Killing Evil ISIS - Islamic State targets

If voters listen to Republicans, the fear messaging infected inside their personal attacks includes the wrong minded information about the war against the evil ISIS, the Islamic State terrorists.  Donald Trump lies about the lack of progress against ISIS because, frankly, he has no information about what's going on to target the evil ISIS terrorism and evil tactics. As a matter of fact, Donald Trump (also known by his family's name: Drumpf) seems more intent on selling his label wines, steaks and magazine than explaining to Americans what he knows about the international War on Terror.

Evil ISIS has attacked innocent people with chemical weapons!

Daily Beast reports:
U.S. Attacks ISIS Chemical Weapons Program
Two facilities were destroyed in airstrikes thanks to intelligence provided by an Iraqi operative held in U.S. custody for the past month.  The Iraqi man being held and interrogated by U.S. officials is a suspected mid-level Islamic State operative whose knowledge of the group’s chemical weapons program allowed coalition strikes to destroy at least two related facilities, two defense officials said.

The man has been detained for roughly a month, according to the officials. And in that time, they said, he has given the U.S. the most in-depth understanding of ISIS’s chemical attack capabilities and aspirations.

“They have gotten a lot of information from this guy,” a third defense official explained. “A lot.”

It was based on his information that the coalition conducted at least two strikes this week in Iraq, which targeted ISIS’s chemical program, according to one defense official.

According to a March 5, press release from Operation Inherent Resolve, the American-led coalition struck “an [ISIS] weapons production facility” near Mosul, which was suspected to be part of ISIS’s chemical weapons program. And in a March 7, press statement, the coalition said it struck an ISIS “tactical unit” near Mosul, which also was believed to be related to the program.

Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, ISIS has deployed two kinds of chemical weapons—crude chlorine and mustard agent. The group is believed to have acquired crude chlorine when the group was known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. How it acquired the mustard agent is unclear, as it could have either acquired from someone else or developed it on its own.

The ISIS terror group is suspected of launching as many as 20 chemical weapons attacks across Syria. Independent organizations that have researched such claims have only confirmed ISIS’s use of such weapons in a few of those cases. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded ISIS used mustard gas in three instances in August 2015—in an attack on the city of Marea in Aleppo province and in two attacks in Iraq near the Kurdish capital of Irbil.

The organization concluded that in the Marea attack, “a non-state actor had allegedly used a chemical weapon.”

The Syrian regime also is suspected of using chlorine in attacks against opposition forces.

There are growing concerns that ISIS would like to launch similar attacks on the United States.

Just last month, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, said at a security conference in Munich that ISIS “would like to use chemical weapons” in an attack on America.

“It is very clear aspirationally they would like to do more and it is a concern to us in the United States because the indications are that they would like to use chemical weapons against us,” Clapper told attendees of the 52nd Munich Security Conference.

The Daily Beast has known about the man’s cooperation with U.S. officials since last week. But the U.S. military asked the Beast to withhold that information, saying ISIS was not aware that the man was in U.S. custody—even weeks after his detention—and that publishing details of his detention would endanger the destruction of the facilities and the U.S. troops that captured him.

The officials would not elaborate on the man’s role in ISIS, the depth of his knowledge of ISIS’s chemical weapons program, or where he was captured in Iraq.

However, the International Committee for the Red Cross “has been able to visit the detainee but in accordance with our confidential approach, we are not in a position to comment on the individual’s identity, location, or conditions of detention,” Trevor Keck, the deputy spokesperson of the Washington Delegation of the ICRC, told The Daily Beast.

The Red Cross “visits people held in detention facilities run by various authorities in Iraq,” Keck said, “in order to monitor their treatment and conditions of detention.”

“The ICRC in Iraq conducted 241 visits to more than 37,000 detainees held in 87 places of detention since 2015,” and has had follow-ups with 922 detainees on “issues related to treatment, health and judicial guarantees,” Keck said.

Once detainees are handed over to Iraqi authorities, what happens to them is less clear. The Daily Beast previously reported that six ISIS fighters who were captured in Iraq last year by Kurdish forces and taken into their custody were tortured. U.S. forces participated in the raid that netted the ISIS fighters.

The detainee is at least the second alleged Iraqi ISIS fighter captured and held by the U.S. since coalition airstrikes against ISIS began. UPDATE: On Wednesday, an official confirmed the Iraqi man’s identity as Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, who once worked for Saddam Hussein’s Military Industrialization Authority.


The U.S. was previously holding another ISIS fighter, Umm Sayyaf, the wife of the group’s former oil operations chief. She was captured during a U.S. raid targeting her husband, who was killed during that operation. While in custody, she provided valuable intelligence about ISIS’s operations, U.S. officials said.

Indeed, Umm Sayyaf gave up so much information that U.S. officials have renewed their focus on interrogating ISIS operatives rather than just depending upon airstrikes in the regions controlled by ISIS.

By the end of last year, the U.S. military began sending in Special Forces assigned to expeditionary task forces that were designed, in part, to compare high-value ISIS leaders in Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. military, however, has no plans to hold such detainees, but rather intends to release them to Iraqi custody once officials complete their interrogations.

Instead of of an infomercial and ego building, Donald Trump needs to talk about substantive issues and demonstrate what he knows about international terrorism. Apparantly, as of last night, on March 8th, he seems not to know anything.

Lobbying Against Genocide - Nobody

Let's face it, Syrian diplomacy between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov worked, at least for the time being, because Russia and President Putin didn't want to deal with the outcome of a US weapons attack on Syria, post the chemical massacre of civilians on August 21, 2013. This massacre occurred for no reason, except, because Assad's government wanted to do it.  Subsequently, the US Congress didn't have any gumption to follow up on enforcement of a ban on chemical weapons, as ratified in the Geneva Protocol, because, frankly, there are simply no lobbyists in Washington DC who are paid enough to petition against genocide.  Nevertheless, the evidence for retaliation is there. Moreover, there's also a case to be made for a US national security risk, because, if Assad used chemical weapons against civilians, then there's absolutely no restraint, whatsoever, against using the same deadly gas to kill American military or other opposition forces.  

Even Syrian President Assad doesn't seem to have much steam in opposing what the world is calling his government's Sarin attack on innocent civilians in a "chemical massacre" aka genocide. Nevertheless, many nations, notably Great Britain, appear to be reluctant to retaliate against this henious crime. Athough President Obama made a valiant effort to demonstrate anger and retaliation against Assad's genocide and to uphold the world ban on the use of chemical weapons as established in the Geneva Protocol, these threats were abandoned to make way for diplomacy to work out what could be a better solution than an overt attack, meaning the removal of Assad's Weapons of Mass Destruction. But, will Assad really remove those weapons? Ahhhh, well, it all looks good in print and in photo-ops, but enforcement is still an ambiguous science, to say the least.  It seems to me, Assad won't take well to being told what to do by Russian President Putin or anybody else.  If he doesn't do what he's told, however, he is likely to loose his job.  Of course, he's probably already been "fired" by Putin, anyway, because the egocentric Russian leaders is thriving on the limelight he's soaking up in taking a central role to help resolve the Syrian chemical weapons crisis.  Assad is, at this point, a puppet and his Russian controlled strings could be snipped off at any time.  

As a matter of fact, a descriptive people's cartoon is in the normally censured Syrian media showing President Putin putting a heart defibrillator on Assad's chest.  No explanation needed.

Let's face it, Assad is a terribly unpopular and incompetent Syrian president. He's dealing with a horrible civil war while over 2 million of his citizens are living in refugee camps in surrounding countries.  Now, he's gone and massacred over 1,000 civilians with Sarin poison gas, besides! There's no way President Assad can be a legitimate leader of Syria after being at the center of the catastrophic incidents he's been unable to control.  

Nevertheless, the Syrian opposition sees the US-Russian tentative agreement, sans Assad's involvement (it appears) to be a setback to forcing a regime change. Well, that's probably true, but, on the other hand, another Syrian president will probably be hand picked by Putin, anyway.

Meanwhile, over 1,000 civilians were murdered while they slept because President Assad killed them with Sarin gas. Our US Congress was unable to rise to the occasion to retaliate in support of those dead people because, frankly, no lobbyists were evidently hanging around their Washington DC offices or in their staff meetings to protect Syrians from genocide.  

It seems to me, the National Rifle Association's Wayne Lapierre could do a little to redeem himself as a quasi anarchist if he put some of his high paid time protecting Second Amendment rights for Americans, into defending civilians against genocide.  

But, the tragedy that doesn't end is the lack of sincerity in compassion for those civilians gassed by Sarin gas in a chemical massacre. They will undoubtedly melt into the litany of genocides listed on the website genocides in history. 

Nobody, apparently, are lobbyists against genocide.

President Obama's Convincing Syria Speech - But Americans Aren't Hearing the Truth

“We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use them as the backbone of a life trying to defend something," quote from "A Few Good Men".
President Obama's convincing speech on September 10, 2013 was one of the most effective and passionate of his Presidency, in support of defending Syrian civilians against chemical weapons attacks by their own government. 

Unfortunately, the American people simply aren't hearing the truth about President Obama's persuasive argument to retaliate against President Assad's horrid attack on civilians. He may have helped his argument, but probably not enough.

"You can't handle the truth,"...

Americans are obviously worried sick about the lack of value in waging more wars when most of us can't depend on income security at home.  We "get" the risk of launching yet another Middle East War, because we haven't seemed to make much difference in the Operation Dessert Storm, the Iraqi War or the War in Afghanistan, which is still going on.  Attacks against Syria, for the violation of international agreements against using chemical weapons on civilians, means putting more Americans at risk for defending countries whose names we can hardly pronounce for purposes we simply can't understand.  Nonetheless, it doesn't seem to resonate with Americans that our nation waged war in Iraq with no evidence of national security risks.  As it turned out, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, but Americans, under President Bush II,  invaded the country, anyway.  As it turns out, Syrian President Assad and his family have used weapons of mass destruction on the country's civilians, but Americans are simply not inclined to do anything about it.  This makes virtually no sense.

Now, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin has put a diplomatic solution on the table to avoid an assault on Syria.  

If Putin had put forth his idea for a peaceful solution a few days earlier than he did, it’s doubtful that President Obama would have bothered to deliver a prime time speech on Tuesday night. What he said—Syria is still dangerous, but there’s no need to act just yet while we pursue this new diplomatic path—doesn’t move the plot forward or require the nation’s rapt attention. It also doesn't make much sense, either.  We're either going to retaliate or not.

Obviously, America must peruse every diplomatic avenue before, eventually, taking the necessary action to retaliate against the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Doing nothing is not an option, because the next time chemical weapons are used will be against American military trying to defend US national security interests. For example, Americans could find ourselves involved in preventing Iran from launching a nuclear weapon against Israel (Dear God Forbid).  Chemical weapons could do a lot to destroy Israel and American defenses against potentially heinous war mongering.

But, Americans aren't hearing these potentialities and truth seems to have abandoned the discussion altogether.

"We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use them as the backbone of a life trying to defend something," says Jack Nicholoson's character, Colonel Nathan Jessup.

President Obama said, "If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield, and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons and to use them to attack civilians.:

"If fighting spills beyond Syria's borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden Assad's ally, Iran, which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path. This is not a world we should accept."

“We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use them as the backbone of a life trying to defend something," quote from "A Few Good Men".

Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson): "All you did was weaken a country today... that's all you did. You put people's lives in danger."

But Americans simply can't handle the truth, at least not yet.

President Obama gave Americans a passionate argument for defending Syrian civilians and US national interest against the use of chemical weapons, but we simply can't handle the truth.

Now, the opportunity for a diplomatic resolution is in the "court" of Russian President Putin, who says he'll negotiate a turnover of chemical weapons out of Syria in exchange for no US retaliatory attack.  Unfortunately, President Putin has little credibility when discussing peace. Rather, he seems addicted to ambition, whatever the cost to others (at least, that's my opinion of him).

So, the US is now in a diplomatic holding pattern, waiting for instructions from President Putin about how to proceed.  

Meanwhile, the truth will become ever more clouded and the suffering of the Syrian people will grow.

It's often hard to listen to the truth, but there's no way of avoiding it forever.  If Americans learned anything during the attacks on September 11, 2001, it was to pay attention to the truth.  There was ample evidence of the growing momentum of Al Qaeda before the brutal attacks on New York City's Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the aborted attack on Washington DC, but they were ignored. Growing threats were ignored because few people wanted to pay attention to what was self evident.  And then we were attacked.

President Obama made a very convincing speech to Americans about why Syria is important and for the importance of retaliating against the use of chemical weapons, killing over one thousand civilians.  It's dangerous to ignore the truth.  It's high time our nation learns to handle the truth. Otherwise, our national security is at risk.

Syria - a Crisis Facing a Potential Yogi Berra Decision

People who claim to need more evidence about whether or not Syrian President Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons to kill civilians, probably believe in rain dancing.  They live in a fantasy world.  

President Assad's CNN interview with Charlie Rose suggesting he didn't order the use of chemical weapons, is a ruse. It's a trick to deflect responsibility. In fact, his answers to Rose were ambiguous and confusing. He doesn't deny using chemical weapons. Assad can't blame Secretary of State Kerry for producing "no evidence" about the use of chemical weapons, when everyone knows who's guilty.

"Take Five", or a potential diplomatic hold on the Syrian crises, comes from the unlikely source of President Vladimir Putin.  In fact, Putin offers to broker a deal whereby Assad will forfeit all chemical weapons to prevent a US attack to retaliate against their use to murder civilians.  This is a Yogi Berra opportunity, albeit fraught with the risk of even more deception.  

President Obama is in the midst of a media blitz to create a case in support of holding President Assad accountable for killing civilians with chemical weapons.  As the crises builds, President Putin has offered a "fork in the road".  As Yogi Berra would recommend, there is a chance to "take it".  In other words, this offer to enforce a removal of chemical weapons from Syria gives the world a chance to pause - but for how long?  

In my opinion, Putin's offer is a diplomatic deflection ploy. His purpose is to hold off an international crises with the United States until after the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, Americans are skeptical of evidence required to attack Syria. In acting against Syria, the US will be engaged in the country's civil war.  Nevertheless, even Assad's use of chemical weapons in an act of genocide has been unable to convince Americans to demand accountability from yet another evil world dictator.

In somewhat of a surprise move, Putin's intervention created a fork in the road toward a military attack on Syria.  Regardless of how much we mistrust Putin or his intentions, President Obama has reached a point in this crisis where we should take it, but soon.

But, of course, this potential fork in the road should be taken before the 2014 Olympic games.  Meaning, Syria turning over their chemical weapons to international control to be destroyed, must happen soon, very soon.