare parts because of US sanctions. Israeli arms dealers have been accused of illegally supplying parts to Iran on several occasions. One such deal was reported in Greece this year by Kathimerini newspaper and other media

 

HMMM Interesting.

[cheif No 1]

This was logical and expected ever since the US attacked Iraq during first gulf war in 1991

 

The US's alliance with Iran is natural; throughout the history the foreign invaders have sided, supported and exploited "minorities" within Islamic world; and after occupation these minorities are direct beneficiaries

 

Iran has existential threat from the 90% sunni world and not from US, West or Israel

 

US, West, Israel face no existential threat from Iranian Islamic revolution based government which is representing only 10% of the entire Muslim world

 

But the fog in media is so glamorously thick, the above simple equation is difficult to comprehend

 

 

This Shia regime arose fro Sunni world. Look back few hundred year and find any Shia Empire. Also by how many Sunni governments they got attacked. Only Saddam the secular have attacked Iran 

[clutch]

BLACKWATER MERCENARIES COMING TO IRAQ TO FIGHT ISIS-





President Barack Obama has stressed that the U.S.-led coalition fight against the Islamic State can be won without boots on the ground. But it depends on whos wearing the boots.
Thousands of private security contractors, who played critical, below-the-radar and at times controversial roles in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being asked to consider joining this latest battle against Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria and possibly elsewhere in the Middle East. What specific jobs they will fill, and which departments or countries will be paying for their services, remains to be seen. But the demand for their considerable and varied expertise is expected to be high, and thats welcome news for both the contracting companies and politicians, according to policy advisers and industry experts.
I think Obamas promise not to send ground troops to Iraq and Syria, combined with the threat there, incentivizes the administration to turn to contractors because there are such fewer political risks, says George Washington University law professor Laura A. Dickinson, author of Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs.
Private security contractors cant engage in combat, but they can oversee training and logistics and can provide security, Dickinson says. I recently saw a posting looking for companies interested in constructing a network of satellite stations. So there will be many opportunities to be involved.
And thats a good thing for a private industry that has watched with dismay over the last couple of years as the U.S. government has extricated itself from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan.
The private-sector industry views ISIS as a potential marketplace, says Sean McFate, a professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service and author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. My guess would be that private contractors are eagerly wandering the halls of K Street and Pentagon City, offering their services. Theres blood in the water.
During the height of the U.S. military surge in Iraq in 2007, more than 180,000 private contractors were stationed throughout the region, according to Peter Singer, a military strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
It was greater than a 1:1 ratio to U.S. forces a lot like parallel troops, Singer says. The number goes down as U.S. forces shrink, but the bottom line is they didnt go away. Theyve just shifted to different roles from analysts to translators and security guards to training the Iraqi Air Force.
Training and equipping foreign forces in Syria is a key component of the administrations plan to defeat ISIS, and signs already point to a plan that involves at least a partial reliance on private security firms to assist and not just in Syria.
Were seeing the framework be put into place, Singer says. In August, the U.S. Army Contracting Command posted a notice for contractors willing to work an initial 12-month contract that will focus on force-development operations. They posted one of these before the 2003 invasion (of Iraq), and Halliburton expressed interest.
In its expansive announcement for Security Assistance Mentors and Advisors in Iraq, the Army says it is looking for contractors to help the Baghdad government, cognizant of the goals of reducing tensions between Arabs and Kurds, and Sunni and Shias, with key focus on core process and systems which involve, but are not limited to administration, force development, procurement and acquisition, contracting, training management, public affairs, logistics, personnel management, professional development, communications, planning and operations, infrastructure management, intelligence and executive development.
Those interested had until Aug. 25 to respond. A formal call for applicants has not yet gone out. But McFate, a former U.S. Army officer and later a program manager for powerhouse military contractor DynCorp International in Africa, says the turnaround could be quick.
Many of these companies have been pre-vetted and can be deployed very quickly, he says. In fact, many are already doing work for either State or DOD in some capacity.
In July, the State Department renewed a no-bid contract with defense contractor Triple Canopy, doubling the number of guards providing security to the U.S. consulate in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, Iraq.
Back in 2010, McFates former employer, Dyncorp, signed a five-year deal worth up to roughly $900 million to provide a fleet of aircraft, including UH-1 Huey utility helicopters and Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop airliners.
Of the $4 billion allocated to the State Department for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2002 to 2013, DynCorp received 69 percent, or nearly $3 billion, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
With the political gain of avoiding public outcry over U.S. ground troops being deployed back to the region comes the political risk of relying on a private military that has had instances of misconduct.
When these companies end up in the spotlight, its often because something has gone wrong. The most well-known private military contracting firm no longer exists: Blackwater Worldwide, founded by charismatic and controversial former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, has undergone several name changes and leadership shake-ups since four security guards were accused of killing 14 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007.
Two years after the shooting, the North Carolina-based Blackwater renamed itself Xe Services LLC. In 2010, Prince left the company, selling his stake to investor group USTC Holdings LLC and moving to Abu Dhabi, where he has been linked to efforts to build a mercenary force for the United Arab Emirates, a critical ally in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
The following year, Xe Services morphed again, calling itself Academi. And this summer, the private security company joined forces with rival firm Triple Canopy to form Constellis Holdings.
The consolidation brings more than 6,000 employees under one umbrella, which includes a new board of directors made up of Washington insiders: John Ashcroft, who was President George W. Bushs attorney general for five years; Jack Quinn, a counsel to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore; and retired Adm. Bobby Inman, former director of the National Security Agency and deputy CIA director.
The State Department has worked frequently with Triple Canopy to protect its embassies and consulates around the world. In 2012, the firm received more than $200 million in contracts for the security of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The next year it received $5 million more to protect the U.S. Consulate in Basra, Iraq.
But it is the reliance on these same players that has raised red flags for critics, including high-profile lawmakers such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy.
Law professor Dickinson says that the big concern is, have we really learned our lessons from the last round of wars where we witnessed colossal failures, huge problems with waste, misconduct and transparency?
One enormous issue, she says, is there are still huge gaps in our courts jurisdiction to consider cases involving crimes committed by private contractors.
In July, Leahy re-introduced legislation to allow the Justice Department to prosecute non-Defense Department contractors and government employees for some crimes committed overseas.
The bill would close a potential gap in the federal governments jurisdiction over civilian contractors.
Another move toward greater accountability, according to Dickinson, is a voluntary agreement led by the Swiss government called the International Code of Conduct (ICoC ) for private security service providers.
Theres wide support for that code with hundreds of companies (including DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Academi) signing on, although it remains to be seen how it will be enforced, she says
In August, the State Department said it anticipated making membership in the ICoC Association a requirement for companies bidding for security contracts.
While contractor misconduct presents short-term risks, McFate and others warn about the potential long-term damage of sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors who will remain far outside U.S. jurisdiction.
One facet of these industries maturing and becoming billion-dollar behemoths is that theyre starting to go indigenous, McFate says.
The leading firms are going into Iraq and Afghanistan and hiring lots of local personnel and then those guys are hiring their brother the warlord, he explains. When the primary contractor leaves, the subcontractor may not want to go out of business. Why not keep working with the political parties or warlords or become your own warlord?
At this point, the political cover outweighs these and other concerns, McFate says.
Using contractors is a tricky choice and there are some long term risks. But it sends a different type of message its less political. When most Iraqis think of contractors, they dont have warm and fuzzy feelings, he says. But sending in U.S. troops? Its a different signal. One of Osama bin Ladens main grievances was foreign troops inside the kingdom.
Singer has a simpler explanation: For whatever reason, Americans dont get as upset when a contractor gets killed.
Jennifer Koons

http://www.stripes.c...-state-1.316782


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I have to admit... These ISIS devils days are ounnumbered. ... they whole world is after them... these Blackwater folks are gonna get these guys!

[clutch]

ISISthe New Israel
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is our Frankenstein. The United States after a decade of war in Iraq pieced together its body parts. We jolted it into life. We bathed it in blood and trauma. And we gave it its intelligence. Its dark and vicious heart of vengeance and war is our heart. It kills as we kill. It tortures as we torture. It carries out conquest as we carry out conquest. It is building a state driven by hatred for American occupation, a product of the death, horror and destruction we visited on the Middle East. ISIS now controls an area the size of Texas. It is erasing the borders established by French and British colonial powers through the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. There is little we can do to stop it.

ISIS, ironically, is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the contemporary Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state eventually carved out of Palestine in 1948. Its tactics are much like those of the Jewish guerrillas who used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel. Antagonistic ISIS and Israeli states, infected by religious fundamentalism, would be irreconcilable neighbors. This is a recipe for apocalyptic warfare. We provided the ingredients.

I and Loretta Napoleoni, the author of the book The Islamic Phoenix, spoke at a Dec. 2 event in Manhattan at the headquarters of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Napoleoni pointed out that the message imparted to Muslims by ISIS is radically different from that of other jihadist groups, especially al-Qaida. ISIS does not call for martyrdom and self-immolation. It has launched a jihad against secular and discredited regimes in the Middle East rather than against Western targets abroad. It is seeking to establish, as the Zionists did in Palestine, a utopian, religious state. It holds up the ancient Caliphatewhich united Muslims throughout the Middle East in the seventh century and whose time is considered the golden age of Islamas an ideal, much as Jews held up the biblical kingdoms chronicled in the Hebrew Bible. ISIS, to build its state, has called on engineers, doctors and technicians to immigrate to the area it controls. And ISIS, although devoted to a fundamentalist form of Salafist Islam, is thoroughly modern. It has mastered sophisticated forms of electronic communication and delivers its messages through social media. And unlike groups such as al-Qaida, which bans television sets and radios, it views the technical advances of modern society as an asset. The mixture of fundamentalist religion with modernity is a potent and intoxicating brew for disenfranchised Muslims. And ISIS has attained what peaceful uprisings in the Middle East have notliberation from detested regimes, at least for now.

Modern technology and a clear understanding of how our multipolar world functions, however, are not enough to succeed, Napoleoni writes of the uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Is it possible that the smartphone uprisings, including the Arab Spring, failed where the Islamic State has succeeded because the latter is managed by a professional elite, which guides the rank and file, while the former finds itself at the mercy of their constant interaction and participation? If so, is the Islamic States model of nation-building more modern than that of the Arab Spring?

Terror, as was true for the Jewish fighters in Palestine in the late 1940s, is an effective tool to intimidate opponents and accelerate ethnic cleansing. The fear of ISIS is its most potent weapon. Iraqi army troops, although better armed than ISIS fighters and outnumbering them, drop their U.S.-supplied weapons and flee before ISIS. Shiites abandon whole villages to ISIS. And all the U.S. advisers sent to put some spine in the Iraqi government forces have so far been unable to significantly stem the advance.

Sunni militants in Iraq consciously orchestrated the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. This clash, as was true in the former Yugoslavia, is not the result of ancient ethnic hatreds. It was created for political expediency.When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian radical, arrived in Iraq, he founded al-Tawhid al-Jihad. His group used forged documents to infiltrate over 100 fighters from al-Qaida, most of whom had been in Afghanistan, into Iraq. Zarqawis goal was to spark, under the cover of fighting the Western coalition forces, a sectarian conflict with the Shiites. He understood that a unified Shiite and Sunni state would thwart the dream of a Sunni Islamic state. He had to ignite a religious war. His group, in 2004, eventually became al-Qaida in Iraq and declared its loyalty to Osama bin Laden, who had initially rejected Zarqawis tactic of attacking Shiites. Zarqawi was killed in 2006. His death was followed a year later by the so-called Sunni awakening. By 2010 the radical group was almost extinct.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is our Frankenstein. The United States after a decade of war in Iraq pieced together its body parts. We jolted it into life. We bathed it in blood and trauma. And we gave it its intelligence. Its dark and vicious heart of vengeance and war is our heart. It kills as we kill. It tortures as we torture. It carries out conquest as we carry out conquest. It is building a state driven by hatred for American occupation, a product of the death, horror and destruction we visited on the Middle East. ISIS now controls an area the size of Texas. It is erasing the borders established by French and British colonial powers through the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. There is little we can do to stop it.

ISIS, ironically, is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the contemporary Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state eventually carved out of Palestine in 1948. Its tactics are much like those of the Jewish guerrillas who used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel. Antagonistic ISIS and Israeli states, infected by religious fundamentalism, would be irreconcilable neighbors. This is a recipe for apocalyptic warfare. We provided the ingredients.

I and Loretta Napoleoni, the author of the book The Islamic Phoenix, spoke at a Dec. 2 event in Manhattan at the headquarters of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Napoleoni pointed out that the message imparted to Muslims by ISIS is radically different from that of other jihadist groups, especially al-Qaida. ISIS does not call for martyrdom and self-immolation. It has launched a jihad against secular and discredited regimes in the Middle East rather than against Western targets abroad. It is seeking to establish, as the Zionists did in Palestine, a utopian, religious state. It holds up the ancient Caliphatewhich united Muslims throughout the Middle East in the seventh century and whose time is considered the golden age of Islamas an ideal, much as Jews held up the biblical kingdoms chronicled in the Hebrew Bible. ISIS, to build its state, has called on engineers, doctors and technicians to immigrate to the area it controls. And ISIS, although devoted to a fundamentalist form of Salafist Islam, is thoroughly modern. It has mastered sophisticated forms of electronic communication and delivers its messages through social media. And unlike groups such as al-Qaida, which bans television sets and radios, it views the technical advances of modern society as an asset. The mixture of fundamentalist religion with modernity is a potent and intoxicating brew for disenfranchised Muslims. And ISIS has attained what peaceful uprisings in the Middle East have notliberation from detested regimes, at least for now.

Modern technology and a clear understanding of how our multipolar world functions, however, are not enough to succeed, Napoleoni writes of the uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Is it possible that the smartphone uprisings, including the Arab Spring, failed where the Islamic State has succeeded because the latter is managed by a professional elite, which guides the rank and file, while the former finds itself at the mercy of their constant interaction and participation? If so, is the Islamic States model of nation-building more modern than that of the Arab Spring?

Terror, as was true for the Jewish fighters in Palestine in the late 1940s, is an effective tool to intimidate opponents and accelerate ethnic cleansing. The fear of ISIS is its most potent weapon. Iraqi army troops, although better armed than ISIS fighters and outnumbering them, drop their U.S.-supplied weapons and flee before ISIS. Shiites abandon whole villages to ISIS. And all the U.S. advisers sent to put some spine in the Iraqi government forces have so far been unable to significantly stem the advance.

Sunni militants in Iraq consciously orchestrated the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. This clash, as was true in the former Yugoslavia, is not the result of ancient ethnic hatreds. It was created for political expediency.When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian radical, arrived in Iraq, he founded al-Tawhid al-Jihad. His group used forged documents to infiltrate over 100 fighters from al-Qaida, most of whom had been in Afghanistan, into Iraq. Zarqawis goal was to spark, under the cover of fighting the Western coalition forces, a sectarian conflict with the Shiites. He understood that a unified Shiite and Sunni state would thwart the dream of a Sunni Islamic state. He had to ignite a religious war. His group, in 2004, eventually became al-Qaida in Iraq and declared its loyalty to Osama bin Laden, who had initially rejected Zarqawis tactic of attacking Shiites. Zarqawi was killed in 2006. His death was followed a year later by the so-called Sunni awakening. By 2010 the radical group was almost extinct.

Source: Chris Hedges, Truthdig, 15 December 2014