There were rumors that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the raving kook who is the self-proclaimed Caliph of ISIL / ISIS / Islamic State and who appears to share former FL Governor Charlie Crist’s fondness for portable fans, was killed in a recent US bombing raid.
But he appears to have released a new audiotape referencing recent events, including President Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 1,500 US troops to Iraq, so he’s still alive. Bummer.
Please feel free to discuss the ISIS lunatics, the wisdom of continuing US involvement in Iraq or any other topic — open thread.
Shakezula
Sit down strike at Walmart.
Kock Puppets call for drone strikes. (Kidding. Maybe.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Shakezula: Excellent.
Belafon
Why should we, Betty? FOX has declared all this – ISIS, Ebola, I forget the third – not worth talking about. Elections cure panic attacks.
BGinCHI
If only ISIS were as lazy as Congress.
Wonder who has the higher approval rating?
SRW1
In somewhat related news: “US still in business of re-establishing Iraqi-Syrian border.”
Marrtin Dempsey
schrodinger's cat
I am more worried about the GOP lunatics controlling the Congress and Senate. They can do far more damage than ISIS can.
Linda Featheringill
Do you remember the Brer Rabbit story of the tar baby? Well, the entire area from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the western border of India is a tar baby.
Interfere at your own risk.
[The President, by the way, probably didn’t have that story as part of his childhood. ]
Shakezula
@BGinCHI: Top spot is a tie between Ebola and radioactive suppositories.
Cluttered Mind
Serious question: Have we ever actually killed a serious high level target with nothing but a bombing run or drone strike? It seems like every time I see news of the U.S. patting itself on the back for taking someone out, they turn out to be alive. The obvious question then is “If we didn’t know who we were killing, who did we really kill?”
Dcrefugee
@Belafon:
What a coinkydink all this came out a month or so before the midterms! Don’t hear too many outlets spending hours and hours talking about the fact that, whatever the Mooslim Sochulist did, it kinda, sorta worked.
Gawd, I need a vacation from all this…
Cluttered Mind
@schrodinger’s cat: Fun fact: They can even cause more damage than ISIS can in the territory ISIS currently controls! So depressing.
Betty Cracker
@SRW1: Oh, Christ on a fucking Triscuit. I get that Dempsey can’t take options off the table when coming up with general recommendations. But now he’s talking about specific military objectives and ground combat roles. That makes me nervous.
Belafon
@Cluttered Mind: For a while, we hit so many number 2s that it was the most dangerous position in al Qaeda.
Bob In Portland
Does it matter? Our enemies are phantoms, created in dreams or at desks in Georgetown and Langley. If Baghdadi is gone, it’s because his part in this morality play ended. There are others.
SRW1
@Betty Cracker:
Weird thing: The Guardian article was much shorter and did have a direct comment by Dempsey on the border. That part seems now gone in favor of paragraphs about the apparent Baghdadi tape.
jibeaux
Sometimes, I wish we were the size of, say, Ireland. There are real advantages in running a country of being nearly inconsequential to the rest of the world.
Anya
Why is everyone on my twitter TL freaking out about Jonathan Gruber?
Amir Khalid
@jibeaux:
Less temptation to mess about with other countries, true; on the other hand, other countries are more tempted to mess about with you.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cluttered Mind: Yes, but it has been a very rare occurrence. One or two in the last decade I can think of.
schrodinger's cat
@Linda Featheringill: You mean the northwestern border of India, right? Because to the west of India is the Arabian sea.
Southern Beale
Yesterday’s 2nd Amendment Hero.
Remember, kids: CCW holders are the safest, most responsible gun owners EVER!
schrodinger's cat
@jibeaux: England is not much bigger than Ireland, but that didn’t keep them from messing around with the rest of the world.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Anya:
Because he apparently made comments that prove (absolutely PROOOOOVE!) that Obamacare was sold on a lie and is truly the biggest grift and economy destroying albatross in the history of ever.
Mind, this is by painting him as THE chief architect of of the ACA and thus if even he admits the sold ACA on a lie, then clearly Obama must be the worst super-mega petty tyrant ever shoving his care down our throats.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
@Southern Beale:
Basic gun etiquette is simply too much to ask for gun owners. It’s against the 2nd amendment to require that people know how to fucking handle the things before they own them after all.
Betty Cracker
@Anya: Well, it was really stupid to reference the stupidity of the American voter. Even if they are stupid. And now they’re demonstrating their stupidity by being stupidly outraged over a stupid nothingburger. So much stupid to go around!
jibeaux
@Amir Khalid: so, make it Scotland. :)
Mandalay
@SRW1: Dempsey’s money quote from your link:
Nobody could have predicted…
Tone In DC
@Shakezula:
LULz.
Don’t forget control freak US governors who try to imprison Ebola-free nurses in the nurses’ own homes; as a group, they have to be in a close third.
max
But he appears to have released a new audiotape referencing recent events, including President Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 1,500 US troops to Iraq, so he’s still alive. Bummer.
Well, ostensibly, they had caught someone on the phone talking about a big impending meeting. Given the circumstances, they went ahead and hit it. The curiosity I have is whether they did in fact get somebody besides him. Unfortunately, ISIS going to tell us.
So the question boils down to: if you think you’ve made the guy, do you try and bag him or not? Considering the charismatic cult tendencies of most of the jihadi leaders, I’m not sure taking a pass is much of an option. (Unless you’re the Bush administration, and you think letting these guys run around and keep doing their thing is a great propaganda advantage.)
Meantime, CNN is floating stories about how the administration is going to change strategies and go after Assad, but that one reads like the usual (anonymous) suspects (plus what is probably the original Republican source for their story) are talking their book to a reporter in the hopes of pressuring the administration to actually change course.
max
[‘Striking how many friends ISIS has… not least in Congress.’]
srv
The policy to be announced (leaked to CNN) apparently involves:
1) Replacing Assad
2) Getting Baghdad to arm/support Sunni tribes in Anbar
3) Defeating IS in Iraq
4) Defeating IS in Syria
5) Doing #2, #3 and #4 simultaneously rather than one at a time
6) Training moderates to take over Syria before they are exterminated. Adm Kirby says they’ll be ready in 9-12 months, soonest.
It might just be simpler to re-invade Iraq at this point.
FlipYrWhig
This dawned on me after watching Lawrence O’Donnell last night. Any chance Howard Dean makes another run for President? There’s a lot of unresolved longing for him on the self-avowed left.
Betty Cracker
@max: From what I read last week after the strike, a bunch of people were killed, and they were ISIS fighters and commanders (though Terror Inc. seems to have a remarkably flat org chart). The only question was whether Bagdadi was among them. And maybe he was — he may be wounded but still able to yap.
catclub
@srv:
My understanding of the Sunni awakening was that we paid them to no longer fight us. …and when we left, we stopped paying them, and they went back to fighting the Baghdad government. For some reason the the Shiite Maliki was not interested in paying (bribing) the Sunni tribes to be good citizens.
Unless WE put up the money to pay them, they are not getting support from Baghdad, unless the politics in Baghdad have changed a lot.
Southern Beale
Why can’t I forward a text message from my iPhone anymore? Now when I hit “edit” my only options are read or delete.
I wish they’d quit fucking with this shit. Just when I think I have it figured out they change it.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
Biden. Al Franken. (Yes, I know that having some ex actor become President is unseemly, but there you are.)
chopper
@Anya:
dude helped write romneycare. he was a consultant when it came to the ACA. dude didn’t decide, or write, any of jack or shit when it came to obamacare.
but apparently now ‘some schmuck named jonathan gruber’ singlehandedly wrote the PPACA. because reasons.
catclub
@Southern Beale:
1. It has already been saved to the cloud.
2. In Soviet Russia, text forwards you.
3. Try the veal.
Southern Beale
@chopper:
So Romney hired an anti-populist schmuck who thinks Americans are stupid, but Democrats get the blame. This needs to stop happening.
Southern Beale
@catclub:
Thanks.
Fuck the cloud.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I like Howard Dean and supported his presidential run in 2004. He’s a smart guy with a lot to offer. But I’m not thrilled with his undisclosed lobbying activities.
Roger Moore
@Cluttered Mind:
Anwar al-Awalaki is the first example who springs to mind.
Cluttered Mind
@Southern Beale: Because Apple’s customer satisfaction/service mission statement is “DANCE, PUPPETS! DANCE!”
There’s a reason there are no apple products in my house and never will be.
Trollhattan
Never get off the boat, even in Paris.
Cluttered Mind
@Roger Moore: Was there ever any actual evidence that al-Awlaki did anything more dangerous than flap his gums about the evils of the West? If so, I don’t recall it being made public (feel free to prove me wrong, I’ll shut up if I’m wrong). Because if being an asshole and inciting people to violence via hate speech to a large media audience is cause to be droned to death, I’m not sure why Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are still alive.
Mandalay
@SRW1: It does seem odd that the Guardian is not reporting this quote from Dempsey:
The source is Reuters, so I’m assuming that Dempsey really said that.
And Dempsey wasn’t presenting it as a hypothetical either.
catclub
@Trollhattan: I will note that lions and tigers have not thrived with the onset of many more people, and towns and cities. But leopards have.
SRW1
@Mandalay:
The considering thing I could understand, if only from the pov of being prepared, But Dempsey publicly talking about it and, as Betty mentioned, in terms of specific targets, sounds like a bit more than that.
And what I found most weird was that Dempsey made it sound as if one of the strategic goals of the US was to guarantee Iraqs borders. The integrity of Iraq may or may not be salvagable, but to specify it as a strategic goal might be a good script for ‘The Iraqi Quagmire – Part II’.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mandalay: That’s 80,000 more than exist.
We’re really getting into “underpants gnomes” territory with our foreign policy these days.
Mandalay
@SRW1:
It clearly is a goal. If Syria goes under, or is engaged in eternal strife, that’s a bummer, but it’s not the end of the world for the US.
OTOH, Iraq disintegrating would be a real problem. The Middle East would become dramatically more unstable, Jordan and Lebanon would be next, and worst of all, gas might go to five bucks a gallon.
Biden’s suggestion of breaking Iraq up in an orderly fashion was a promising approach, but it’s way too late for that now.
Betty Cracker
@SRW1: Which is why it makes no goddamned sense to kick that hornets nest again. “Don’t do stupid shit.” Words to live by!
burnspbesq
@Southern Beale:
DNR. The gene pool is better off without this clown contributing to it.
gratuitous
I really wish we had a government that practiced its own laws. I’m not necessarily happy that al-Baghdadi continues his activities, but I’m so over our habit of raining down sudden death from the skies on people who can’t fight back and can’t get away. It’s a self-defeating unsustainable strategy until you develop the insensitivity to human life that you get to the point of “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” And even when a murderous regime hell-bent on lawless executions gets to that point, it doesn’t end well.
Another Holocene Human
@Bob In Portland: Our enemies are phantoms says the guy who spent months concern trolling about the Ukrainian opposition and repeating Putin’s talking points about how they’re all Nazi fascist racist anti-Semitic revanchists in love with WWII.
I guess you would know, right?
Elizabelle
Putting out the bat signal for Valdivia and any other NoVA Balloon Juicers tonight:
What the heck. Sounds like a good flick and there’s a Mexican restaurant/bar next to theatre.
Calouste
@Southern Beale: So the guy dropped his gun onto the floorboard and picks it up. At that point it is no longer concealed, is that a violation of his CCW?
Calouste
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve noticed BiP hasn’t been mentioning Ukraine today, even though I have seen him posting quite a bit. I guess the checks from the Kremlin have bounced.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: Dean appeals to those who believe in dreams and fairy tales and also “lefties” for whom Buh-black Obummer was too melanin-enhanced to take seriously.
I mean, Obama could have marked “biracial” on his Census form but he Didn’t.Even.Try.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
LOL! so true — so sadly true.
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: Ooo, cut from the RT payroll. Harsh.
Cacti
Continuing yesterday’s discussion about Dr. Matt Taylor’s unfortunate wardrobe choices…
Rose Eveleth, science and tech writer for The Atlantic, gets death threats for tweeting her disapproval of the same.
chopper
@srv:
Sounds like something walnuts came up with. Complete with ‘then a miracle happens!’ hand waving.
chopper
@Elizabelle:
That’s next door to my work. Well, that is if I didn’t telecommute.
chopper
@Calouste:
The ruble has lost a lot of its value recently. Those checks don’t go as far as they used to. I hear ol’ bob is moonlighting shilling for china.
Elizabelle
@chopper:
Dang. Have missed you on a few occasions now!
Trollhattan
@chopper: “We don’t emit carbon; the CIA emits carbon and blames us! Don’t you remember Bay of Pigs?”
d58826
. Bummer that he isn’t dead but since it was an audiotape maybe we knocked him around a bit. If we did come close to getting him it brings to mind Ali’s comment about Sonny Liston – he can run but he can’t hide. So the caliph may not be sleeping quite so soundly.
On a totally different topic, even thought there might be a common thread in terrorism. There have been a lot of pixels spilled over the past week about elections having consequences. Well here is another one and for once it leans in the direction of Justice. The federal prosecutors in W. Virginia have obtained a 4 count indictment against former Massey energy CEO Don Blankenship. The charges are the result of a 4 year investigation into the deaths of 29 miners at the Massey Upper Big Branch mine. While none of the charges are for murder, if he is convicted on all four counts he would face a maximum of 31 years in jail. At his age, if he was forced to serve the maximum, that would amount to life in prison. Blankenship claims that the investigation is politically motivated and he is innocent. I actually agree witrh him on the former but certainly not the later. If the GOP had been running things in Washington there would have been no DOJ investigation and the accident investigation would have been a whitewash. Given the business friendly Bush administration they probably would have file criminal charges against the dead miners for violating air pollution standards.
Elections have consequences and in this case maybe on the side of the angels for once. The voters in West Virginia seem to be intent on digging their own graves and thgen paying the oligarchs for the shovels.
Trollhattan
@d58826:
The hell you say. I’ve wanted Blankenship in the dock ever since his “dig coal” memo came to light. The bastard is a murderer but I’ll settle for him in prison, deprived of his golden parachute.
The families deserve that much.
watcher
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/13/us-military-considers-troops-iraq-general
US military considers sending combat troops to battle Isis forces in Iraq
General Martin Dempsey tells House committee that he would consider abandoning Obama’s pledge and send troops to fight Isis in Iraq
Chris
@Kryptik, A Man Without a Country:
I clicked on the link from a wingnut relative’s Facebook. Did I get this right – the big lie is that they told the public it wouldn’t be redistributive? Or at least didn’t tell the public that it would be redistributive? That’s what they’re all flipping out about?
Quite honestly, if that’s true, then I’m good with it. Lie away, politicians.