US, Russian Federation bombard Islamic State oil trade

Leaders are carried away by a heady sense of empowerment as a anxious or frightened public demands that something be done in response to calamity and to prevent it happening again. This has always been true.

Gates believes the USA needs to become more aggressive in its intelligence operations in monitoring ISIS in Iraq and Syria and around the world. The reality is that ISIS was established in Iraq in 2006 during American supervision following the removal of Saddam.

Sir Christopher, a key figure in negotiations between Washington and London over the Iraq War during his six-year stint as ambassador to the U.S., said any plan to deal with Isis would need to take into account regional realpolitik.

What we do know is who they may be: they are the same names that were quite prominent in the market in September when Glencore had its first, and certainly not last, near death experience: the Glencores, the Vitols, the Trafiguras, the Nobels, the Mercurias of the world. “There’s a clear linear progression from one to the other”. It has withstood the aerial pounding by USA and coalition warplanes, defended its core territories and apparently used its resiliency and social media savvy to replenish its ranks as quickly as they are reduced. He urges an American-led regional ground force invasion of Syria, adding: “Under no circumstances would I work with (Putin) and the Iranians regarding Syria if the price to fight ISIL (is) to keep (Assad) in power”.

Wood said it was unlikely that Islamic State would emerge as victors if foreign powers launched a full assault on them in Syria and Iraq, so its supporters may have put in it a “strategically uncomfortable corner by carrying out an attack more gruesome and successful than its leaders wished”.

It is now evident that the IS can not be contained through a few uncoordinated air strikes. But here there is a political problem. It is overstretched, but it has at least four effective combat divisions. Even the Syrian government is said by Western diplomats and Syrian opposition member to buy oil from IS through middlemen, though Syrian officials deny it – and the main source of oil for government-held parts of the country is shipments from Damascus’ top ally Iran.

Islamic State is a taking a leaf out of al Qaeda’s playbook. But it is still too early to say how far it has tipped it. The Syrian army has suffered 47,000 killed in action and its paramilitary forces lost a further 31,000 over the past four years, leaving it exhausted and fought out. Russian support has raised morale but its previous weaknesses remain, so it is unclear if it could win a major victory such as capturing the opposition-held half of Aleppo. The Assad regime leverages these banks to further its own business interests with the Islamic State.

Americans want the Obama administration to get tougher with the ISIS following the carnage in Paris, but numerous measures now being proposed could actually make the threat worse, counter-terrorism experts said. These paramilitaries are highly esteemed by the Shia majority, but they have failed to dislodge Isis from Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Duncan’s, Donald Trump’s, Ben Carson’s and others’ profoundly irresponsible and misleading rhetoric have successfully framed large populations of the West as fearful or antipathetic toward Muslims.

The Star, in line with the current style of most global news organizations and wire services, now refers to the “Islamic State group” or “Islamic State militants”.

While it is not for infidels to declare what is or isn’t Islamic – it seems pretty obvious that ISIS, which only admits Muslims, has a credible case to be called Islamic – the “self-declared” bit is undeniably silly. The Islamic State itself has taken tens of thousands of innocent lives in the region, and now hundreds more civilian lives in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and France. The progressive removal of old sanctuaries in Turkey is a serious loss for the jihadis.

The United States and its coalition partners have targeted ISIS with 8,216 airstrikes – 5,383 in Iraq and 2,833 in Syria, through November 16, the Pentagon says.

As a result, “it’s going to become more and more hard to differentiate between a pickup truck that is carrying crude oil and a pickup truck that just belongs to a baker or a farmer”. There is now no truly safe place for an Iraqi Sunni to escape to inside the country.

She’s expected to call for escalated aggressiveness in confronting it – the same ruse as other presidential aspirants, using the threat of ISIS as a pretext for greater war on Syria.