by: the Common Constitutionalist
So, Mr. President – ISIS is contained and on the run, are they? Well, I agree with half – the on-the-run part. They are on the run – running all over the globe.
First though – remember this?
A report in the Wall Street Journal cited a German Defense Ministry official who said a mustard gas attack which took place on August 13 on roughly 60 Kurdish fighters in an area 40 miles southwest of Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s ethnic Kurd region.
Another attack occurred in August, where ISIS fired an estimated 59 shells and left as many as 25 people in the northern Syrian village of Marea contaminated by what has since been confirmed to have been mustard gas, a chemical weapon banned under the 1925 Geneva protocol.
Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq have reported at least five attacks on their positions in northern Iraq in August and September with mortar shells or Katyusha rockets filled with sulphur mustard.
Experts aren’t certain where ISIS is acquiring the chemical weapons. Some say they came from an Assad stockpile. Intelligence experts say that is unlikely. More likely is that they are homemade, as they are developing the expertise to do so.
In any event, its obvious ISIS has no qualms against the use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons. And if they are manufacturing their own weapons, it seems to me they would need to test their effectiveness. It’s entirely possible that those attacks were just that – a test of the agents efficacy.
Knowing this, coupled with the fact that they have recruited chemists and physicists, can anyone be surprised at the latest intelligence reports, compiled by the European Union Parliament in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, showing that CBRN substances have been carried undetected into the EU.
The report suggests that EU governments should also begin to take precautions such as routinely equipping emergency crews with antidotes to a non-conventional attack and increasing security around key installations. It also suggested instructing the public on various means of protecting themselves. That sounds a lot like the useless practice of duck and cover, taught to the cold-war kids of America.
Europe is in big trouble and for an organization that is supposed be decimated, ISIS sure does seem to be on the offensive.
Add to the good news coming out of Europe regarding the “contained” ISIS, are reports that the Islamic State has also killed Taliban Leader Mullah Akhtar Mansou in Afghanistan, as it moves to take Taliban territory. This was accomplished by yet another ISIS province, Wilayat Khurasan, who is entrenched in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan and has successfully infiltrated the Taliban.
ISIS has recruited Taliban fighters from 25 of 34 of their provinces and looks poised to begin taking much more territory.
Once again the Islamic State is proving it is at least one step ahead of the West. As our leaders wage a war of politically correct words, continually dismissing and downplaying the ISIS threat, they just keep doing what they do – and exactly what they’ve told us they would.