al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2016 part 19-142-caliphate-isis-53-coming defeat-6a

CdW Intelligence to Rent -2016- In Confidence [email protected]

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-53-Coming Defeat-6a

We will not ultimately and strategically defeat ISIS on our current path.

Previous; ISIL is on the defensive, and we are on the offensive," Obama said, using another acronym for ISIS. "We have momentum, and we intend to keep that momentum."

"In the days and weeks ahead we intend to take out more (leaders.) Every day, ISIL leaders wake up and understand it could be their last," Obama said.

"Their ranks of fighters are estimated to be at the lowest levels in two years and more and more are realizing that their cause is lost," he added.

Put simply, we are still at war with radical Islamic groups and an ideological movement that can’t be ignored nor wished away.

“wish for the best” strategies and missionsFirst and foremost, military leaders should stop pretending that we’re winning the

current war against ISIS and its affiliates. We are not.We thus cannot afford to

underestimate our enemies’The popular media

narrative is that this is a desperate move from ISIS as it retreats in Iraq and Syria. But security professionals take a very different view.

There are three elements at work here: the actual state of the war, the Pentagon’s plans for a rapid increase in U.S. involvement in the war (including “boots on the ground”) and the hidden nature of ISIS’s plans for an expanded war overseas.

It is a considered long-term plan to maximize anti-Muslim bigotry and inter-community tensions across the West. To put it bluntly, from a Western security perspective, it might be sensible to remember how ISIS sees things. To the militants, we have killed Muslims in the tens of thousands, so ISIS is now killing hundreds of us in kind—but it wants to kill thousands.

Flynn: Despite what you hear in the news from the Obama administration and the military, our strategy of conducting infrequent airstrikes and re-taking pockets of Iraq and Syria terrain will only help us achieve short-lived tactical victories. We will not ultimately and strategically defeat ISIS on our current path. Nearly fifteen years have passed since the United States was attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda terrorists. It has been over eighteen months since its ideological fellow travelers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured a broad swath of Iraq. ISIS continues to add to its recruitment pool of more than thirty-six thousand foreign fighters from approximately eighty different countries – already a formidable coalition.

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

CdW Intelligence to Rent of 9 03/05/2023

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Given its Internet sophistication and the attraction the group has with vast numbers of potential recruits from among disaffected populations around the globe, ISIS has the realistic potential to eventually swell its ranks of jihadists waging a “holy war” to hundreds of thousands in both the western and eastern hemispheres.

Already ISIS has expanded well beyond its self-proclaimed “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, with pledges of allegiance from extremist groups in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Dagestan. ISIS’s intent is to network these islands of extremism into a radical Islamic archipelago, with global ambitions for conquest.

A decade-and-a-half into this conflict we must acknowledge and take seriously not only the fanatical commitment of radical Islamic jihadists and their malevolent long-term intentions toward us, but also the fact that the threat has spread far beyond the Middle East.

This shadow now darkens the prospects and threatens the well-being of hundreds of millions of people around the world. The continued forced migration of millions of refugees from the Middle East into the heart of Europe only hints at the mid- and long-term threat ISIS and its global army of jihadists pose.Put simply, we are still at war with radical Islamic groups and an ideological movement that can’t be ignored nor wished away. We have to face the fact that ISIS and its army of like-minded jihadists are determined to win that war, and believe they are on the path to victory. They may well be right.

That raises two blunt and vital questions that almost never get asked in Washington, D.C. Do we even know how to win wars anymore? Does America still have what it takes? Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that the answers to both those questions are that we probably don’t.





Somewhere along our national journey our political leaders lost the clarity of vision, our military commanders the habits of strategic thought, and our public the determined will to achieve victory. There are times when it almost seems as if the idea of truly winning-- stealing the willingness to continue fighting away from the enemy, and creating a real sense of a victor and a vanquished – has become too politically incorrect. I believe our inability to achieve victory stems mainly from having lost sight as a nation of what it means to win, and of the vital importance of doing so in our own interests.Losing Our Way. Many factors have led to our current status as a country seemingly perpetually at war, yet rarely victorious.

First, because we abandoned a draft military back in the 1970s, the public has lost the personal stake it once had in any political decision to go to war. As a result, many Americans view the all-volunteer force as a mercenary army to be thanked for its service in airports, but without any true appreciation or concern for the real human costs involved in war. Taking their cue from voters, politicians use the all-volunteer force as a policy plaything that they are willing to deploy with only the vaguest objectives, because the perceived political costs of doing so are low. The urgency that used to attend a decision to use military force, and bring operations to a rapid and decisive end, have dissipated.

It is difficult to overstate how this change in U.S. tradition has altered the calculus on the use of military force. Decisions to deploy the all-volunteer force on endless rotations and in the furtherance of vague goals that fall well short of victory have become the norm. Experience has shown that this system of perpetual deployments places an unconscionable burden on our soldiers—particular among the junior ranks and junior non-commissioned officers. Not surprisingly, such policies appear to be a significant factor in the greatly increased number of divorces, collapse of families, and suicides among our returning service members.Over many years such feckless political guidance and the overly bureaucratic system it has engendered have also affected the mindset of military leaders. Military leaders have been conditioned throughout their careers to accept “wish for the best” strategies and missions usually aimed at maintaining a shaky status quo, or containing as opposed to decisively defeating an enemy.

The Pentagon bureaucracy has evolved a similar intellectual complacency that encourages “protect-my-rice-bowl” tactics and petty interagency jealousies that work against the successful “whole of government” approaches required to achieve lasting victories. This bureaucracy places such a chokehold on how the military operates today that we are now incapable of envisioning, planning and executing a strategy with clear metrics for success. Along the way, a U.S. military organization that once prided itself on strategic acumen and historical understanding of how to fight and win the nation’s wars has devolved into a vast bureaucracy designed to rotate units efficiently in endless deployments that have no clear pathway to victory.

A Path to Victory. The ability to capture the physical and moral high ground in conflict, and hold it long enough to achieve victory, stems mainly from political decisions. The commander-in-chief must have the will to direct the necessary actions.

For their part, our military leaders must be brutally honest in their assessments of what is required to achieve victory, and they should feel morally bound to resist participating in wars with no clear metrics describing a victorious end state. First and foremost, military leaders should stop pretending that we’re winning the current war against ISIS and its affiliates. We are not.The American people must also be given a more direct stake in the outcome of this global





conflict. For example, if the military – including the Reserve and the National Guard through a mandatory call-up – were told to go to war, and that it would not be coming home until that war was won, we would organize and fight much differently than we have done for the past few decades.We did exactly that when America habitually used to win wars. My father was a World War II veteran; when he deployed to Europe, he wasn’t told he’d be home in four to six months, or after his unit’s first year-long rotation to the European theater was completed. He was simply told by his leaders to go win the war on the European continent – which he and his fellow troops did. My father served proudly as a corporal until the job was done.Why shouldn’t we do the same today if we are serious about winning the war against ISIS? If our military was directed to go fight that war with the specific understanding that it would be required to stay until the war was won, we would plan and fight much differently than we do today. More urgent and focused planning -- as reflected in reformed policies and procedures that subjugate convenience and efficiency to the imperative of winning – would in my assessment result in wars that would be far less costly than the perpetual funk of endless conflict in which we now find ourselves.Such a change in mindset would preclude, for example, the construction of large U.S. bases in war zones with all the creature comforts of home, where the chief preoccupation of many forward deployed soldiers is on getting to the on-base Pizza Hut or Burger King. That is an apt metaphor for the unserious attitude that is sadly coming to define the American way of warfighting.

Winning the War of Ideas. To win the war against ISIS, we must defeat it on the battlefield through direct action by recapturing its territory and destroying its physical assets. But we must also attack the value system and moral code ISIS uses to recruit. That means winning the information war, a critical part of the battlespace that we too often cede to our sophisticated enemies. We must refute the excuses that radical Islamists use to justify their actions, and promote an unambiguous alternative value system that stands in stark contrast to the primitive and barbaric dogma that ISIS espouses. A disciplined but positive and imaginative message-based information war would constantly drive home the message that ISIS doctrines are anathema to civilized peoples of any race, nationality, ethnic or religious group.Just as in the fight against imperialism, fascism and communism, winning the ideological struggle against radical Islamism will be difficult. But winning the war of ideas is necessary to a sustainable victory. ISIS effectively appeals to the deep resentment many young Muslim men in particular feel about being trapped in societies where they have few prospects for upward advancement, or hope of achieving their dreams. Many ISIS foreign fighters are first- or second-generation immigrants or troubled converts who feel an acute sense of alienation, and they long to belong to a cause greater than themselves.Radical Islamic scholars with an intimate understanding of the sense of grievance and alienation of these vulnerable young Muslim men convince them that the cause of their suffering is the system of modernity promoted by the West in general, and the United States in particular. These skillful scholars entice recruits to join a cause that appears to offer worldly pleasures and adventures, as well as spiritual salvation through jihad.Though ISIS adherents subscribe to a return to seventh-century values that condone mass murder, the grotesque brutalization of captives, sexual slavery of minority women and children, and the forced subjugation of non-believers, they are not stupid. Quite the opposite, they are true believers who have shown both fanatical zeal and commitment, as well as great skill in manipulating world opinion and outmaneuvering their enemies.





Many ISIS adherents have shown a willingness to die as martyrs for their global cause, the definition of true believers. We thus cannot afford to underestimate our enemies’ intellectual capabilities in pursuing their twisted vision. They are not the junior varsity or second-string team. They are shrewdly waging psychological and physical war with the limited resources at their disposal. Twice in the past decade they have fought the U.S. military – the world’s preeminent fighting force – very nearly to a draw on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.Defeating ISIS and its ilk will require not only engaging them directly through force of arms and overwhelming information operations, but also taking decisive steps to cut off the support they receive from both state and non-state actors. Unfortunately, many of these supporters of ISIS and other Islamic extremists groups come from nations that are nominal U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Persian Gulf kingdoms and Pakistan. Convincing them that such extremists groups are ultimately a threat to their own stability will be difficult, and require great diplomatic dexterity and sophistication. We must resist the entrenched bureaucratic mindset, however, that would look the other way at this double-dealing and clandestine support for ISIS and its allies.As you read these words, the war we are engaged in with ISIS is claiming the lives of innocent people on multiple fronts. The misery and suffering are intense, and the staggering number of atrocities continue to mount in a toll that assaults the collective sense of justice of the civilized world. It is consequently in our best interests, and those of our allies, that this war be brought to an end as soon as possible. We must face the fact that a long war works to the advantage of ISIS. The suffering of people being enslaved, raped, tortured and murdered does not factor into their calculations, nor does the traumatization of impacted societies. ISIS only has one aim: to conquer and compel all people under their dominion to accept their fundamentalist and perverted interpretation of Islam, or die. For them time thus has no meaning. Unless directly confronted, attacked, and decisively defeated, ISIS will continue to do whatever it takes – for as long as it takes – to establish and expand their dreamed of caliphate of tyranny.When the United States leads a real fighting coalition to defeat ISIS, it will be our right and prerogative to argue the how and why of this war. We can discuss the mistakes made by political and military leaders, the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of the conflict, and hopefully the lessons learned that led to success. But if we lose – and we must admit the real possibility that ISIS will ultimately achieve its goals absent decisive U.S. action – then the narrative of this war will belong to the victors. Because that would be a black day for all of civilization, I say let’s stop just participating in this never-ending conflict and instead win it, once and for all.Portions of this essay have been adapted from the forthcoming book "The Field of Fight."

Lt. General (Ret.) Michael T. Flynn spent 33 years as an intelligence officer. He served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Senior Military Intelligence Officer in the Department of Defense. He is the founder of the Flynn Intel Group, a Commercial, Government, and International consulting firm. He is the author of the forthcoming book, written with Michael Ledeen, of "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies" (St. Martin's Press, July 12, 2016).

Jan 2016 the Pentagon: This campaign will take years to execute, officials say. But it is underway, both operationally and politically. Carter's recent trip to the region, which





included stops here in Irbil, Baghdad and Turkey, set things in motion. 1

The new plan calls for fighting the terror group like a conventional enemy, relying on traditional military tactics such as maneuver-style warfare and attrition. This has replaced last year’s approach, dubbed the “Iraq First Strategy," which was widely criticized as ineffective, especially after ISIS fighters seized the city of Ramadi in May. Instead, the U.S. and its allies now intend to confront the extremist group and its force of about 30,000 fighters, targeting their strongholds and resources across Iraq and Syria simultaneously. Publicly the Obama administration says its strategy to defeat ISIS has not changed significantly, but realities on the ground and discussions at home indicate otherwise. Political considerations in Washington and Baghdad will limit the size of the U.S. force on the ground, so the campaign relies heavily on a dizzying patchwork of local ground forces — often with competing agendas — moving in large formations to isolate and ultimately invade the two major ISIS strongholds: Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. In Mosul, the plan calls for the Iraqi army to attack from the south, while the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga squeeze Islamic State forces from the north and east. In Syria, U.S. forces will support friendly militias in the northeast as they push south toward the Islamic State's defacto capital."Our campaign plan's map," Defense Secretary Ash Carter told soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on Wednesday, "has got big arrows pointing to both Mosul and Raqqa.

In a secondary front, the Iraqi army will move west from Ramadi, the recently reclaimed capital of Anbar province, up the Euphrates Valley and toward the Syrian border. Another key pillar of this strategy requires cutting off the Islamic State's primary supply line to the outside world by pressuring Turkey to seal its border with Syria.The new strategy coincides with the October appointment of an Army stalwart, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, former commander of the First Armor Division, as the first flag officer to oversee all anti-ISIS operations in both Iraq and Syria. "Before that, the senior guys on the ground were pretty much from the special ops community," said retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, a former top adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq who now 1 http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/war-on-is/2016/01/14/pentagon-strategy-islamic-state-iraq-syria/78269180/





teaches military history at the Ohio State University. "And now to put in someone who has a more conventional background … does signal that this is going to be a much more conventional fight than the [Obama] administration had first calculated."

President Barack Obama has observed, “ISIL [Islamic State] is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion — an example of unintended consequences — which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”Many of us, looking at the horror of the Iraq war, waged by the US and the UK against the regime of Saddam Hussein — when 200,000 civilians died and a total of 800 billion US dollars was spent on the campaign — need little to be persuaded that there was a Machiavellian plot to find an excuse to make war. Yet there are many in the circles of power in Washington who believe that the US should shoot on sight and to kill whenever danger is thought to have appeared — in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and before that, in Vietnam.The so-called ‘justification’ for going to war in Iraq 13 years ago was based on a 93-page classified CIA document that allegedly contained ‘specific information’ on Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programmes and his close links with the al-Qaeda. The document has now been declassified, thanks to the work of the investigative journalist, John Greenewald. His findings have just been published in the on-line magazine, VICE.The document, before published with a large number of deletions, is available for everyone to read in its entirety. It reveals that there was zero justification for the war. It reveals that there was “no operational tie between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda” and no weapons of mass destruction programmes.President George W Bush’s secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed that the US had “bulletproof evidence” linking Hussein to the terrorist group. “We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members. We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological-agent training”. The CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate report takes a very different line. The document observes that its information about a working relationship between al-Qaeda and Hussein was based on “sources of varying reliability.”“As with much of the information on the overall relationship we do not know to what extent Baghdad may be actively complicit in this use of its territory for safe haven and transit,” the report adds. A report issued last December by the high-powered RAND Corporation, which employs some of the best analysts in the US, entitled “Blinders, Blunders and Wars”, said the CIA report “contained several qualifiers that were dropped. As the draft went up the intelligence chain of command the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively.”One example is that the CIA report concluded that Iraq “probably has renovated a vaccine production plant to manufacture biological weapons, but we are unable to determine whether biological weapons research has resumed.” The report also said that Hussein did not have “sufficient material” to manufacture nuclear weapons. But on October 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, President Bush simply said that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” and “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons programme.”Another example is Rumsfeld’s claim to have “bulletproof evidence” on al-Qaeda’s link with Hussein. But the CIA report’s information about Iraq’s supposed working relationship with al-Qaeda and Iraq concluded that it was not at all clear that Hussein had even been aware of the relationship, if in fact there were one.” The later investigation by Congress concluded that the intelligence community based its claims on a single source.Paul Pillar, now a visiting professor at Georgetown University and before that in charge of





coordinating the intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq, told VICE that the bio-weapons claims were based on unreliable reporting by sources such as Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group. “There was an insufficient scepticism about some of the source material”, Pillar said. “I think there should have been agnosticism expressed in the main judgments.” Pillar went on to say Bush and Rumsfeld “had already made the decision to go to war in Iraq, so the CIA report didn’t influence their decision.” But they used their misleading interpretations of it to convince public opinion that war was necessary. (The British ambassador at the time wrote in his book that he told the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that. Yet Blair went on telling the public that evidence of malfeasance was still being gathered.)The RAND study also concluded that the report was wrong on mobile biological labs, uranium ore purchases from Niger and Iraq building rocket delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction.Yes, aim before you shoot. And don’t tell such terrible lies.The writer has been a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune for 20 years and author of the much acclaimed new book, Conundrums of Humanity — the Big Foreign Policy Questions of Our Age.

Regards Cees April 19 UK could send planes and warships to Libya to defeat ISIS, says Philip Hammond but he rules out sending combat troops after being warned not to 'add fuel to the fire' in war-ravaged countryForeign Secretary says he doesn't expect a request for naval and air support in the short

term But he says UK could be called upon to help provide military help in futureHe promises to give MPs a vote on providing planes and warships Hammond rules out sending in combat troops to fight ISIS directlyHe says there's 'no appetite' in Libya for foreign intervention But 1,000 UK troops could be sent to train Libyan forces without MPs vote Former head of British Libyan Embassy warns intervention will hinder new Libyan

government rather than help it

April 20, The popular media narrative is that this is a desperate move from ISIS as it retreats in Iraq and Syria. But security professionals take a very different view.There are three elements at work here: the actual state of the war, the Pentagon’s plans for a rapid increase in U.S. involvement in the war (including “boots on the ground”) and the hidden nature of ISIS’s plans for an expanded war overseas.ISIS is certainly under substantial pressure in Iraq and Syria and has lost significant territory in both countries over the past year. This, though, is a very long way from defeat.For a start, whenever the Iraqi army takes back a town or city, the process is invariably much slower than anticipated, and even when it does reclaim territory, it has serious trouble maintaining control. It took well over four months to overrun Ramadi between August and December 2015—and, four months later, ISIS paramilitaries are still harrying Iraqi units around the city.March 2016 saw a new assault on Mosul begin, to great fanfare. But now, and with much less publicity, the Iraqi army has withdrawn in at least temporary disarray, its early advances not only stalling but going into reverse. Meanwhile, ISIS has actually recaptured a key crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border.This leads us to the American reaction. The Pentagon regards Mosul as the principal focus





of the war against ISIS in the Middle East, and it has become clear that the U.S. is going to expand its air support for the Iraqis—and that this is evolving more and more into a ground war.Shadow War President Barack Obama was recently reported to be considering sending an additional 250 special operations forces to operate in Syria, and there’s every indication that the U.S. is developing a major “shadow war” against ISIS, similar to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2004-07. That isn’t the best of precedents. While JSOC was credited with hugely damaging AQI, it also helped spawn ISIS, which has proved to be a much more dangerous successor.In addition to its expanded use of special operations forces, the Pentagon is increasing the number of regular combat troops fighting ISIS, regardless of the Obama administration’s avowed intent to avoid deploying “boots on the ground.”The Marine Corps has for many weeks now been operating the first of what may become many forward-based artillery batteries, Firebase Bell, a unit equipped with four M777A2 howitzers. These are heavy-duty artillery pieces, each of which can fire two shells a minute with a range of up to 20 miles, covering an area of around 800 square miles.ISIS has already started counterattacking this firebase, killing one Marine and seriously injuring several others at the end of March. But the Pentagon is undeterred and is now looking at setting up more forward artillery positions, which it deems necessary aid if the Iraqi forces are to ever retake Mosul.As if to support this, a substantial force of Marines, the 13th Marines Expeditionary Unit, has just arrived in the Persian Gulf with three large amphibious warfare ships and supporting vessels—a force nearly twice the size of the one it replaces. Meanwhile, B-52 strategic bombers have been moved from the U.S. to the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.Long Time ComingThe expansion of the conflict into what is now likely to become a major ground war comes as Pentagon sources claim that the intensive 20-month air war has killed around 28,000 ISIS supporters. The thinking goes that this is why ISIS has taken the war to the West, first with the Bardo Museum and Sousse attacks on Western tourists in Tunisia and more recently the destruction of the Russian Metrojet airliner in Sinai and the attacks in Paris and Brussels.But it’s now clear that there is nothing recent about this change and that ISIS has been developing this strategy for at least two years. The group may now be intensifying its strategy, but in all probability it was establishing sleeper cells in Western Europe well before the Tunisia attacks of 2015.This is not just crude retaliation. It is a considered long-term plan to maximize anti-Muslim bigotry and inter-community tensions across the West. To put it bluntly, from a Western security perspective, it might be sensible to remember how ISIS sees things. To the militants, we have killed Muslims in the tens of thousands, so ISIS is now killing hundreds of us in kind—but it wants to kill thousands.Paul Rogers is a professor of peace studies at Britain’s University of Bradford.




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