ISIS
November 16, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Byron York, with help from senior military officers with intimate knowledge of our bombing campaign against ISIS, explains how President Obama has made it impossible to wage war successfully: [T]he Pentagon announced Monday that American warplanes had struck a group of Islamic State trucks involved in the oil-smuggling business that brings the terrorist organization hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The strike, near Abu Kamal, in Syria, destroyed 116
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November 16, 2015 — Scott Johnson
President Obama was visibly annoyed by the questions posed to him at his press conference in Turkey today. They lacked the deference to his majesty that he has grown accustomed to. The Federalist has posted a striking lowlight here (video below). Quotable quote: “What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that
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November 16, 2015 — Scott Johnson
A well-connected law enforcement source writes with comments that comport with those made by CIA Director Brennan today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (C-SPAN video here and and Washington Times article here), but go beyond them. I thought readers would find these comments of interest: I’ve got a few good contacts in Middle Eastern and European intelligence and anti-terror police services and have been in contact with
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November 16, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes made the rounds on the Sunday morning gabfests yesterday. The burden of Rhodes’s comments as he made the rounds was to explicate Obama’s declaration on Thursday that ISIS had been “contained” just before ISIS demonstrated its reach with the massacres it committed in Paris on Friday. Rhodes danced as fast as he can to explain that Obama didn’t mean that ISIS was “contained.” And
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November 13, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Mohammed Emwazi, the man who beheaded several ISIS prisoners with a knife in those shocking videos, is believed to have been killed by a U.S. airstrike in Raqqa, Syria. It is not certain that the operation got its target (during a press briefing, British Prime Minister Cameron alternated between speaking about Emwazi in the past and the present tenses). However, the BBC, citing a “senior military source,” reported Friday that
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October 12, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Last night 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Obama conducted by Steve Kroft. The interview ran over two segments. Videos and transcript are posted here. In the first half of the interview Kroft asked about foreign policy. The questions were critical and the atmosphere was tense. Obama was not pleased. Obama yammered in his accustomed style. Kroft interrupted to note that he felt like he was being filibustered. Again,
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October 7, 2015 — John Hinderaker
An Associated Press investigation has documented at least four attempts by criminal gangs to sell nuclear materials to ISIS. All of these attempts occurred in Moldava, and likely are not the only ones to have taken place in recent years. The AP article is long and worth reading in its entirety. An excerpt: The previously unpublicized case is one of at least four attempts in five years in which criminal
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September 15, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Millions of people are streaming out of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Many are fleeing (or have fled, making an intermediate stop in Turkey) from ISIS, others from Assad. This refugee crisis has already roiled European politics, and some are advocating that the United States take in even more Middle Eastern refugees than we already are. What is missing from this picture? Michael Ramirez weighs in with his usual insight; click
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June 18, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Our congressman is John Kline, a man who served 25 years in the Marine Corps before he retired at the rank of Colonel. He served as a helicopter pilot and was ultimately accorded the responsibility of flying Marine One. He also served as a personal military aide to Presidents Carter and Reagan. When Rep. Kline asks the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a question bearing on our national
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June 9, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I noted President Obama’s concession that he lacks a “complete strategy” for defeating ISIS. Thus spake Obama at a press conference related to the G7 meeting in Kruen, Germany. That’s a patently pathetic “partial strategy” he has put on display in Syria and Iraq. It can’t be the fault of the great Obama. Obama implied that the Pentagon has left him without a “complete strategy” at this point: “When
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June 8, 2015 — Scott Johnson
We are deep into the “more mush from the wimp” phase of the Obama presidency. Do we have a strategy for fighting ISIS? I should think he would be embarrassed to admit that we do not, but he can concede that we don’t have “a complete strategy” yet if he can imply that the Pentagon and others are somehow at fault for our current position. Thus spake Obama at a
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May 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, undertook yesterday to assess the truth or falsity of these remarks by Jeb Bush about ISIS: ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president. Those statements are, by any normal standard, true. But this is what Kessler had to say: Islamic State, also known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and
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May 25, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Iraqi troops lack “the will to fight” ISIS, according to Ashton Carter, the Secretary of Defense. Carter is one of the few Obama administration officials whose statements on controversial matters should not be dismissed out of hand, and he may well be right about the Iraqi military. There’s a flip side to this story, though. The Obama administration lacks the will to help the Iraqis fight ISIS. This fact has
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May 22, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
ISIS’s capture of Palmyra has aroused fears that the terrorists will smash the archaeological treasures of this ancient Semitic city. The fears are justified, given ISIS’s conduct in places like Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Mosul. But according to Nicolas Pelham, writing in the New York Review of Books, even as ISIS forces made a great show of destroying some antiquities on display in the museum in Mosul, the leadership was planning
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May 21, 2015 — John Hinderaker
As I wrote on Monday, the administration’s policies on the Middle East are in a state of collapse. This is partly–but only partly–because ISIS is rampaging across Syria and Iraq. So on Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was pressed on how the president’s campaign to “degrade and destroy” ISIS is going. Overall, Earnest said, the president’s strategy has been a success: Because the administration’s strategy has been successful “overall,”
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May 20, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
U.S. policy in Iraq is in a shambles — there can be no serious disagreement about that. Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a mere 70 miles from Baghdad, has been captured by ISIS. Mosul, Iran’s second largest city, remains in ISIS’s hands. As importantly, it’s now clear that military success against ISIS hinges on the use of Iranian-dominated militias, but that these forces will not be able to
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May 18, 2015 — John Hinderaker
You know it’s bad when even the Associated Press notices: “Rout In Ramadi Calls US Iraq Strategy Into Question.” The fall of Ramadi calls into question the Obama administration’s strategy in Iraq. Is there a Plan B? The current U.S. approach is a blend of retraining and rebuilding the Iraqi army, prodding Baghdad to reconcile with the nation’s Sunnis, and bombing Islamic State targets from the air without committing American
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