Earlier this month, NBC News published a "heat map" leaked from the National Counterterrorism Center that purported to show that the Islamic State extremist group has expanded to "fully operational" status in 18 countries and is spreading to several others. Writing in The Hill this week, however, counterterrorism researcher Anhvinh Doanvo argues that it is … Continue reading Fuzzy math, the ISIS brand, and America’s foreign military presence
Tag: syria
Less than a month after the release of the infamous "28 pages" of a congressional 9/11 investigation that had been withheld for over a decade, which dealt with alleged ties between the government of Saudi Arabia and some of the hijackers, the Pentagon and State Department announced a new arms sale totaling more than $1 … Continue reading A billion more in arms for Saudi intervention in Yemen civil war
The news media has recently focused much attention on the supposedly imminent collapse of the "caliphate" of the Islamic State extremist group (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) in the main area it has controlled in the past couple of years in Iraq and Syria. Developments elsewhere, however, show that ISIS and the broader Islamist extremism … Continue reading ISIS “caliphate” collapse won’t bring end to War on Terror
In an opinion piece in the Washington Post yesterday, columnist Josh Rogin revealed what he said was potentially a "bad deal" that the Obama administration is pitching to Russia about increased cooperation in Syria. But it's hard to know what to make of the news, which the Russians won't comment on, and which comes amidst … Continue reading Russia and the US in Syria: Deals, disinfo and deception
While US Special Forces are "not on the forward line" in the fight to take back Raqqa from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to a Pentagon spokesman, they are certainly close. Photos from Agence France-Presse published on Thursday, in fact, show US forces in the Syrian village of Fatisah not only … Continue reading Patching up differences in the Gray Zone
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