Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they […]
An interesting story popped up via the Iranian mouthpiece, Fars, stating in part the following: Israel’s fighter jets have taken part in the Thursday Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen, sources in Sanaa disclosed on Friday. “This is for the first time that the Zionists are conducting a joint operation in coalition with Arabs,” Secretary General of […]
Houthi, Shia, Sunni
The United States has indications that Iran has carried out air strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq in recent days, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. A senior Iranian official denied that Iran had launched any such air strikes. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States had indications that Iran had used […]
The U.S. government has stated that it is part of a multi-national coalition (Obama says ‘over 60 countries’) in the fight against the Islamic State, but details of what each nation has contributed are scarce. Many nations have contributed humanitarian assistance, but below is a list of other nations’ known involvement in terms of military […]
The first time the US acknowledged the presence of a shadowy and unknown group known as ” Khorasan” was when the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said last week that this group is operating in Iraq and Syria with a mission to strike the US and western targets around the world and possibly in the […]
Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. An Indiana Air National Guard unit that flies the Cold War-era gunships, known as Warthogs, is planning to deploy about 300 airmen […]
While extremist groups are generally amorphous organizations, ISIS can trace its history directly back to the Sunni terrorist organization al Qaeda, specifically the Iraq faction, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for scores of bombings, kidnappings and in Iraq following the U.S. invasion there. After al-Zarqawi was…
House Homeland Security Chair Rep. Michael McCaul said today he believes that ISIS, the jihadist army that has taken control of large part of Iraq and brutally murdered American journalist James Foley, has external operations under way to hit the West. “Their focus right now is establishing the caliphate. But don’t kid yourself for a second, they [are] i…
The Obama administration insisted Thursday that the U.S. will avoid mission creep in freshly war-torn Iraq , even as its Pentagon chief warned that the Islamic State poses a terrorist threat to Americans “beyond anything that we’ve seen.” “Get ready,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declared in an ominous warning, even as the White House tried to ta…
Within hours of President Obama ’s heads-up to the American public that he authorized the Pentagon to use military force in Iraq to counter the advance of Islamist militants there, the Pentagon did just that. As Washington woke up Friday morning, it learned that two US F-18 fighter jets had started their campaign, dropping 500-pound laser-guided bombs…