Key Words
Adam Montana, AdminBill, Benjamin Fulford, Currency Exchange, David Schmidt, Dinar, Dinar Guru, Dinar Recaps, Dinar Rv, Dinar Scam, Dr Clarke, Frank26, Gary Larrabee, Gurus, Guru Hunters, JerzyBabkowski, Kaperoni, Kenny, Monetary Reform, Mnt Goat, My Ladies, Okie, Poppy, RamblerNash, Ray Renfrow, Redenomination, Revaluation, Ssmith, TNTBS, Tnt Tony, WING IT, We Are The People, Willis Clark, WSOMN, Yosef, Zap
The Pentagon says ISIS is “well-positioned” to make a comeback
Dinar Daily :: DINAR/IRAQ -- NEWS -- GURUS and DISCUSSIONS :: IRAQ and DINAR -- ARTICLE BASED INFORMATION and DISCUSSIONS
Page 1 of 1 • Share •
The Pentagon says ISIS is “well-positioned” to make a comeback
The Pentagon says ISIS is “well-positioned” to make a comeback
New reports show ISIS may still have as many fighters as it did at its peak.
By Jennifer Williams@jenn_ruth jennifer@vox.com Aug 17, 2018, 1:20pm EDT

A member of Hashwd Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization units) removes a sign on a lamp post bearing the ISIS logo in the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, on August 26, 2017. AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images
It looks like ISIS isn’t quite as defeated as President Donald Trump claims.
Over the past eight months, Trump has repeatedly touted his administration’s success in defeating the terrorist organization and destroying its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. In April, for example, he tweeted that “the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our ‘Thank you America?’”
Yet Trump’s own military now says ISIS is still worryingly strong.
On Thursday, a Pentagon spokesperson said that the terrorist group “is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge.”
“ISIS probably is still more capable than al-Qaida in Iraq at its peak in 2006-2007, when the group had declared an Islamic State and operated under the name Islamic State of Iraq,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson told the news outlet VOA in an emailed statement.
“ISIS remains a threat, and even one ISIS fighter is one too many,” he added.
Robertson’s comments aren’t an anomaly. Everyone from senior Defense Department officials to the United Nations has been sounding the alarm lately that ISIS is a whole lot stronger than we’d previously thought.
That’s not just bad news for Trump — it’s bad news for everyone.
Multiple reports show ISIS’s numbers are way higher than we thought
Robertson’s comments were in response to a recent report by the Defense Department’s Inspector General, which said the US military estimates that ISIS still has between 28,600 and 31,600 active fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Those numbers support the findings of a July UN report that said several current estimates from UN member states put the number of active ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria at “between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries.”
If correct, those numbers are staggering.
At the group’s peak in 2015, US intelligence officials estimated the group had around 33,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Which means that despite the US-led coalition having spent four years and $14.3 billion fighting ISIS — including a whopping 24,566 airstrikes — the group is nearly as strong in terms of numbers of fighters as it was at its peak.
However, as Robertson, the Pentagon spokesperson, told VOA, “Yes, there are still residual numbers of ISIS members. But manpower is not a good metric to assess the volatility of this terror group.”
The raw numbers don’t tell the whole story
ISIS’s so-called “caliphate” has been destroyed, and it no longer holds even a fraction of the territory it once did.
Just a few years ago, ISIS controlled a swath of territory roughly the size of Great Britain. It also controlled several major cities in Iraq and Syria, including Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and Raqqa, the capital of ISIS’s caliphate.
As my colleague Zack Beauchamp has written, “This territory gave ISIS tremendous resources. It recruited both volunteers and conscripts, extorted ordinary citizens, and plundered oil reserves and ancient artifacts to fill its coffers.” He continued:
Today, nearly all of that territory has been retaken. Which means that while it may have tens of thousands of fighters, those fighters — and more importantly, the group’s leaders — are scattered throughout the two countries, rather than concentrated in a unified territory they control.
That matters a lot: Without a safe haven in which you can plan, train your forces, and build up your military, it’s a lot harder to launch a major military offensive like the kind we saw when ISIS first swept into Iraq in 2014.
If you’re constantly on the run, moving from safe house to safe house while being hunted by US-led forces, it’s also difficult to communicate with the more far-flung members of your organization — something al-Qaeda also discovered the hard way.
ISIS also just looks a lot less powerful than it did when it controlled a major chunk of territory. If, as Gartenstein-Ross explained, ISIS’s “legitimacy came to rest on the continuing viability of their state,” then the collapse of that state is a major blow to its legitimacy. And that means it’s not quite the shining beacon of jihadist recruitment it once was.
ISIS is a much weaker terrorist organization. But the group is still deadly.
ISIS has launched numerous deadly attacks in Iraq and Syria in recent months. As the Washington Post reported in July, small-scale attacks in more remote areas of Iraq have escalated:
And it’s not just Iraq.
In Syria last month, ISIS orchestrated a coordinated suicide bombing campaign in Sweida Province, an area in southern Syria close to the border with Jordan that is primarily home to members of the Druze minority. The attacks killed more than 200 people.
So although it may not have its caliphate anymore, ISIS is still a potent terrorist organization capable of wreaking havoc and bloodshed.
“ISIS will take full advantage of any opportunity, including any abatement of pressure, to regain its momentum,” Robertson told VOA.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/8/17/17715374/isis-still-threat-defeated-terror-attacks-pentagon-iraq-syria-trump
New reports show ISIS may still have as many fighters as it did at its peak.
By Jennifer Williams@jenn_ruth jennifer@vox.com Aug 17, 2018, 1:20pm EDT

A member of Hashwd Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization units) removes a sign on a lamp post bearing the ISIS logo in the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, on August 26, 2017. AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images
It looks like ISIS isn’t quite as defeated as President Donald Trump claims.
Over the past eight months, Trump has repeatedly touted his administration’s success in defeating the terrorist organization and destroying its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. In April, for example, he tweeted that “the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our ‘Thank you America?’”
Yet Trump’s own military now says ISIS is still worryingly strong.
On Thursday, a Pentagon spokesperson said that the terrorist group “is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge.”
“ISIS probably is still more capable than al-Qaida in Iraq at its peak in 2006-2007, when the group had declared an Islamic State and operated under the name Islamic State of Iraq,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson told the news outlet VOA in an emailed statement.
“ISIS remains a threat, and even one ISIS fighter is one too many,” he added.
Robertson’s comments aren’t an anomaly. Everyone from senior Defense Department officials to the United Nations has been sounding the alarm lately that ISIS is a whole lot stronger than we’d previously thought.
That’s not just bad news for Trump — it’s bad news for everyone.
Multiple reports show ISIS’s numbers are way higher than we thought
Robertson’s comments were in response to a recent report by the Defense Department’s Inspector General, which said the US military estimates that ISIS still has between 28,600 and 31,600 active fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Those numbers support the findings of a July UN report that said several current estimates from UN member states put the number of active ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria at “between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries.”
If correct, those numbers are staggering.
At the group’s peak in 2015, US intelligence officials estimated the group had around 33,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Which means that despite the US-led coalition having spent four years and $14.3 billion fighting ISIS — including a whopping 24,566 airstrikes — the group is nearly as strong in terms of numbers of fighters as it was at its peak.
However, as Robertson, the Pentagon spokesperson, told VOA, “Yes, there are still residual numbers of ISIS members. But manpower is not a good metric to assess the volatility of this terror group.”
The raw numbers don’t tell the whole story
ISIS’s so-called “caliphate” has been destroyed, and it no longer holds even a fraction of the territory it once did.
Just a few years ago, ISIS controlled a swath of territory roughly the size of Great Britain. It also controlled several major cities in Iraq and Syria, including Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and Raqqa, the capital of ISIS’s caliphate.
As my colleague Zack Beauchamp has written, “This territory gave ISIS tremendous resources. It recruited both volunteers and conscripts, extorted ordinary citizens, and plundered oil reserves and ancient artifacts to fill its coffers.” He continued:
Perhaps most notably, it gave ISIS a powerful veneer of legitimacy in the eyes of radicals. The goal of all jihadist groups, including both ISIS and al-Qaeda, is to establish a caliphate governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law. ISIS claimed to have actually done so. The caliphate became its calling card, the single best resource for growing its power.
”When they declared the caliphate, their legitimacy came to rest on the continuing viability of their state,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me in an interview.
Today, nearly all of that territory has been retaken. Which means that while it may have tens of thousands of fighters, those fighters — and more importantly, the group’s leaders — are scattered throughout the two countries, rather than concentrated in a unified territory they control.
That matters a lot: Without a safe haven in which you can plan, train your forces, and build up your military, it’s a lot harder to launch a major military offensive like the kind we saw when ISIS first swept into Iraq in 2014.
If you’re constantly on the run, moving from safe house to safe house while being hunted by US-led forces, it’s also difficult to communicate with the more far-flung members of your organization — something al-Qaeda also discovered the hard way.
ISIS also just looks a lot less powerful than it did when it controlled a major chunk of territory. If, as Gartenstein-Ross explained, ISIS’s “legitimacy came to rest on the continuing viability of their state,” then the collapse of that state is a major blow to its legitimacy. And that means it’s not quite the shining beacon of jihadist recruitment it once was.
ISIS is a much weaker terrorist organization. But the group is still deadly.
ISIS has launched numerous deadly attacks in Iraq and Syria in recent months. As the Washington Post reported in July, small-scale attacks in more remote areas of Iraq have escalated:
Over the past two months, dozens of people, including local government officials, tribal elders and village chiefs, have been abducted and killed or ransomed by fighters claiming affiliation with the Islamic State. Electricity infrastructure and oil pipelines have been blown up. Armed men dressed as security forces and manning fake checkpoints have hijacked trucks and robbed travelers, rendering the main Baghdad-Kirkuk highway unsafe for a period of weeks.
And it’s not just Iraq.
In Syria last month, ISIS orchestrated a coordinated suicide bombing campaign in Sweida Province, an area in southern Syria close to the border with Jordan that is primarily home to members of the Druze minority. The attacks killed more than 200 people.
So although it may not have its caliphate anymore, ISIS is still a potent terrorist organization capable of wreaking havoc and bloodshed.
“ISIS will take full advantage of any opportunity, including any abatement of pressure, to regain its momentum,” Robertson told VOA.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/8/17/17715374/isis-still-threat-defeated-terror-attacks-pentagon-iraq-syria-trump
RamblerNash- GURU HUNTER
- Posts : 14524
Join date : 2015-02-19
Dinar Daily :: DINAR/IRAQ -- NEWS -- GURUS and DISCUSSIONS :: IRAQ and DINAR -- ARTICLE BASED INFORMATION and DISCUSSIONS
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:
You can reply to topics in this forum
» The Security Council recalls the need to determine the fate of missing Kuwaitis in Iraq
» Strategy for the advancement of the industrial sector in Iraq
» Privatization is the key to development
» The reality of financial inclusion in Iraq
» Iraq is among the world's top gold buyers
» The increase in the import tax of cars in Iraq
» Araji reveals the corruption of the Central Bank and the reason for not participating in the elections (expanded)
» Apply for visa to Iraq
» Becky McGee/Oootah "I Don't Want to Hear How Tough It Is - Send Me YOUR MONEY!" 2/19/19
» Halbusi in Germany to discuss these files
» Newspaper Brentian: Baghdadi survived a coup attempt carried out by "foreign evils"
» Iraq and the EU agree on projects worth 41.5 million euros
» Oil falls from the highest level in 2019 as a result of economic concerns
» Trade buys about 120,000 tons of Vietnamese rice
» Iraq and the European Union sign an agreement to implement projects worth 41.5 million euros in Basra and Nineveh
» ""New Gold Back US Dollar Before 2020" by Brigantine - 2/18/19
» Kaperoni - Things Pick Up in March! 2/18/19
» Wow. Dave Schmidt's nutty new age 2/24 "guest"
» Meta 1 Coin Scammer Robert Dunlap! 2/18/19
» "Reaching out" - MarkZ Update 2/18/19
» Romania confirms its continued support for Iraq and its readiness to provide assistance in the fight against corruption
» US pressure on the Gulf to continue isolating Syria .. UAE: We do not want to repeat the scenario of Iraq
» Expert: Facilitating lending mechanisms supports economic advancement
» Abadi: Agendas contributed to the decline of the political period and I want to return to the presidency of the government
» Smith calls on Kuwait to "turn the page of the past" and the latter calls for facilities
» customs calls "urgent" for domestic and foreign companies and importers
» Gary Larrabee: World Prosperity Plan for all of Humanity 2/18/19
» "Change is a Coming!" - Mon. AM KTFA Thoughts/News 2/18/19
» Iran urges Visa-Free Regime with Iraq
» "Change your Rate" - Mon. PM KTFA Thoughts/News 2/18/19
» "Ready" - Mon. PM TNT Thoughts/News 2/18/19
» "How Long?" - Mon. PM TNT Thoughts 2/18/19
» "Customs" - Mon. PM KTFA Thoughts, News w/ DELTA 2/18/19
» Secretary General of the Council of Ministers renews the desire to develop the horizon of joint cooperation between Iraq and China and expand the role of Chinese companies in the future
» The Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers confirms the readiness of the Secretariat to communicate with the United Nations Program to support and jointly finance the restoration of stability projects
» The Government of Japan and UNESCO sign agreement on ‘Voices of the children of Old Mosul’ primary school project
» During the presiding over its sixth session .. Minister of Planning: Committee on Economic Affairs obliges government agencies to adopt the railways national carrier
» Minister of Planning discusses with the Sudanese University of Neelain prospects of scientific cooperation between the two countries
» Saleh receives official invitation to visit Belgium and EU headquarters
» Minister of Planning: Uniting local and international efforts to restore life to liberated areas is a national necessity we are working to enforce
» Leapfrog Logistics: Digitising Delivery in Iraq
» Supervisory Action Manual / Risk Management Controls in Traditional Banks (Commercial)
» The dollar continues to stabilize against the Iraqi dinar
» Iraq strengthens its reserves of gold to 96 tons
» New round of US-China trade talks opens in Washington
» Directing the rehabilitation of an international road between Iraq and Saudi Arabia by more than 23 billion dinars
» Minister of Electricity: Mahedr of money on energy equivalent to the production of Iran and Saudi Arabia
» Egyptian transport: two stations will play a vital role in the reconstruction of Iraq and Syria
» Iranian exports of goods to Iraq reach $ 2 billion