Islamska drzava

[Lord Protector]

 

HAARETZ.com

Analysis  

 

Rebel advances in Syria leave Israel contemplating life without Assad

IDF deputy chief of staff says Syrian army ‘has ceased to exist’ and that Hezbollah’s casualties are significantly higher than previously believed.

 

By Amos Harel and Gili Cohen 00:55 02.06.15

 

Israel’s defense establishment has started keeping an even closer eye on Syria’s civil war, given the growing assessments that President Bashar Assad’s regime is having trouble repelling the rebel onslaught and is rapidly losing its grip on some of the areas still under its control.

This week, the rebels took over Ariha, a town in northern Syria that directly threatens the Alawite enclave on the Mediterranean coast. The Alawite sect, to which Assad belongs, is the regime’s main power base.

“De facto, the Syrian army has ceased to exist,” Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, the Israel Defense Forces’ deputy chief of staff, said on Monday. The numerous defeats that the regime suffered recently are putting growing pressure on its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. This was evident not only in last month’s rare series of speeches by the Shi’ite group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah – three in one week – but also in the organization’s massive drive to recruit more Lebanese to fight in Syria against Islamic State, the radical Sunni organization also known as ISIS or ISIL.

 

The Israeli defense establishment believes Hezbollah suffered at least 80 fatalities during the past month’s battles in the Qalamoun Mountains, on the Syria-Lebanon border.

“This isn’t a good moment – not for Hezbollah, not for Assad and not for Iran in Syria,” one defense official said on Monday. He added that the Assad camp faces a dilemma over whether to continue fighting with the same intensity in the Qalamoun region, or to focus on defending the Alawite enclave and its major cities, Latakia and Tartus.

The official said Israel is currently trying to verify assessments that Hezbollah has lost about 1,000 fighters in Syria since the civil war began four years ago – significantly more than the 700 fatalities that had been the prevailing assessment until recently. He added that Hezbollah is using a wide variety of weaponry in Syria, including rockets and explosive-laden drones.

This week, the Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and a coalition of eight other rebel groups – known as Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) – captured the town of Ariha, on the western edge of Idlib Province. It borders the mountain ridge that overlooks the Alawite enclave from the north; over the past few days, the rebels have used this ridge to fire rockets at the suburbs of Latakia.

The rebels also acquired large quantities of weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles, from the Syrian Army bases that they captured in Idlib.

ISIS isn’t part of the rebel coalition operating in Idlib, but has joined the fight against Assad’s forces around the major cities of Homs and Aleppo. The Arab media is full of speculation that the rebels are also planning a new offensive in southern Syria, near the city of Daraa.

In response to the recent defeats it has suffered, the regime has stepped up its airstrikes – including a massive use of barrel bombs, which cause heavy civilian casualties.

Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Golan said that from Israel’s perspective, the strategic situation on the northern border “may be better than ever before,” despite the many potential threats, because thousands of Hezbollah fighters are busy in Syria and the Syrian Army has effectively ceased to exist.

Nevertheless, he added, this convenient situation is unlikely to last. Meanwhile, Hezbollah “has acquired operational capabilities that no terrorist organization ever had in the past.” And while Syrian rebels aren’t currently targeting Israel from the Golan Heights, that, too, could change, he warned.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2015 by slow

[Lord Protector]

Dude, where’s my Humvee? Iraq losing equipment to Islamic State at staggering rate

By Peter Van Buren, Reuters

 

June 2, 2015

A view of humvees parked at a courtyard at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, September 30, 2011. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen

Iraqi security forces lost 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when Islamic State overran the northern city of Mosul in June 2014, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday in an interview with Iraqiya state television. Coupled with previous losses of American weapons, the conclusion is simple: The United States is effectively supplying Islamic State with tools of war the militant group cannot otherwise hope to acquire from its patrons.

In addition to the Humvees, Iraqi forces previously abandoned significant types and numbers of heavy weapons to Islamic State. For example, losses to Islamic State include at least 40 M1A1 main battle tanks, as well as small arms and ammunition, including 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer mobile gun systems.

“We lost a lot of weapons,” Abadi admitted.

To help replenish Iraq’s motor pool, the U.S. State Department last year approved a sale to Iraq of 1,000 Humvees, along with their armor upgrades, machine guns and grenade launchers. The United States previously donated 250 Mine Resistant Armored Personnel carriers (MRAPs) to Iraq, plus unaccountable amounts of material left behind when American forces departed in 2011. The United States is currently in the process of moving to Iraq 175 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, 55,000 rounds of main tank-gun ammunition, $600 million inhowitzers and trucks, $700 million worth of Hellfire missiles and 2,000 AT-4 rockets.

The Hellfires and AT-4′s, anti-tank weapons, are presumably going to be used to help destroy the American armor in the hands of Islamic State. The United States is also conducting air strikes to destroy weapons seized by Islamic State. It’s a surreal state of affairs in which American weaponry is being sent into Iraq to destroy American weaponry previously sent into Iraq. If a new sequel to Catch-22 were to be written, this would be the plot line.

The United States also continues to spend money on training the Iraqi military. Some 3,000 American soldiers are currently in Iraq preparing Iraqi soldiers to perhaps someday fight Islamic State; many of the Americans are conducting the training on former military bases abandoned by the United States following Gulf War 2.0. In addition, some $1.2 billion in training funds for Iraq were tucked into an omnibus spending bill that Congress passed earlier this year. This is in spite of the sad reality that from 2003 to 2011, the United States spent $25 billion training Iraqi security forces.

The return on these training investments? The Iraqi army had 30,000 soldiers in Mosul, who ran away in the face of about 1,000 Islamic State fighters. The same thing happened just a few weeks ago in Ramadi, where 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, collapsing faster than a cardboard box in the rain, fled ahead of only 400 Islamic State fighters. The Iraqis left behind more weapons.

In an interview with me a year ago, Chris Coyne, professor of economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, predicted this exact scenario well before the United States sent troops back into Iraq:

“The United States government provided significant amounts of military hardware to the Iraqi government with the intention that it would be used for good. However, during the Islamic State offensive, many of the Iraqis turned and ran, leaving behind the United States-supplied hardware. This weapons windfall may further alter the dynamics in Syria.

“Now the United States government wants to provide more military supplies to the Iraqi government to combat Islamic State. But I haven’t heard many people recognizing, let alone discussing, the potential negative unintended consequences of doing so. How do we know the weapons and supplies will be used as desired? Why should we have any confidence that supplying more military hardware to a country with a dysfunctional and ineffective government will lead to a good outcome either in Iraq or in the broader region?”

The impact of all these heavy weapons falling into Islamic State hands is significant for American foreign policy goals in the Middle East. A report prepared for the United Nations Security Council warns that Islamic State possesses sufficient reserves of small arms, ammunition and vehicles to wage its war in Syria and Iraq for two more years.

And that presumes the United States won’t be losing more tools of war to Islamic State, thanks to the Iraqi army.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2015 by slow

[Lord Protector]

 

ISIS: An Inside Job?

 

You could say that

by Justin Raimondo, May 27, 2015

 

When Ivy Ziedrich, a nineteen-year-old college student, approached Jeb Bush on the campaign trail and zinged him with “Your brother created ISIS!” the media ate it up and the video went viral. Ms. Ziedrich, a member of the College Democrats, talks veryfast, and she managed to utter the following diatribe before Jeb could get in a word edgewise:

“You stated that ISIS was created because we don’t have enough presence and we’ve been pulling out of the Middle East. However, the threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military were forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with access to all the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS!”

Poor Jeb! Being even less informed than his ambusher, he could only “respectfully disagree” and reiterate the neocon party line: if only we’d kept more troops in longer ISIS wouldn’t have coalesced. “You can rewrite history all you want,” he said, with a sigh, “but the simple fact is we’re in a much more unstable place because America pulled back.”

The media homed in on this incident because they’re still blaming Bush and theRepublicans for the Iraq war, while ignoring the key role played by Democrats –Hillary Clinton and her husband come to mind – in ginning up that disaster. So in that sense Jeb is correct when he says they’re rewriting history, albeit not quite in the way he imagines.

Ms. Diedrich is wrong about ISIS: the idea that its foot soldiers are mostly former members of the Iraqi military is unlikely, although there are some former officers in the higher echelons. The vast majority of its fighters have been recruited from throughout the Middle East (and Europe) from the ranks of radical Islamists. More importantly, the Islamic State metastasized in Syria, not Iraq, and this is the key in assigning responsibility.

While the Bush administration made plenty of noises about going into Syria, this turned out to be mostly bluster. It took the Obama administration to launch this folly, and they did it by creating a proxy army, the “moderate” Islamists of the Free Syrian Army, ostensibly in order to overthrow Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad. A newly revealed classified document uncovered by Judicial Watch gives us a glimpse into how this effort was inextricably intertwined with the real history and origins of the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS).

A Defense Intelligence Agency analysis of the Syrian civil war, dated August 12, 2012, starts out by drawing the battle lines, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency” are “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]” and are being supported by “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.” Russia, Iran, and China are said to support the Assad regime. The war won’t unseat Assad, but will develop, predicts the memo, into a “proxy war.” In order for the West to win that war, the author recommends setting up “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command center for the temporary government.”

Safe havens for al-Qaeda and its allies – just what the doctor ordered!

In a matter-of-fact tone, the memo projects the establishment of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.” While positing that this could endanger the unity of Iraq, the memo goes on to say that this project is supported by “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey,” and makes this alarmingly prescient prediction:

“… [T]here is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

Such a development would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” – which is precisely what has happened. Mosul fell last year, and Ramadi was just taken, much to Washington’s consternation.

Far from being taken by surprise, the rise of the Islamic State was anticipated – and facilitated – by this administration. Critics of our Syria policy, including this writer,have been saying this for quite some time, but this DIA memo documents and confirms it for the first time.

The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton’s State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and “vetted” the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn’t pass muster. And our “moderates” quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we’d provided.

This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a. “Hillary’s War,” where the US – “leading from behind” – and a coalition of our Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch shows.

It seems Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) wasn’t too far off the mark when he asked then Secretary of State Clinton what she knew about arms shipments from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels. Here’s the exchange:

“PAUL: My question is, is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?

CLINTON: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record no one has ever asked me.

PAUL: It has been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and they might have weapons. What I would like to know, is the annex that was close by [in Benghazi]. Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries – to any countries, Turkey included.

CLINTON: Senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available. I do not know. I do not have information on that.”

Sen. Paul was righter than he knew: not only were the arms shipments going toTurkey, and then on to the rebels, but, as Judicial Watch discovered, they were also going directly to Syria.

The divisions in the administration over what to do – or not to do – in Syria came outin a 2013 Senate hearing in which then CIA director Leon Panetta admitted to Sen. John McCain that he, the Joint Chiefs, then CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, and Secretary Clinton had all supported a plan to arm the Syrian rebels, which was vetoedby the White House. Yet those arms shipments made it from Benghazi to Syria, leaving port in late August, 2012 – shortly before Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in anassault on what appears to have been a CIA redoubt, set up near the US consulate.

What was that spook outpost up to? Was Ambassador Stevens involved in facilitating that shipment? (One of his last meetings was with Mahmoud Mufti, the owner of a shipping company.) In short, did the Clinton-Petraeus-Panetta team do an end run around the White House, setting up a clandestine arms shipment operation that funneled Qaddafi’s arsenal to their Syrian proxies?

We don’t know the answer to these questions, of course, but one wonders: why did Secretary Clinton insist on keeping the Benghazi “consulate” – really a cover for a CIA operation – open despite repeated warnings about the lack of security?

“Your brother created ISIS!” Well, not quite. While it’s true that ISIS would never have succeeded in setting up an Islamic State in the heart of the Levant if we hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, the real parents of this mutant offspring of American policymakers areHillary Clinton and her co-thinkers in the Obama administration. So intent were they on overthrowing Assad that they funded and armed our mortal enemies.

This whole episode dramatizes, in the most vivid way imaginable, the principle of “blowback” in the conduct of foreign affairs. US intervention in the internal politics of other nations leads, inevitably, to unforeseen consequences. The problem we sought to solve worsens – and new problems, often on a much larger scale, raise their heads.

Yet the policymakers responsible for this fiasco will never change: they believe they can centrally plan the transformation of entire nations from one social system to another and control how complex societies react to their efforts at social engineering. They really think they can run the world. Each time they fail they attribute it to a reluctant American public, or a lack of funding, or some other factor that somehow interferes with the proper application of their omniscience.

They never learn.

Yes, but the American people are learning. Slowly but surely, we anti-interventionists are turning the tide in our favor. The public is sick unto death of perpetual war, and the polls show it. The only problem is that the War Party has control of the media, and dominates the debate in Washington. 

 

 

[Anduril]

2300 Hamvija zarobljenih samo u Mosulu?

I za to se saznalo tek posle godinu dana kad iracki predsednik treba nekako da opravda svoju nesposobnost.

 

 

Btw. ovi tekstovi o SAD koje su direktno stvorile IS su komicni.

Prosto zato sto je prilicno ocigledno ko i koliko para ulaze u rat u Siriji.

Iran, KSA, Katar i Rusija su tu ocigledno bitniji igraci.

Da se oni nisu umesali, Asad bi odavno pao a sta bi onda bilo u Siriji je tesko predvideti. Stvaranje IS-a bi bilo mnogo teze izvodljivo.

 

 

Problem SAD i uopste Zapada je taj sto nisu u stanju da uspostave nekakvu ideolosku vezu sa Bliskim istokom osim ogoljenog konzumerizma.

Zato iracka armija nece da gine jer im tzv. sloboda i demokratija bez vladavine prava zapravo nista ne znace.

 

 

Sa druge strane, za ove ocigledne neuspehe i bespotrebno tracenje ljudskih zivota i para u Americi niko ne odgovara jer je korumpirani vojno-industrijski komplex i dalje izvan zahvata FBI-ja. Jednog dana ce im tako neki "saveznici" roknuti dirty bomb usred Amerike pa ce se mozda opametiti i krenuti u ciscenje te mocvare posto nisu posle 9/11.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Anduril

[Prospero]

Sa druge strane, za ove ocigledne neuspehe i bespotrebno tracenje ljudskih zivota i para u Americi niko ne odgovara jer je korumpirani vojno-industrijski komplex i dalje izvan zahvata FBI-ja. Jednog dana ce im tako neki "saveznici" roknuti dirty bomb usred Amerike pa ce se mozda opametiti i krenuti u ciscenje te mocvare posto nisu posle 9/11.

 

Ne odgovara se krivično za spoljnopolitičke akcije, pa ni za promašaje. 

 

Vojno-industrijska močvara je posledica političkih odluka da se bude angažovan na svakom meridijanu (što bi rekao nesrećni senator Tom Koton - "ne možemo mi da se fokusiramo na Istočnu Aziju, mi smo globalna sila i moramo da budemo prisutni svuda").

 

Kada otvore jasniju internu debatu oko svog interesa na Bliskom Istoku (Izrael, nafta, širenje demokratije. štagod) onda će znati šta im treba da to postignu pa i meru močvare koju moraju da trpe. Ovako imaju močvaru, neugodno im je jer vide da to sve doprinosi nebezbednosti (svojoj i tuđoj), da je preskupo, da se prečesto brukaju, a ne mogu da formulišu smislene ideje.

 

Dakle, čišćenje močvare zahteva neke prethodne političke radnje.

[borris_]

Da se oni nisu umesali, Asad bi odavno pao a sta bi onda bilo u Siriji je tesko predvideti. Stvaranje IS-a bi bilo mnogo teze izvodljivo.

 

 

Asad bi najverovatnije brzo pao a za ovu drugu tvrdnju nisam siguran. Tu imas primjer Libije, zemlja koja je se ne granici sa Irakom, gdje je Gadafi brzo pao i opet imas IS. 

[Utvara]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=72a_1433419233

Novi uradak Islamske države, uz prigodnu istorijsku digresiju.

[hazard]

Jezivo     

[Далибор]

[SNARC]

Jel neko nekog kolje ili ubija, da znam da ne otvaram ?

[Далибор]

Ma jok. Pogledaj, nema "eksplicitnih scena".

Edited June 4, 2015 by Далибор

[MancMellow]

 (što bi rekao nesrećni senator Tom Koton - "ne možemo mi da se fokusiramo na Istočnu Aziju, mi smo globalna sila i moramo da budemo prisutni svuda").

 

 

 

Pročitao. Zanimljiv intervju. Mada mislim da je njegova poenta - US mora da bude pristuna na Bliskom i Srednjem Istoku samo uvijeno u formu ove druge izjave

[MancMellow]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=72a_1433419233

 

Novi uradak Islamske države, uz prigodnu istorijsku digresiju.

 

lovely 

[Ryan Franco]

Ne mogu da otvaram video jer nisam kod kuce.

 

Koji je vrag unutra? Jel Al Bosni?

[MancMellow]

Otvori kad dođeš kući. Jest Al-Bosni. Ima i istorijska pretpriča