Good day and welcome to this week’s briefing………
Item 1–ISIS is creeping closer to US forces in Anbar……..
Provincial officials in the Anbar Province, which if anyone is keeping track is about 80% under the control of ISIS, have warned that ISIS is making more gains, overrunning the town of Bagdadi as of Thursday morning.
That’s a bigger problem than most towns being lost, as it puts ISIS forces less than five miles away from Ayn al-Assad air base, where some 320 US ground troops are stationed as “advisers.”
Just in time for the AUMF debate…….damn! The coordination is just amazing…..
Pentagon has stated that the attacks failed…….
Pentagon officials claimed on Friday that ISIS attempted to attack the Ayn al-Assad air base, where US ground troops are stationed, but failed before they got too close to the US troops.
The problem is that all the news is not reported…..just the “good” news…..this is not something that will be printed in the US……
An Iraqi tribal leader said Saturday that ISIS militants are gaining ground in Anbar province, predicting a “collapse within hours” of Iraqi army forces there if tribal forces withdraw.
Sheikh Naim al-Gaoud, a Sunni Muslim leader of the Albu Nimr tribe, called for more U.S. intervention — including ground troops, arming tribes directly or at least pressuring the Iraqi government to give the tribes more firepower.
While U.S. officials have said that ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, is on the defensive in Iraq and Syria, al-Gaoud says that’s definitely not the case where he is.
“In Anbar, we are losing ground, not gaining,” he said.
Item 2–There are bad ideas and then there are stupid ideas……..
Israel’s constant attacks on Syrian military targets and Hezbollah forces in southern Syria have killed a number of top anti-ISIS fighters. Now, with Syria and Hezbollah moving against al-Qaeda-held territory in the far south, the rebels are hoping they’ll do it again.
Reports from Israeli Druse leaders who claim they are in close contact with rebels say they’re urging the Israeli military to intervene to “save” the rebel-held territories from the southern offensive.
Item 3–Does anyone know who al-Quds are? Of course not….they are not important enough. al-Quds is an Iranian “Seal Team” fighting in Iraq against ISIS……
An influential Iranian general who has reportedly been near the front line against the Islamic State group was quoted Thursday saying the jihadists are “nearing the end of their lives”.
“Considering the heavy defeats suffered by Daesh and other terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, we are certain these groups are nearing the end of their lives,” Suleimani was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
True or propaganda?
Item 4–Now here is an idea whose time has come…….
The shadowy anarchist group, which is known for waging online attacks on everyone from the U.S. government to the Church of Scientology, is trying to dismantle the vast social media operation that helps ISIS recruit new followers.
By exposing and disabling hundreds of Twitter accounts, email addresses and websites purportedly affiliated with ISIS, hackers with Anonymous are all but inviting the notoriously Web-savvy terrorist group to an online war.
As of Wednesday, many of the ISIS sites remained inaccessible or disabled after members of Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks, flooding the pages with traffic. Many of the Twitter accounts appeared to be suspended.
The attacks came the same day that hackers claiming affiliation with ISIS took over a variety of U.S. media feeds, including the Twitter account of Newsweek magazine.
Anonymous appears to be firmly on the side of the United States when it comes to the conflict with ISIS
Item 5–Is this an escalation?
President Obama hasn’t gotten approval for his “intentionally vague” Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS, but the Pentagon is already scrambling to escalate its military presence in the region in preparation of the ground war it would start.
Over 4,000 ground combat troops from Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade are being sent to Kuwait under this new deployment, where they will make up the region’s largest collection of US ground troops, which will include heavy armored vehicles
Thanx for the time and attention…..
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