This week ISIS released an audio recording of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. What does it say about the group’s capabilities that after all these years he’s been able to evade capture?
As the ISIS chief — because he was captured as an al-Qaeda leader — so we got him, check that box. We then released him, but that’s another thing. As an ISIS leader, he’s been operating since 2013, so that’s only six years. Whereas how long was Osama bin Laden’s son on the loose before we got him?
But you’re not concerned that he’s still been able to hide out? Like, what does that say about their networks?
I’m concerned about, first of all, are they setting up another caliphate? Are they holding more territory? No. Are the incidents extraordinarily low by every measure we’ve made in Afghanistan and Iraq? Absolutely, yes. Do we have areas where they seem to be persistent, pervasive, resilient, especially in Iraq, yes? In certain areas. And that’s the thing that has concern.
You saw recently that there was an island in the Tigris that was simply blown to bits by the U.S. Air Force. Forty tons of bombs or something like that. That island had been attacked twice, and it was hard to clean them all out. These are very, very rare.
This is the only case I can think of in either country where we’ve actually had a little tiny military operation, or several military operations, to clean these guys up. Most of the time, they’re on the move. I know in the Badia desert, south of the Euphrates, and we’re very worried about that. We’ve taken certain actions that I can’t get into against them. They float around like desert nomads. They strike the Russians. They strike the regime. They strike the Iranians. They stay away from us because they know what’s going to happen.
It’s a very different kind of concern than what we have had before with ISIS. So what we’re basically watching is the Delta. Are they increasing their attacks? Are they showing more resiliency? Are they beginning to not dominate, but at least contest. That’s the word. Contest terrain. We don’t see any of that other than rare things like this stupid island.
In his audio recording [Baghdadi] called on this followers to target prisons. Has the U.S. taken any additional steps to further secure these detention centers that are holding ISIS suspects and their families?
You can assume, one, that the U.S. always takes steps to harden targets that have been identified as under attack. And you can take it as an assumption that I’m not going to confirm that in any way, shape or form.
From 2010 to 2012, Jeffrey served as US Ambassador to Iraq.
The never ending Iraq War.
After 15 years, #USArmyReserve MSG Maynor Reyes returns to Iraq for a new mission: https://go.usa.gov/xVmzU
From the September 17th snapshot:
The wars never end. Which is how the Pentagon's DIVIDS notes Sgt Maynor Reyes is back in Iraq, 15 years after he first left. He's now stationed at the "Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq in support of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve." Kyle Rempfer (ARMY TIMES) reports, "Fort Bragg’s XVIII Airborne Corps handed off the reigns of the counter-Islamic State mission to III Armored Corps out of Fort Hood at a ceremony in Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday."
When does the US hand off that mission to Iraq and bring all the US troops home?
It's a real shame that, after all these years, that question still can't be asked by our 'brave' press in a White House or State Dept press briefing. Let alone in a 60 MINUTES interview with a sitting president.
In the US, Joe Biden wants to receive the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He brags constantly that Barack Obama put him in charge of Iraq. For some reason, this does not lead the press to ask questions of him about Iraq, about the many mistakes the US has made, about how the country is still at war and how and when this war ends.
THE REAL NEWS NETWORK discussed Joe with Ryan Cooper. Excerpt.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network.
We may be witnessing the sunset, the sad sunset, of a long political career in slow motion in this 2020 Democratic primary race, one bad sound bite at a time. Of course I’m talking about Joe Biden, and his sometimes nonsensical, sometimes fanciful, and sometimes some would argue racist comments that have plagued him on this recent campaign. How is he still in the race? Will someone tell him to stop making ad hoc comments and stick to his script? Should we call the people on Joe and get him some help? And why is the media is still calling this man and his awful comments the frontrunner, and the best bet the Democrats have to beat Trump?
Here to talk about this amusing and frightening case of what could be the ungluing of a Democratic presidential candidate, from Philadelphia is Ryan Cooper. Ryan is a Staff Writer for The Week. His work all has also appeared in The Nation, Current Affairs, and The Washington Post. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me today.
RYAN COOPER: Thanks for having me.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So I have to start off by saying that your article in The Week about Joe Biden entitled, “Why is the Media Gaslighting America on Joe Biden?” It was my favorite article on this topic that I have read in the past couple of weeks, so I appreciate the article. The first thing I want to ask you about this, the media has had an interesting response to Biden’s recent unfortunate comments. Are his comments just simple gaffes, as much of the corporate media characterizes them, or are they more than that?
RYAN COOPER: You have a man who is very used to speaking off the cuff. He’s very charming, he’s very funny, and he’s got a certain kind of charisma to him in his interpersonal behaviors. Then you have a guy who has very clearly lost a step or two mentally. He loses the thread of what’s going on. He’ll forget what he’s talking about. Trump does this sort of thing very consistently too where he starts in on a sentence and then he sidetracks himself, and then he forgets where he was going with the original thing and just sort of trails off.
Then I think thirdly, you have a career where Joe Biden has been firmly on the right of the party for a long time, and the party even relative to 2016 has moved very sharply to the left. Everybody is talking about the ideas of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and his entire career is all about credit card companies, giving them whatever they want, war on crime, mass incarceration. And so you combine those two things and you get a guy who’s just popping off semi-incoherently and semi just being horribly out of step with the party. And so, he just sounds horribly inappropriate to a modern audience.
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So it sounds to me like you’re saying that he is playing the part of the angry old man who is pretty much angry that the kids have taken his party away, almost.
RYAN COOPER: Angry maybe isn’t the right word. See, he’s not furious, exactly. He’s always very jovial in his comments, but he seems more just confused, like the way he used to be able to just riff on things and everyone would think, “Oh, it’s old Uncle Joe, Diamond Joe,” the Onion articles. Now it’s like, not only is he saying stuff that is offensive to the modern audience, but then it sounds incoherent and strange. Like if your dad said that, you would start looking to take away his car keys, and so—
JACQUELINE LUQMAN: I would take away my dad’s car keys. Yes.
RYAN COOPER: Yeah. You feel bad for him in one sense, but boy, he really is not doing himself any favors. It seems as if he can’t help himself. If he could keep doing this, he certainly would, but he just doesn’t appear to be capable of it.
So many problems for Joe.
NEWS: @JoeBiden broke with Obama to become one of only 3 Dems who voted with the GOP to make it harder for Americans to reduce their medical debt. @BernieSanders' new plan would reverse those changes & eliminate medical debt https://bernie.substack.com/p/bern-notice-bernies-medical-debt … #EliminateMedicalDebt
In other news, Nate Silver's ongoing racism continues to evade media coverage.
Yes @NateSilver538 called People of Color supporting @BernieSanders residue with great ease. Where, I say where are the folks who usually call out racism? I know where they are. No where to be found because the attack is against Berniecrats. #ResidueForBernie
I've always said Nate was the Jimmy The Greek of politics -- and, yes, that does include the racism that finally destroyed Jimmy's career.
