At least one bundle of U.S. weapons airdropped in Syria appears to have fallen into the hands of ISIS, a dangerous misfire in the American mission to speed aid to Kurdish forces making their stand in Kobani.
An ISIS-associated YouTube account posted a new video online Tuesday entitled, “Weapons and munitions dropped by American planes and landed in the areas controlled by the Islamic State in Kobani.” The video was also posted on the Twitter account of “a3maq news,” which acts as an unofficial media arm of ISIS. The outfit has previously posted videos of ISIS fighters firing American made Howitzer cannons and seizing marijuana fields in Syria.
ISIS had broadly advertised its acquisition of a broad range of U.S.-made weapons during its rampage across Iraq. ISIS videos have showed its fighters driving U.S. tanks, MRAPs, Humvees. There are unconfirmed reports ISIS has stolen three fighter planes from Iraqi bases it conquered.
More Foreign Policy Incompetence – U.S. Humanitarian Aid is Going Directly to ISIS
Michael Krieger | Posted Tuesday Oct 21, 2014 at 1:48 pm
“The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: The bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,” says an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local nongovernmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it.
The State Department official said he, too, was conflicted about the programs… “Are we helping indirectly the militants to build their caliphate? I wrestle with this.”
– From Sunday’s Daily Beast article: U.S. Humanitarian Aid Going to ISIS
The Daily Beast has been at the forefront of exposing the bizarre emergence of the latest terror threat known as ISIS, which is being used to take away civil liberties at home, and fuel more chaos and destruction abroad. It was their work in June that first highlighted the fact that ISIS was and is being funded and supported by U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. I commented on the absurdity of the situation in my piece, America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq, in which I noted:
But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.
“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”
Well, the Daily Beast has done it again. This time courtesy of Sunday’s excellent article, U.S. Humanitarian Aid Going to ISIS. Just in case you think American foreign policy incompetence couldn’t get any worse, I present to you the following excerpts. Read it and weep:
GAZIANTEP, Turkey—While U.S. warplanes strike at the militants of the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, truckloads of U.S. and Western aid has been flowing into territory controlled by the jihadists, assisting them to build their terror-inspiring “caliphate.”
The aid—mainly food and medical equipment—is meant for Syrians displaced from their hometowns, and for hungry civilians. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the United Nations. Whether it continues is now the subject of anguished debate among officials in Washington and European. The fear is that stopping aid would hurt innocent civilians and would be used for propaganda purposes by the militants, who would likely blame the West for added hardship.
Don’t even get me started on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is often nothing more than a CIA front. Learn about that here and here.
Quite the reverse, the aid convoys have to pay off ISIS emirs (leaders) for the convoys to enter the eastern Syrian extremist strongholds of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, providing yet another income stream for ISIS militants, who are funding themselves from oil smuggling, extortion, and the sale of whatever they can loot, including rare antiquities from museums and archaeological sites.
“The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: The bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,” says an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local nongovernmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it.
“I am alarmed that we are providing support for ISIS governance,” says Jonathan Schanzer, a Mideast expert with the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “By doing so we are indemnifying the militants by satisfying the core demands of local people, who could turn on ISIS if they got frustrated.”
Aid coordinators with NGOs partnering USAID and other Western government agencies, including Britain’s Department for International Development, say ISIS insist that the NGOs, foreign and local, employ people ISIS approves on their staffs inside Syria. “There is always at least one ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us,” says an aid coordinator. “And when a convoy is being prepared, the negotiations go through them about whether the convoy can proceed. They contact their emirs and a price is worked out. We don’t have to wrangle with individual ISIS field commanders once approval is given to get the convoy in, as the militants are highly hierarchical.” He adds: “None of the fighters will dare touch it, if an emir has given permission.”
What becomes even more bizarre is that while aid is still going into ISIS-controlled areas, only a little is going into Kurdish areas in northeast Syria. About every three or four months there is a convoy into the key city of Qamishli. Syrian Kurds, who are now defending Kobani with the support of U.S. warplanes, have long complained about the lack of international aid. Last November, tellingly, Syrian Kurds complained that Syria’s Kurdistan was not included in a U.N. polio-vaccination campaign. U.N. agencies took the position that polio vaccines should go through the Syrian Red Crescent via Damascus when it came to the Kurds.
The really tragic part is that if the U.S. should be helping anybody, it is the Syrian Kurds in Kobani. As noted in a Huffington Post article from yesterday, this community has created a globally unique experiment in radically decentralized government. Naturally, America is singling them out to be massacred.
It’s hard to know whether the U.S. government is intentionally helping ISIS, or if it is just that incompetent. Either conclusion is terrifying.
But don’t worry, ebola is under control, the economy is just fine and the NSA isn’t spying on you.
Move along slaves.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
i don’t worry about 10% of droppings get lost as long as 90% gets to pesherga or ypg
bad luck if it gets tot isis, who, btw, seem to me all hidden homosexuals..
isis-boyzzz seem to me homosexual, not by choise, but by bad luck..
if they are not able to capture women, they have to fuck another isis-boy..
unluckily the captured women don’t like that so much.. so, they can show like they have finally a women, but they basicly have nobody (no body … GRINNN)
even not a blowjob… so they blow temselves up… ha haha hahahaaa..
simplu stupidos.. mmm, stupidos with a mahine gun are stupid stupidos..
so, whatever nation you’re from : nuke those isis debiles… in the west we are happy they go to syria, in the east you do not have to be ahppy because we send you our stupido loosers…
bye.. didivandezurebommeindewulf
The results of any sufficiently sophisticated incompetence is indistinguishable from MALICE.
It seems to me that Obama’s “incompetence” ends up with MORE Federal power, increased impoverishment of Americans, expansion of the police state, complete failure to roll back radical Islam, destruction of the military, abandonment of the southern border, alienation of allies & strengthening of our enemies, obliteration of the Constitution and expansion of Executive Branch power, need I go on?
With “friends” or Presidents, like Obola, who the fuck needs enemies?
Fuck it, nuke all these fuckers into the the next life. Let’s get it over with once and for all. Put me in charge, the Middle East would go silent within hours. There would be NO rag heads left to debate with.
Fuck Sand Niggers.
@Sensetti:
Obola will never do it. He vowed in one of his “books” to stand with the Muslims in any kind of conflict.
And that’s all ya gotta know about how to interpret his response to the ISIS crap. If Obola could treat his political enemies like ISIS treats theirs, he would.
And the brain dead clapping seal Obola Zombies would probably help.
How General Dynamics Just Got A $600 Million Check From Uncle Sam, Courtesy Of ISIS
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/21/2014 18:20 -0400
Sometimes, in the fog of whatever is the Mideast war du jour started initially under a “humanitarian intervention” pretext then quickly morphing into yet another counter-Syria campaign to appease various Saudi and Qatari emirs and princes, it is easy to lose sight over just what the purpose of said war is. Luckily, we have the US military industrial complex to remind us, and specifically weapons and ammunition specialists like General Dynamics. So here, for those confused, is a summary of the the first half of the great circle, which uses war, mass killings and civilian casualties, as a cover to deploy what else: US taxpayer money into the pocket of US corporations. Lots of it.
As Reuters reports, the U.S. government on Monday said it had approved the sale to Iraq of $600 million in tank ammunition manufactured by General Dynamics Corp saying it would help the Iraqi government establish an integrated ground defense capability.
In short: the Obama administration is about to give its latest puppet government in Iraq some $600 million in US taxpayer funds so said government can further arm itself in its war with a terrorist group that until recently was also being funded, trained and equipped by the US government. The beneficiary: a US company which some say is at the forefront of the US military industrial complex.
With that out of the way, here’s more.
The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, notified lawmakers that the State Department had approved the sale of 10,000 M831 120m, high-explosive anti-tank munitions, 10,000 M865 120mm kinetic energy warheads and 26,000 other munitions, as well as logistics services.
DSCA said the prime contractor would be General Dynamics, maker of the M1A1 Abrams tank and the requested munitions.
The U.S. military has been conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and is seeking to strengthen the Iraqi government so it can resist the extremists more effectively.
Reuters also adds that Congress now has 30 days to block the sale, “although such action is rare since arms deals are usually vetted carefully before a congressional notification.”
Actually, the reason there is rarely if every blocking of such indirect subsidies to the US Military Industrial Complex is simple, and is the other half of the circle.
C’mon people. It’s not incompetence. It’s part of a giant circle jerk… The MIC doesn’t give a shit who gets a few weapons. And neither do those who benefit, as long as it leads to continuing perpetual warfare and they have the bigger guns.
It isn’t incompetence Obama is doing exactly what he wants to do. It makes no difference. Radical Mohammedans want to cut off our heads. Moderate Mohammedans. Want radical Mohammedans to cut our heads off. Kill em all let Allah sort them out.
The US military hasn’t used pineapple style grenades since the Korean conflict. Not sure what that pic was, but it wasn’t US arms.
ISIS Claims It Hit US Embassy In Baghdad’s Green Zone
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/22/2014 09:42 -0400
“They know Baghdad. They’ve lived in Baghdad,” said Lt.Col Oliver North, warning over the weekend that sources in Iraq believed ISIS was planning a “major attack” against the embassy in Baghdad. Yesterday we get some confirmation – via ISIS – that they did in fact reportedly strike the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. As Inquisitr reports, on Tuesday the Islamist militant group took credit for a mortar attack against the embassy in Baghdad. The group bragged about the attack on social media, claiming that there were likely casualties – “Four rockets strike Green Zone in #Baghdad; helicopters hovering over the Green Zone; ambulances heading that way after strikes!!” one ISIS militant noted on Twitter. As North concludes, “They are at the gates of Baghdad. They’re coming for us.”
As Inquisitr reports,
ISIS has reportedly struck the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in what could be the furthers incursion yet into Iraq’s capital.
On Tuesday the Islamist militant group took credit for a mortar attack against the embassy in Baghdad. The group bragged about the attack on social media, claiming that there were likely casualties.
…
ISIS has been increasing its attacks on Baghdad in recent weeks, including a wave of car bomb and mortar attacks on Sunday that left at least 150 people killed. Four car bombs exploded in Shia districts of Baghdad, leaving 36 people dead and 98 wounded in a span of two hours.
ISIS fighters have been encamped in suburbs surrounding Baghdad, and earlier this month sent four mortar shells into the Green Zone, the heavily protected location of the U.S. Embassy and other government buildings.
This is likely no surprise as Lt.Col Oliver North has warned…that sources in Iraq believed ISIS was planning a “major attack” against the embassy in Baghdad.
“They know Baghdad. They’ve lived in Baghdad,” North said of the militants reportedly planning the attack.
They are at the gates of Baghdad. They’re coming for us,” he added.
But North’s predictions were also tinged in political criticism, as he used the prediction as a way to attack President Obama and allege a conspiracy to let ISIS take over Iraq for his own benefit.
“I don’t think he gives a d**n,” North said. “I think he’s hoping that he can hold the lid on this until after this election so it won’t be just another disaster for this administration.”
The first crate full of Mk2 grenades in the bulk box are inert, no M204 fuses or powder. Just iron bodies. Looks like WW2 or Korean war surplus.
The other crate had fully fuzed M26 frag grenades in their Mil STD 2073 SPI packaging.
“he Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, notified lawmakers that the State Department had approved the sale of 10,000 M831 120m, high-explosive anti-tank munitions, 10,000 M865 120mm kinetic energy warheads and 26,000 other munitions, as well as logistics services.”
The M865 and M831 variants are only training rounds for the 120mm.
The M829/M830 variants are the shit.
This is why when people think we’ll defeat Ebola with our superior technology and know-how, I have to laugh. Sure, it’s better that most of our people don’t think illness is caused by evil spirits, but if we’re not spanked by an ebola epidemic, it’ll be because of sheer dumb luck – that it’s true that people aren’t infectious until after symptoms have appeared. Most LIberians just have to sit in their huts and wait to die. American Ebola nurses get on planes and go on cruises.
Greetings,
I, too, noticed that the air drop contained inert munitions. Of course, as a former ordnance officer in the U.S. Army, I can tell you that we do stockpile and maintain munitions for weapons that have been out of service for decades.
Those old pineapple grenades can be easily modified into something a bit more deadly but I’m guessing that someone just wanted to get rid of ’em.
I wish they’d airdrop some munitions around here. Or C-rations. Or old tools, whatever. Maybe some FRN’s.