ISIS IS WEAK - What ISIS doesn't want you to hear!

[Chris]

This is good. It's what I think is happening but various neocon types would prefer to go to war.



Transcript: Waleed Aly hits out at ISIS over Paris attacks, calls them weak.

[valley ranch]

Not weak, maybe losing the offensive in some areas. They are a pack of the dirtiest crap on the world. They know they're crap too.

This girl, I remember her referring to her brother who they called Bird: "Bird's a good thief, a good, good thief!"

[waltky]

Sometimes ya win, sometimes ya lose - good time Charlie's got the blues...

Islamic State Finance Minister Killed by US Forces
March 25, 2016 — U.S. forces have killed Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, an Islamic State finance minister also responsible for the terrorist group's external affairs, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Friday. "We are systematically eliminating ISIL's cabinet," Carter said, using an acronym for the terrorist group.

Carter would not say whether Qaduli, also known as Hajji Iman, was killed in Iraq or Syria, nor would he say whether the IS leader was killed in a raid or an airstrike. According to a U.S. defense official, Qaduli was "actively plotting to conduct terror attacks in the West." The official said the U.S. military believes Qaduli was providing money to foreign fighters trying to develop and carry out attacks similar to the attack this week in Brussels. Qaduli was released from Iraqi prison in early 2012 and had a $7 million reward on his head.

Others under attack

Carter also announced that Abu Sara, an Islamic State leader charged with paying fighters in Iraq, was targeted by U.S. forces this week. A defense official told VOA that Sara was hit by a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq. Omar al-Shishani — also known as "Omar the Chechen" — was killed in a U.S. airstrike in March, and IS chemical weapons expert Abu Malik was killed by a strike in late January. "Striking leadership is necessary, but it's far from sufficient," Carter said.

Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli. The Islamic State group's second in command is said to have been killed in a U.S. raid in Syria.

He added that the killing of Qaduli was consistent with U.S. strategy of pressuring the Islamic State in "every single way we can, from the leadership right down to supporting local forces on the ground." "Momentum is in our favor," General Joe Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the briefing Friday, "but by no means would I say that we're about to break the back of ISIL or that the fight is over."

U.S. role questioned

See also:

Taliban Assassinate Afghan Army General
March 25, 2016 — Taliban suicide bombers have assassinated a senior army general and his bodyguard in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, Afghan officials said Friday.

Three gunmen with explosives strapped to their bodies entered the home of General Khan Agha in the Dand district disguised as guests late Thursday. The gunmen opened fire before blowing themselves up or being killed in a firefight with security forces, regional Corps Commander General Dawood Shah Wafadar told VOA. The deadly overnight attack also left a teenaged son of the slain general seriously wounded. Wafadar said Agha, the deputy head of 205th Atal Military Corps for civilian affairs, routinely received guests at his residence.

Afghan security forces guard a checkpoint in Spein Boldak at the border with Pakistan, Kandahar province, Afghanistan, Jan. 25, 2016. Three Taliban gunmen killed Afghan General Khan Agha in the Dand district late Thursday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, with a spokesman saying two of its suicide bombers participated in it and 10 Afghan security personnel, including Agha, were killed while many others were wounded. The insurgent group often gives inflated casualty figures in such attacks. Separately, at least seven police officers were killed in a suspected insider attack in Kandahar's Arghandab district. Officials said the slain members of the Afghan Local Police, or ALP, were asleep when three of their colleagues sprayed them with bullets and fled the scene along with the victims' weapons and ammunition.

The ALP is a community policing system established about six years ago to protect villages and remote districts around Afghanistan because of the insufficient presence of army and police forces there. The Taliban spokesman later claimed responsibility, with a spokesman saying the assailants were its loyalists and returned to the insurgent ranks after carrying out the attack.

http://www.voanews.com/content/talib...l/3254635.html

[waltky]

ISIS' finance minister death a heavy blow...

Islamic State dealt hefty body blow with death of top aide - officials
26 Mar 2016 - Islamic State will struggle to recover from the death of a top aide, reported this week in a U.S. air strike, whose overview of the group's finances, politics and administration was unmatched, Iraqi and U.S. sources said.

Islamic State will struggle to recover from the death of a top aide, reported this week in a U.S. air strike, whose overview of the group's finances, politics and administration was unmatched, Iraqi and U.S. sources said. Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, also known as Haji Iman and Abu Alaa al-Afri, was a veteran jihadist with a bounty of US$7 million (5 million pound) on his head. That was second only to the US$10 million offered for Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and accurately reflected his importance to the group. "This is the heaviest blow to Islamic State in terms of assassinations because Qaduli was at the heart of (its) ...administrative structure," said Hisham al-Hashimi, an analyst who advises the Iraqi government on the militants. "Baghdadi can't replace Haji Iman with a person of equivalent value. He will have to appoint three people to fill the vacuum... That reduces (Baghdadi's)... efficiency and leaves him more exposed to danger than before."

As well as heading the Shura council that advises Baghdadi, Qaduli was governor of the Syrian provinces and the group's financial comptroller, Hashimi said. His death, and just before him that of war minister Abu Omar al-Shishani and the capture of an unidentified chemical weapons operative, "show that the United States has sources of information close to their top command level," the analyst added. U.S. officials say Islamic State is losing a battle to forces arrayed against it from many sides in the vast region it controls. The jihadist fighters were on the retreat this week in the strategic Syrian city of Palmyra.

In Iraq, the group has been pulling back since December when it lost Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. The Baghdad government is hoping this year to recapture Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, seized by the militants nearly two years ago. "The loss of Haji Iman will be massive. Although (Islamic State) ... has a strong system in place to replace key leaders it still takes time to readjust," said Ranj Talabany, an official from the Kurdish Zanyari intelligence agency. "He was fully aware of their finances, and key leadership decisions were made with Haji Iman being consulted."

AL QAEDA VETERAN

[MisterVeritis]

If we had fought WWII is such a pathetic manner the English, and possibly the Russians, would be speaking German.

[Peter1469]

I have been saying this for a long time. ISIL didn't take bin Laden's advice to wait to create a Caliphate. He said it wasn't time. ISIL tried anyway and has lost about 40% of its territory over the last year. Running a nation is expensive. And you have to hold territory. ISIL is proving to not be great at it.

But, as they are defeated on the conventional battlefield they will shift to terror attacks. So expect more Paris and Brussels style attacks.

This is good. It's what I think is happening but various neocon types would prefer to go to war.



Transcript: Waleed Aly hits out at ISIS over Paris attacks, calls them weak.

[waltky]

ISIS startin' to fracture?...

Cracks show inside Islamic State's shrinking caliphate
Wednesday 29th June, 2016: It was barely more than a squiggle, but the mark of a single letter sprayed overnight on a wall in the heart of Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate was a daring act of dissent.

The next day, ultra-hardline Islamic State fighters came and scrubbed out the "M" - the first letter of the word for "resistance" in Arabic - which appeared in an alley near the Grand Mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul about three weeks ago. A video of the single letter, scrawled about a metre long on the wall, was shared with Reuters by an activist from a group called "Resistance", whose members risk certain execution to conduct small acts of defiance in areas under Islamic State rule. Nearly two years since Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivered a sermon from that same mosque summoning Muslims worldwide to the "caliphate", it is fraying at the edges.

As an array of forces make inroads into their territory spanning Iraq and Syria, the jihadis are becoming even harsher to maintain control of a population that is increasingly hostile to them, according to Iraqi officials and people who managed to escape. "They are harsh, but they are not strong," said Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, who is in command of the operation to recapture Mosul and the surrounding areas. "Their hosts reject them." Many local Sunnis initially welcomed the Sunni Muslim militants as saviours from a Shi'ite-led government they perceived as oppressive, while thousands of foreigners answered Baghdadi's call to come and wage holy war.

For a time, the militants claimed one victory after another, thanks as much to the weakness and division of the forces arrayed against them as their own strength. They funded themselves through sales of oil from fields they overran, and plundered weapons and ammunition from those they vanquished. But two years since the declaration of the caliphate, the tide has begun to turn in favour of its many enemies: Iraqi and Syrian government troops, Kurdish forces in both countries, rival Syrian Sunni rebels, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, and a U.S.-led coalition which has bombed the militants while conducting special operations to take out their commanders. Of the 43 founders of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, 39 have been killed, said Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert who advises the Iraqi government.

The self-proclaimed caliph, Baghdadi, is moving in a semi-desert plain that covers several thousand square kilometres west of the Tigris river and south of Mosul, avoiding Syria after two of his close aides were killed there this year: "war minister" Abu Omar al-Shishani and top civilian administrator and second-in-command Abd al-Rahman al-Qaduli, Hashimi said. The most senior commanders after Baghdadi are now Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the group's spokesman who took over military supervision after Shishani's death, and Abu Muhammad al-Shimali, who oversees foreign fighters and succeeded Qaduli as civilian administrator, he said. Kurdish and Iraqi military commanders say the group is deploying fighters who are less experienced and less ideologically committed to defend what remains of its quasi-state, which is under attack on multiple fronts.

MORE

See also:

Islamic State may not need the ‘state’ in order to exist
Monday, Jun. 27, 2016 - Iraq’s army succeeded this week in liberating the city of Fallujah from the extremist fighters of the Islamic State movement who first occupied the provincial centre just west of Baghdad more than two years ago.

And, as the national flag was hoisted over the city’s mostly empty buildings, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed that soon the flag will fly in Mosul as well, a reference to Iraq’s much larger northern city that serves now as the capital of Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. But while the news from Fallujah was promising to those who seek Islamic State’s demise, as was news from Syria where U.S.-led efforts to defeat IS forces have made gains in the area of Aleppo, no one should think Islamic State is on the run.

The battle for Mosul, like the battle for Raqqa, where IS commanders are headquartered in Syria, is still far off. And even if IS forces are vanquished from these cities, the Islamic State movement is not about to vanish. “The ‘state’ in Islamic State will collapse,” says the Beirut-based analyst Rami Khouri, “but IS will not disappear.” Already the IS movement has followers from Southeast Asia to North and Central Africa and Mr. Khouri foresees a more dispersed group of extremists carrying on long after any fall of Mosul.

Members of Iraqi police forces celebrate on a street on June 27, 2016 in western Fallujah, after Iraqi forces retook the embattled city from the Islamic State.

Evidence of this could be seen earlier this month in Orlando where Omar Mateen rounded up and killed 49 people in a gay bar and told 911 he was acting in the name of Islamic State, and in the Philippines where Canadian traveller Robert Hall was beheaded by a group of rebel kidnappers known as Abu Sayyaf that long ago adopted the flag and mantra of the IS movement.

What matters to Islamic State, Mr. Khouri recently wrote, isn’t necessarily territory. “What matters to IS and will allow it to persist for some time is the shared mindset of a large number of people around the world – from hundreds of thousands to perhaps a few million – who have lost confidence in their existing political, religious and socio-economic institutions.”

MORE

Related:

IS Syria stronghold Raqqa next after Manbij operation is completed - US official
Wednesday 29th June, 2016 | WASHINGTON: Once the operation against the Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria is completed, that creates the conditions to move on the militant group's main stronghold of Raqqa, Brett McGurk, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy in the fight against Islamic State said on Tuesday.

"The Manbij operation, it's ongoing on right now, it's hard fighting, once that is done, that sets the conditions for Raqqa," McGurk told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

The Syria Democratic Forces, comprised of Kurdish and Arab fighters and backed by the air power of a U.S.-led coalition to fight IS, have been involved in the Manbij operation.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...a/2912906.html

[waltky]

IS jihadis and Syrian rebels may be winning the battle but losing the war...

Syrian Rebels Turn Tables on Regime as IS Loses Bastion
Aug 06, 2016 | Jihadists and rebels captured strategic military positions on the edges of Syria's second city Aleppo on Saturday, turning the tables on Russian-backed regime forces besieging the city.

To the northeast, a Western-backed alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters scored a major victory against the Islamic State group in the town of Manbij after a fierce two-month battle. The developments have rocked the key northern province of Aleppo, a microcosm of Syria's topsy-turvy, multi-front war that has killed more than 280,000 people. Rebel and regime forces have fought for control of the provincial capital of the same name since mid-2012, transforming the former economic powerhouse into a divided, bombed-out city. On Saturday, opposition fighters and allied jihadists captured fresh territory south of Aleppo in a bid to cut off regime forces and open up a new route into besieged rebel-held districts. "The Army of Conquest on Saturday took control of the armament school, where there is a large amount of ammunition, and a large part of the artillery school" at a military academy south of the city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters advance into the Islamic State jihadist group's bastion of Manbij, in northern Syria.

The coalition of rebels, Islamists, and jihadists "is about to cut off, by gunfire, the supply route into government-controlled districts" of the city, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. That road passes through a southwestern suburb of Aleppo called Ramussa and is the last route into the city used by regime troops. Opposition forces in the city -- encircled by the government since July 17 -- are hoping to expand their control in the area and use that route themselves.

- IS defeat in Manbij -

"The regime forces are in a very difficult position despite Russian air support," Abdel Rahman said. The former Al-Nusra Front -- renamed Jabhat Fateh al-Sham after breaking from Al-Qaida -- on Saturday announced having captured the two military academies and a third military position. Drone footage posted by the group online showed a series of explosions in some of those buildings, followed by massive columns of billowing black smoke. State media reported fighting in the three locations and said the army had dispatched reinforcements to take on "thousands of terrorist fighters". Regime forces, with air support by key ally Moscow, had initially been able to hold off the rebels, who launched their offensive on Sunday. Also on Saturday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces handed a major defeat to Islamic State group jihadists in the town of Manbij. The Britain-based Observatory said the SDF "took control of Manbij on Saturday and are combing the city in search of the last remaining jihadists."

The town had served as a key transit point along IS's supply route from the Turkish border to Raqa, the de facto capital of its self-styled Islamic "caliphate". The SDF launched its offensive on May 31 with air support from the US-led air coalition bombing IS in Syria since September 2014. It encircled the town in early June and surged into it later that month, but its assault was slowed by a fierce jihadist fightback using suicide attackers and car bombs. A spokesman for the Manbij Military Council -- a key component of the SDF -- said fighting was still ongoing in the town. "The battles are continuing near the centre of the town. We are in control of 90 percent of Manbij," Sherfan Darwish told AFP. Formed in October 2015, the SDF has seized swathes of territory in north and northeast Syria from IS. Syria's conflict first erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since evolved into a fully-fledged war largely dominated by jihadist groups. As well as killing more than 280,000 people, it has forced half the population to flee their homes, including nearly five million seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...s-bastion.html

[Peter1469]

They can't hold. They are not an impressive force.

[Ransom]

Entertaining if nothing else. It was many of these posting geniuses on this thread who opposed any involvement by the US.......the French, Dutch, American, British....even the Russians have bombed, infiltrated, and killed many ISIL fighters...and here our rocket scientists are lecturing I told you so.

When they did nothing of the sort.