Report: ISIS Losing in Kobane Fight

Good news, if a BBC report of a Kurdish fighter is to be trusted. I hope and pray that it can.

From the BBC (via Ace of Spades):

The Islamic State (IS) militant group has been driven out of most of the northern Syrian town of Kobane, a Kurdish commander has told the BBC. 

Baharin Kandal said IS fighters had retreated from all areas, except for two pockets of resistance in the east. 

US-led air strikes have helped push back the militants, with another 14 conducted over the past 24 hours. 

Meanwhile, the new UN human rights commissioner has called IS a "potentially genocidal" movement.  

[...]  

Speaking by phone, Kurdish commander Baharin Kandal told the BBC's Kasra Naji that she hoped the city would be "liberated soon". 

Ms Kandal said her militia group had been receiving arms, supplies and fighters but she refused to say how, reports our correspondent, who is on the Turkish border near Kobane.  

Kurdish defenders have victory in their sights. After exactly a month of fighting, they say they have driven Islamic State from most of the city.  

[...]  

The battle for Kobane, which is also known as Ayn al-Arab, is regarded as a major test of whether the US-led coalition's air campaign can push back IS.

Well, the answer for that last bit is "no, an air campaign will not push back ISIS." In Kobane ISIS met stiff resistance from people who possessed no illusions about the consequences of an ISIS victory. ISIS's penchant for burying people alive, beheading, crucifixion, mass executions and public displays of the bodies hardened the resolve of the Kurds, rather than throwing them into a panic. The Kurds' response of throwing everyone who was willing into the fight (including the elderly, children, and women) against this terrible enemy, is both an admirable and an atypical response. It is unrealistic to expect any and all  people fighting ISIS to respond with the same heightened grit, determination, and heroism as the Kurds displayed in Kobane. Thus, the results cannot and will not be the same in future battles.

Basically, the U.S. air campaign will be effective only if all of the enemies of ISIS display heroic levels of courage and determination at all times. Sheer idiocy. An American general planning for a battle and who is expecting, or indeed relying upon, this level of desperation and requiring this amount of heroism from American troops is unreasonable-- and possibly criminal. Expecting constant heroism from loosely-organized, non-professional militias is ludicrous.

Yet, this seems to be the plans of the Obama Administration.

Utter foolishness...

UN: Syria Still Using Chemical Weapons Against Rebels and Civilians

"This has never been about trusting Asaad. It's about training and arming Islamic militants who may or may not be marching on Baghdad and Kobane. I mean international relations are like totally hard, okay?"

And this despite Obama's Operation "Oops I Said Red Line" which resulted in a "deal" brokered by our good friend Putin.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Syria has revealed the existence of four chemical weapons facilities that were previously undisclosed, a top United Nations official said on Tuesday, raising new concerns about the government’s commitment to eliminating its chemical weapons under an agreement struck last year. 

Sigrid Kaag, a special representative of the U.N. secretary-general, reportedly told diplomats on the U.N. Security Council about the newly declared facilities at a closed meeting. Three of the facilities are for research and development and the fourth for production, but no new chemical agents are contained at the sites, according to the Associated Press report on Kaag’s comments. 

The disclosure of more facilities raises new questions about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime might still be hiding parts of its chemical weapons program. Assad agreed to the removal and destruction of his chemical weapons as part of a deal brokered by the United States and Russia in September 2013, which followed the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical agents on civilians in a Damascus suburb. About 1,400 people died in the August 2013 attack, including hundreds of children.  

[...]  

When asked by a reporter whether Assad could be trusted to declare all of his chemical weapons—given U.S. officials’ frequent claim that he has “lost all legitimacy to lead Syria”—Psaki [State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki] said it was more important to focus on U.S. efforts to train the Syrian opposition as an alternative to Assad.

Huh. So Assad still has and is using chemical weapons, and the U.S. State Department's response is to train and arm other fighter in the area... like ISIS maybe?

Gee, I wonder if this attitude/strategy could account for ISIS using American made ammunition, weapons, trucks, etc. Just thinking out loud here...

Observing Obama and his State Department flounder, flail, and generally act like children would be awfully amusing if the consequences weren't so terrible. This is like watching Public Access amateur hour...

"JV" ISIS Advances into Both Iraq and Syria

I hope our State Department is ready to hashtag out #FreeIraq or something...

Who could've predicted this? Certainly not Obama, who is intentionally being kept in the dark by the racist Secret Service.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

The United States appears to be losing its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, experts say, as the jihadist group adapts to U.S. airstrikes and advances toward Baghdad and a strategic town on the Syrian-Turkish border. 

McClatchy reported on Friday that ISIL had established an operational presence in Abu Ghraib, a town within miles of the capital Baghdad that could enable the militants to shell the Baghdad International Airport with artillery. The airport serves as a key transit point for Western embassies and houses a joint operations center with U.S. military advisers. 

A Defense Department spokeswoman said there were no indications yet that ISIL had taken over Abu Ghraib. 

ISIL has also made significant gains in recent days in Iraq’s western Anbar province, where it has seized the town of Hit and launched assaults on other military bases in the region. Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have been captured, and U.S. and allied airstrikes appear to have failed to push back ISIL from its strongholds in Anbar. 

In Syria, ISIL engaged in intense fighting on Monday with Kurdish forces in Kobani—a key town near the Turkish border that could grant Islamic militants new smuggling lines for fighters and supplies if they control it. U.S. airstrikes have also failed to relieve ISIL’s siege of Kobani. 

Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that ISIL fighters have adopted new tactics to evade airstrikes and retain control of territory, including avoiding the use of cell phones and radios, removing their leaders and weapons from bases in Syria, and blending in with the civilian population.

For a group of jayvees pretending to be The Lakers, ISIS isn't doing too badly. And since Obama has promised not too put American boots on the ground-- probably one of the only Obama promises I actually believe-- all ISIS has to do is keep its head down for a while as they continue to murder stacks of people, and cut the heads of selected Westerners.

Obama has no plan, no stomach, and is afraid to deal with actual enemies of the US and its allies. Expect nothing but more ISIS killings, and Obama's attempts to blame others and downplay the violence. Oh, and expect the media to continue to roll over on Obama's command.

ISIS Beheads British Hostage

ISIS, or ISIL, or whatever you want to call these Muslim terrorist butchers, have beheaded British national Alan Henning.

From Gateway Pundit:

The ISIS beheader says in the video,

“The blood of David Haines was on your hands, Cameron. Daniel Henning will also be slaughtered. But his blood is on the hands of the British Parliament.”

Alan Henning made this statement in the video before his death:

“Hi I’m Alan Henning. Because of our parliament’s decision to attack the Islamic State, I as a member of the British public, will now pay the price for that decision.”

Alan had gone to Syria to “help his Muslim friends.”

Another American apparently is the next victim on these people's list.

Having gutted the military despite huge increases in federal spending, Obama's response to the horrific violence in the Middle East which is to lob more missiles, drop some more bombs, and generally be largely ineffective.

So does anybody remember when Westerners were trumpeting about the "Arab Spring"?

I think that's well gone from the Left's collective memory.

Chris Mathews Compares Muslim Terrorists with Poor Black Americans

Just a young man without a cellphone trying to connect to the world, according to Chris Mathews.

Brilliant!

I just can no longer force myself to watch MSNBC. I did for a time, but those days are pretty long gone now. Yet, after listening to Chris Mathews' hilarious performance on this clip, I might go back for the laughs.

Where to begin...

Well, first for some stupid reason I can't post the actual clip. I'll try again later. In the meantime, the clip is over at Soopermexican so check it out there.

My favorite lines as Mathews talks about radical Islamic terrorists who are crucifying people in Syria and Iraq:

"I think most young people in the world today really want to get educated. They really want to get on their cellphones, they really want to connect to the world."

I didn't know it really required much of an education to use a cellphone or run a search on the internet. Are they giving out degrees for that now? It wouldn't surprise me.

But aside from that, these people are actually doing a pretty good job of using social media to post videos of their beheadings, upload pictures of stacks of bodies, etc.-- whereas I am having to provide a link since I can get the damn video clip to load on my blog. It doesn't really appear to me that these Islamic terrorists are having a hard time connecting with the world.

Mathews' very next line:

"They want to be part of the world. That's the optimistic view of everybody in the world, to become part of the globe and the future. Kids know that. Young people-- teens know that. Why do they want to be suicide bombers? What a hopeless career move... to be blunt about it."

I can't write this without laughing out loud. Oh, those crazy, mixed-up jihadist kids. Why can't they just surf the web, make trans-global pen-pals, and not blow themselves up? I just don't get it.

Mathews' laughable ignorance isn't actually the worst example of American Leftist thought. I mean, they are so shallow that they have absolutely no understanding of other peoples' religions, cultures, prejudices, histories... nothing. Just listen to him, Muslim suicide bombers are just people without cell phones.

I'm not going to analyze all this crap, but it does occur to me that this willful ignorance, which is really prevalent on the American Left-- from Obama right down to the local barrista, seems to come from the illusions that the Left have to hold for the Truth (yes, capital T) of their political views to have any hope of working. Socialism just doesn't work fellas. So the American Left must put their blinders on, believe that anyone who doesn't think like them has some mental defect, and know in their heart-of-hearts that people across the globe are, deep down in their very essence, just Lefty Americans. Just another day in reality-based politics, I guess.

Mathews' climatic conclusion:

"Unfortunately there's a parallel with the African-American kid in the North Philly situation where you grow up... where there's no more factories around. There's no more jobs around. There's no more blue collar options and the only deal they offered you is from the drug dealer. We have this problem at home."

Bwah ha ha ha! Yup. Mathews has compared jihadists with poor Black people. I guess we should really be worried about the poor and jobless Americans (which seem to be exclusively Black according to lily-White Mathews) suddenly rising up, crucifying political rivals, sending out pics of the stacks of bodies, and then blowing themselves up in public places. The parallel's right there folks. Mathews' proven it.

Yup, I gotta go back to checking out MSNBC again. The laughs come more frantically then Monty Python's confuse-a-cat sketch on that station.

Obama's ISIS Speech-- A Waste of Air

Hey, don't worry about those ISIS fellows. The self-canonized St. Obama will save us all. It's just like how he was going to make us all rich.

Obama took a brief respite from his grueling golf schedule today to gift us with a speech on the guys who are butchering people across Syria and Iraq. Arab Spring anyone?

 Obama had nothing to say except things are getting better domestically (uh-huh, that's why we have the greatest number of long-term unemployed in American history, just basking in the economic glory), and everything else isn't my fault but it'll be fine. What leadership...

Tom Rogan at the NRO succinctly sums up the weaknesses in Obama's speech.

From his NRO article:

It [Obama's speech] had four key substantive failures. 

First, adopting U.S. strategy in Somalia and Yemen as a guide for action against ISIS doesn’t make sense. The situations in Yemen and Somalia are hardly inspiring. From Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula constitutes a major threat to the West. Similarly, in Somalia, while al-Shabaab has suffered some notable losses, the group retains a significant regional capability (as illustrated by the Westgate Mall attack). Because of its military assets, internationally destabilizing influence, and expansionist ideology, ISIS must be confronted with a strategy that is more encompassing than that in Somalia and Yemen. 

Second, the president’s speech provides further evidence of his administration’s confusion over the connected power and potential of U.S. leadership. Referencing Arab support, Mr. Obama erred when he noted the limits of U.S. power to effect regional political stability. While this statement is true, to the Sunni Arab monarchies who regard Obama’s foreign policy with thinly veiled disdain, it will suggest another marker of hesitation. That’s a major issue — because unless the United States can persuade these states to coalesce around American strategy, they will continue to support Sunni extremists in Syria. After all, these leaders regard their primary threat as Iran, not ISIS. 

Third, the president failed to provide specifics on what contributions his coalition partners will provide to the counter-ISIS effort. As I noted on Monday, coalitions are complicated. By exaggerating tangible international support — the president’s hopeful mention of U.N. engagement was especially absurd — Mr. Obama has invited expectations he cannot meet. He’s weakened his credibility with the American people. 

But the most problematic element of Mr. Obama’s speech was, fourth, his statement that “American forces will not have a combat mission — we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.” While there is little public or congressional support for a major ground operation against ISIS, the president, by explicitly ruling out any ground troops, has eliminated his critical Special Operations portfolio. This is cause for deep concern. Without limited Special Forces deployments on the ground — especially in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor and Raqqah governorates, and north/central Iraq — it will be extremely difficult to restrict ISIS supply routes along the Euphrates corridor. Denying ISIS its maneuver-support structure will hasten ISIS’s defeat. The president’s only alternative is to order a massive deployment of CIA personnel instead. This is a damaging limitation of strategy at the altar of presumed public opinion. It plainly isn’t leadership.

This speech shouldn't surprise anyone. I mean, what on earth did we expect? Obama has no plan. He's proven repeatedly that he never does. I doubt that Obama is even fully aware of what is going on in the world. I think he avoids it because it hurts his frail ego.

Obama's pattern is clear. He simply makes a placating speech, then hopes that things don't get worse on his watch. If things do get worse-- as they have with ObamaCare, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, etc.-- he goes into damage control mode and spins blame on the handiest target. which could be Bush, Cheney, the GOP, the Tea Party, ATMs, greed, etc.

Hey America, you voted for a guy who's whole accomplishments are based only in race and PR. Did you expect anything more but PR from him?