Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria ... ... those horrified by the images of beheadings and immolation, understanding this process (and more importantly the failure of the intelligence community and state department to make inroads against it) requires one to accept something most Americans cannot: ...
... highlighting extreme and supposedly ‘abhorrent’ techniques used on terrorist targets after 9/11 to glean greater intelligence and information. Since that release there has been an orgy of oscillating condemnation/hand-wringing with rationalization/chest-beating,... ... than the public incredulity on American torture techniques after 9/11 is the bogus semantics game being played out with the media now in the report’s aftermath. “Yes we did torture. No. Sorry. We did ‘EITs.’ Yes there were measures ...
... exactly who the strikes are aimed against. The only sustained message given in the media, coming from the government, is that America is lending weapons and logistical... ... almost all Americans. But given these strikes are actually being done by the American Intelligence Community, namely the CIA, in an arena where the US has not officially... ... has a long history of generating support for whatever groups it can find across the Middle East, especially if those groups might share a particular hatred for Israel....
... military and strategic gains achieved by the group so far this year have been impressive and unexpected by leaders in the West, this lack of expectation may be accounted for more by the absence of diligence on the part of Western analysts covering the Middle East than by any miraculous strength of force on the part of ISIS. The ISIS movement in Iraq has been bolstered by the hardened fighters located largely in eastern Syria, where there has always been a heavy population of Sunni Muslims. The reality ...