18 November 2015

After Paris Attacks, Kaine Renews Call for Congress to Authorize War With ISIL & Yes, Obama Does Have an Anti-ISIS Plan "to Take Out These Bastards" & What Barack Obama said about ISIS being contained 17, 16 & 15NOV15

SO many critics about the Obama administration's plans and actions against daesh, and so few of them offer realistic alternative plans of actions. Anyone of any political party trying to use the terrorist attacks in Paris for their own political gain is disgusting. We should be united in our efforts to defeat and destroy terrorism and if suggestions and opinions are to be expressed they should be realistic and practical, not propaganda, fear-mongering, misinformation and deception. +Senator Tim Kaine has been calling for congress to to pass authorization for the American war on daesh / isis for months to no avail. A dangerous precedence is being set allowing our President to wage war without congressional authorization, and congress should hold a debate and vote on AUMF to be on record on the matter and also to take a stand for the defense of our Republic's constitution. These from Sen Tim Kaine's website, +Mother Jones and +PolitiFact ......

After Paris Attacks, Kaine Renews Call for Congress to Authorize War With ISIL

In the wake of the Paris attacks last week, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the Senate floor today to renew his call for Congress to debate and vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIL. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who introduced a compromise AUMF with Kaine in June, joined him on the Senate floor to express his support for a debate on war authorization.

After Paris Attacks, Kaine Renews Call for Congress to Authorize War With ISIL

Published on Nov 17, 2015

Yes, Obama Does Have an Anti-ISIS Plan "to Take Out These Bastards"

Whether it will work is the question.

—By David Corn

| Mon Nov. 16, 2015 4:29 PM EST

Balkis Press/AP

At a Monday press conference at the G20 meeting in Turkey, President Barack Obama was repeatedly asked by American reporters a version of this question: What are you doing to defeat ISIS? CNN's Jim Acosta put it in these Twitterish terms: "Why can't we take out these bastards?" His passionate formulation seemed to imply that the Obama administration was not doing everything reasonably possible to vanquish ISIS. And throughout the presser, Obama explained that there was a strategy in place, asserted that other ideas (such as sending in ground troops or establishing a no-fly zone in Syria) were constantly being scrutinized, and expressed frustration that he was being asked the same question (what's your plan?) repeatedly.
Obama was right. He does have a strategy, and for more than a year the United States has taken many actions to thwart ISIS. Whether these steps are the best that can be attempted (weighing all the complicated costs and benefits) is subject to debate. But Obama's opponents—particularly those Republicans seeking to succeed him in the White House—often assail him as if he's a feckless, do-nothing commander-in-chief who has no understanding of ISIS and has mounted practically no effort to counter these murderous extremists. But that's hardly the case.

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Ask the White House what the president has done to combat ISIS—the president prefers to call the group ISIL—and aides will quickly point out that Obama has forged a coalition of 65 nations that are supporting local forces in Iraq fighting against ISIS. This effort has launched 8,100 airstrikes on ISIS targets in a little more than a year. (For comparison's sake, there have been about 400 drone strikes against targets in Pakistan since 2004.) The White House notes that US military forces recently struck 116 ISIS fuel trucks and disrupted the group's oil-smuggling and financing capabilities. And two weeks ago the president announced he would be sending additional special operations forces to work with Kurds battling ISIS in northern Syria. At the same time, Obama noted the administration would step up supplying equipment to anti-ISIS forces in Syria.
For weeks, administration reps have been describing their anti-ISIS efforts. In late October, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter testified on Capitol Hill and claimed that the US military effort to help moderate Syrians fighting to gain control of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold in Syria, had made gains and that these Syrians were 30 miles from the strategically important city. He noted the overall air campaign against ISIS was intensifying, and he said the United States was prepared to provide more air support and equipment to Iraqi forces battling ISIS, provided that the Iraqis demonstrate progress and the ability to preserve recent gains in Anbar province. "We've given the Iraqi government two battalions' worth of equipment for mobilizing Sunni tribal forces," Carter said. "As we continue to provide this support, the Iraqi government must ensure it is distributed effectively."
Carter cited recent successes on the ground: the Kurdish-led hostage rescue mission in northern Iraq and assorted raids against ISIS leaders: "The raid on Abu Sayyaf's home, and strikes against Junaid Hussain and most recently Sanafi al-Nasr, should all serve notice to ISIL and other terrorist leaders that once we locate them, no target is beyond our reach." He told the senators that all the ideas touted by Obama's critics—a no-fly zone, a buffer zone, humanitarian zone—had been reviewed and pose their own challenges.
In a November 12 speech, Secretary of State John Kerry also outlined details of the administration's anti-ISIS campaign. He said that the number of airstrikes was rising: "There were more than 40 just last night." He added that "the coalition and its allies on the ground have defended Mosul Dam and other vital facilities in Iraq while also preventing a terrorist assault on Baghdad. We have driven [ISIS] from the critical border town of Kobani…We've seen the city of Tikrit liberated." He pointed out that "thousands of American advisers" were training and assisting Iraqi security forces. "We have significantly degraded [ISIS's] top leadership, including Haji Mutazz, the organization's second in command," Kerry added, "and we continue to eliminate commanders and other personnel from the battlefield."
And there's more: helping Iraqi forces aiming to take back Ramadi and boosting the shipment of supplies and ammo to Syrians fighting ISIS. Also, Kerry remarked, the Obama administration was trying to bolster the efforts of its European allies and those allies in the region: "Not long ago, [ISIS] controlled more than half of Syria's 500-mile-long border with Turkey. Today, it has a grip on only about 15 percent, and we have a plan with our partners to pry open and secure the rest." And, Kerry noted, the administration had been pushing a diplomatic initiative in Syria aimed at deescalating the conflict within that country, which, if successful, would allow for a more concentrated multilateral assault on ISIS.
"Remember, this [anti-ISIS] coalition has only been together for 14 months," Kerry said. And administration officials like to toss out this particular stat: ISIS has lost between 20 and 25 percent of the populated territory it used to control in Iraq.
So Obama and his team can recite a long list of actions and a short—but significant—list of accomplishments. Still, the Paris attacks (as well as attacks in Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner, which have been attributed to ISIS) and the ability of ISIS to maintain its quasi-state within not one but two countries can be cited as a sign that ISIS, to some extent, is prevailing, even if it has lost ground.
Obama's anti-ISIS plan is nuanced, multifaceted, tethered to the vexing realities of the region, and focused on long-term success—and it avoids the risks and unforeseen consequences of deploying American ground troops to directly engage with ISIS on Syrian or Iraqi territory. It does not involve grand or sweeping actions. It does not promise complete and immediate success by a date certain. Consequently, Obama is vulnerable to criticism from those who claim bolder (if sometimes unspecified) action would yield better and quicker results. Perhaps additional steps could produce more progress. For example, Brian Katulis, an expert on the Middle East and terrorism at the Center for American Progress, faults Obama for not leaning hard enough on partners in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to make busting ISIS a top priority. But with the national discourse so thoroughly shaped by politics and ideology, it will be hard to have a cool and reasonable debate over alternatives or add-ons to Obama's approach.
The Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed forces and challenges that might require decades to counter, and Obama has been trying to implement a series of actions to end the danger that war generated. Yet any decent plan could take a long time to take out the bastards.

David Corn

Washington Bureau Chief

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS | Twitter

When President Barack Obama said ISIS, or ISIL, was contained, he "was responding very specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria."

— Ben Rhodes on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 in comments on ABC's "This Week"

What Barack Obama said about ISIS being contained

By Lauren Carroll on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 at 4:18 p.m.

President Barack Obama discussing ISIS. (Screengrab)

Last week, President Barack Obama said the Islamic State is "contained" -- a comment that has been scrutinized in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris that have been attributed to the terrorist group.
But has Obama’s comment been taken out of context?
ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos presented White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes with a list of politicians criticizing Obama for his Nov. 12 remarks. Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, for example, said Obama sees the world "as a fantasy."
Rhodes said Obama was talking about a particular aspect of containment that in no way dismissed the possibility of terrorist attacks in the West.
"The president was responding very specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria," Rhodes said, using another acronym for the group. "A year ago, we saw them on the march in Iraq and Syria, taking more and more population centers. The fact is that we have been able to stop that geographic advance and take back significant amounts of territory in both northern Iraq and northern Syria. At the same time, that does not diminish the fact that there is a threat posed by ISIL, not just in those countries but in their aspirations to project power overseas."
This reminded us of a prior fact-check, when Obama said he didn’t specifically describe ISIS as a "JV team" -- a statement we rated False because he was clearly talking about the Islamic State at the time. We decided to look back at Obama’s comments on containing ISIS to see his comments in their complete context.
Rewind
In the context of Obama’s Nov. 12 interview with Stephanopoulos -- the day before the Paris attacks -- it’s actually quite clear that when he says ISIS is contained, he is talking about ISIS’s territorial expansion in Syria and Iraq. Here are the relevant parts of the interview:

Stephanopoulos: "Some of your critics say, even your friendly critics say, like Fareed Zakaria, that what you have on the ground now is not going to be enough. Every couple of months you're going to be faced with the same choice of back down or double down."

Obama: "I think what is true is that this has always been a multiyear project precisely because the governance structures in the Sunni areas of Iraq are weak, and there are none in Syria. And we don't have ground forces there in sufficient numbers to simply march into Al-Raqqah in Syria and clean the whole place out. And as a consequence, we've always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL's capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing at the same time as we're putting a political track together in Syria and fortifying the best impulses in Baghdad so that we can, not just win militarily, but also win by improving governance."

Stephanopoulos: "And that's the strategy you've been following. But ISIS is gaining strength, aren't they?"

Obama: "Well, no, I don't think they're gaining strength. What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain. What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We've made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters."

When Obama said "we have contained them," it’s within a plainly defined scope: ISIS’s territorial ambitions in Iraq and Syria. This context is bolstered by the fact that Stephanopoulos asks Obama about the ground efforts in those two countries.
He wasn’t saying, as critics have shorthanded, that ISIS no longer presents a threat -- an assertion that the Paris attacks would have negated. In fact, in the same interview, Obama acknowledged that ISIS might have surpassed al-Qaida as the greatest terror threat in the world, adding that they are constantly looking for "a crack in the system" to exploit to carry out attacks. "I think that one of the challenges of these international terrorist organizations is that they don't have to have a huge amount of personnel," Obama said.
Is ISIS contained in Iraq and Syria?
The region Obama refers to is significant because it’s the epicenter of ISIS’s caliphate. We surveyed a number of experts, and they all said Obama is accurate when he says ISIS hasn’t gained territory in Iraq and Syria in recent months, though it does not give a full picture of ISIS’s global reach.
"It’s a choice of words that isn’t great, but what he is referring to -- as opposed to the way people have interpreted it -- is correct," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
While ISIS has captured a couple towns in the past few months, it has ultimately lost roughly a quarter of its Iraq and Syria territory overall. A good portion of the losses resulted from United States airstrikes but also from fighting with Iraqi forces and regional groups, Gartenstein-Ross said. This is a far cry from a year ago, when there was serious concern that ISIS would capture Baghdad.
But even though they haven’t expanded territorially recently, ISIS continues to counterattack anti-ISIS forces in the region, noted Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. He added that ISIS has actually expanded globally -- with strongholds and cells in Libya, Yemen, the Sinai region, and Bangladesh, as well as establishing ties with other terrorist organizations in Africa.
This November map from the Institute for the Study of War shows where ISIS has ties. The stars indicate where ISIS has a remote "governorate."
Screen Shot 2015-11-15 at 2.49.04 PM.png

Screen Shot 2015-11-15 at 2.49.04 PM.png

And, as we know from the Paris attacks, ISIS is able to flex their muscle in the West, too.
"They are being contained geographically by traditional military but they are leapfrogging over it using terrorism," said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He added that Obama used "your grandfather’s notion of containment."
Our ruling
Rhodes said that when Obama said ISIS was contained, he "was responding very specifically to the geographic expansion of ISIL in Iraq and Syria."
Looking back at Obama’s interview where he made this comment, it is quite clear that it’s within a narrowly defined scope: ISIS’s territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria. He did not rule out the potential for a terrorist attack, and he also made it clear that the United States’ anti-ISIS efforts are a work in progress.
References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIS no longer presents an active threat are incorrect.
Further, experts told us that Obama is right that ISIS hasn’t expanded in the region in recent months, though this doesn’t give a full picture of ISIS’s global reach.
Rhodes’ statement rates True.

About this statement:

Published: Sunday, November 15th, 2015 at 4:18 p.m.
Researched by: Lauren Carroll
Edited by: Aaron Sharockman
Subjects: Terrorism

ABC News, This Week, Nov. 15, 2015
ABC News, "Full Interview Transcript: President Barack Obama," Nov. 12, 2015
Institute for the Study of War, "ISIS’ Global Strategy: A Wargame," July 2015
ISW, "ISIS Global Strategy," November 2015
Phone interview, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Nov. 15, 2015
Phone interview, Joshua Landis, University of Oklahoma, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, Frederick Kagan, American Enterprise Institute, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, David Schanzer, Duke University, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution, Nov. 15, 2015
Email interview, National Security Council spokespersons Ned Price and Emily Horne, Nov. 15, 2015

NORTON META TAG

18 November 2015