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Obama Administration claim to have “taken out half” of Islamic State’s senior leadership is false

Mar 13, 2015 11:01 am By Robert Spencer

obama-finger-Never since the invention of the airplane has any territory been conquered solely from the air. Kerry and Allen have a vested interest in making the U.S. airstrikes look good, but in reality they’re just a cosmetic exercise to make it look as if the U.S. is doing something about the Islamic State.

“U.S. Exaggerates Islamic State Casualties,” by Eli Lake and Josh Rogin, Bloomberg, March 13, 2015:

The war against the Islamic State has killed thousands of fighters and even some mid-level battlefield commanders, but the organization’s senior leadership and nerve center remain largely untouched, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

These officials and other experts tracking the terror group tell us that the Islamic State’s Shura and Sharia councils, the advisory bodies that help inform the major decisions of the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remain intact, notwithstanding one close call in November for Baghdadi. Although airstrikes and military campaigns have killed several regional administrators and designated “governors,” the Islamic State has quickly replaced them and maintains its command-and-control capabilities.

This assessment of progress against the Islamic State differs sharply from public statements by top Obama administration officials as recently as last month, including Secretary of State John Kerry and retired General John Allen, the president’s special coordinator for the coalition against the Islamic State. In February, Allen said that half the group’s leaders in Iraq had been killed.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference also in February, Kerry expanded that claim to account for the group’s leadership in Syria as well.

“We’ve disrupted their command structure, undermined its propaganda, taken out half of their senior leadership, squeezed its financing, damaged its supply networks, dispersed its personnel, and forced them to think twice before they move in an open convoy,” Kerry said.

Kerry and Allen haven’t since repeated that claim about the group’s senior leadership. U.S. military officials tell us no consensus intelligence estimate supports the claim that half the Islamic State’s leadership has been eliminated.

When asked about Kerry’s 50 percent claim, Army Captain John J. Moore, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told us: “We currently don’t have a percentage attached to that statistic.”

Experts told us Kerry’s estimate is tough to understand, because defining the Islamic State’s “leadership” is subjective. Cole Bunzel, a Princeton University scholar of Near Eastern Studies who closely follows Islamic State, said its leadership structure is opaque, and not much is known about the true membership of its Shura and Sharia councils, which play an important role in the organization. When the Islamic State has announced major decisions, such as its decision to expand into Syria or declare itself a caliphate, said Bunzel, it has made clear that one or both of those councils were consulted by Baghdadi.

“I am very skeptical of the claim that the coalition has killed 50 percent of the leadership of the Islamic State, whatever that means,” said Bunzel.

He later added, “The Islamic State has publicly announced when senior members of the group have been killed. But they have never talked about anyone in the core leadership being killed since 2010.”…

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Filed Under: Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), United States Tagged With: John Allen, John Kerry


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Comments

  1. moses says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 11:07 am

    The obama administration is living in a fantasy land if that’s what they claim.They should wake up and smell the coffee.

  2. Joseph says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 11:40 am

    Obama giving the finger. He has been doing that to America and the rest of the free world since he has been/had any power.
    My hat is off to Robert S. for this one and his other pics. He has a keen ability to choose the picture that supplements the story.

    • Spot On says

      Mar 13, 2015 at 11:45 am

      Picture is worth a thousand words. Says it all.

    • mariam rove says

      Mar 13, 2015 at 11:58 am

      Obama is smoking hashish, which is the preferred drug of muslims. M

    • Cat says

      Mar 14, 2015 at 2:07 pm

      I’ve noticed him giving the finger in a lot of pictures.

  3. Ricky black says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 12:01 pm

    And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of GOD, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, Revelation 20:4

    • Ricky Black says

      Mar 13, 2015 at 12:06 pm

      And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the FALSE PROPHET ARE, Revelation 20;10

      • sound awake says

        Mar 14, 2015 at 5:51 pm

        EVEN BETTER:

        The Heavenly Warrior Defeats the Beast

        11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

        king of kings and lord of lords.

        17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”

        19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. 20 But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.

        REVELATION 19

  4. Mirren10 says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 12:06 pm

    ”Experts told us Kerry’s estimate is tough to understand …”

    Kerry is simply lying. What’s tough to understand about that ?

    How I wish a rash of truth-telling would suddenly break out in the ‘corridors of power’.

  5. Jay Boo says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 12:42 pm

    Dear Obama,

    If someone puts a paper-bag jammed full of Islam on your doorstep, then lights it up, rings your doorbell and runs away that is merely the symptom.

    If you open your door and stomp on the flaming bag then you shouldn’t congratulate yourself for solving the problem.

    The problem is Islam’s cesspool.

    • Jay Boo says

      Mar 13, 2015 at 12:59 pm

      For non-US Americans:
      Here is a silly sanitized cartoon skit explaining about the paper-bag theme I mentioned.

      • Joseph says

        Mar 13, 2015 at 2:38 pm

        GOOD ONE!! I haven’t heard the bag O’ shit trick in 20 years.
        This trick is sooooo nasty that as kids we have NEVER did it.
        However, it gets the point across rather nicely.

  6. mortimer says

    Mar 13, 2015 at 2:25 pm

    They need to get them out of their putrid holes in the ground. Soon the heat will come and the polluted water will kill thousands. Most of ISIS will die from diseases.

  7. tgusa says

    Mar 14, 2015 at 5:07 am

    Obama 2007… “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president it is the first thing I will do, I will get our troops home, we will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.”

    All of the death, the horrifically wounded, both bodily and mentally, the families destroyed, Americans and others hard hard work, all tossed away, abandoned. By… Obama and his despicable cohorts.

    And now an even larger monster rears its ugly head. Obama and his cohorts are perhaps the most hideous abominations that mankind has produced in nearly 80 years. And they attempt to call themselves Americans.

    But this is the modern history of democrats from the Korean stalemate to the Vietnam debacle to the abandonment of Iraq and everything in between. I am sick for the entire world. And I am ashamed of those who call them my countrymen, because, they are not.

    I am happy to have been there and experienced most of it all. That means I am old and do not have to experience the horror that is coming. However, I will fight this evil with complete resolve and with every bit of my energy until my final breath.

    The older you get the more you come to accept and understand…“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

    God bless and keep all our civilized men with the strength they need to confront the evil that is coming over the hill.

  8. Gufo says

    Mar 14, 2015 at 9:06 am

    I’m sure they have, they are all employed in the White House now.

  9. gordon miller says

    Mar 14, 2015 at 11:04 am

    What gets me is how Obama can get all his staff to accept and spout the “party Line” that Islam is a religion of peace. It is so obscene and ridiculous that as good Americans there should be at least some resignations on principle
    And look at our air force engaging in feeble attacks just for show. They know they could be more forceful. It seems our Dear Leader has ordered them not to kill many Muslims.

  10. Doug says

    Mar 14, 2015 at 11:59 am

    “Never since the invention of the airplane has any territory been conquered solely from the air.”

    Except Japan in August of 1945.

  11. Lioness says

    Mar 14, 2015 at 1:44 pm

    Obama is doing NOTHiNG to fight ISIS. The few air strikes are a facade, they accomplish very little. He is a traitor that sympathizes with Islam, so naturally he would find fighting ISIS unpalatable. But for political reasons he has no problem claiming otherwise.

    • ayatollahowmany says

      Mar 15, 2015 at 12:48 pm

      See comment below- your opinion is utterly WRONG.

      You and other posters should spend a little time under air attack,
      if you are so convinced they are merely ‘cosmetic’

  12. ayatollahowmany says

    Mar 15, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    I also detest Obama but to claim airstrikes are ‘cosmetic’ is an outright lie and an insult to those flying them. The Peshmerga and other groups know better than those here making foolish statements that these same ‘cosmetic’ air strikes have been instrumental in driving Daesh back and have requested more of them. I have no doubt that Daesh hate and fear attack from the air- what could be more obvious?

    So PLEASE desist from such overstatements otherwise we all lose credibility.

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