ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

A US intelligence official told the newspaper: "It's all about high-performance technology for electronic reconnaissance on our site, there is concern that such hardware could be part of the German committee of inquiry.." As long as this "risk" exists, it seems "hard to imagine that we provide sensitive technology available".

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Iraqi officials fear IS 'water war' in Ramadi

Baghdad (AFP) - The Islamic State jihadist group will use its seizure of a dam in Ramadi to mount fresh attacks on pro-government forces preparing to besiege the city, Iraqi officials warned Wednesday.

The day after the US-led coalition opposing IS met in Paris, General John Allen -- who is coordinating international efforts against the jihadists -- warned the fight to defeat them could last "a generation or more".

A string of IS advances last month cast doubt on the coalition's strategy, but Washington has insisted it is on the right track.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said after the May 17 fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, that his men would take it back within days but operations are instead focusing on sealing off the city.

IS militants used an unprecedented wave of suicide truck bomb attacks to seize Ramadi in a three-day blitz last month, and have again used this weapon in recent days.

IS claimed responsibility Tuesday for a huge suicide attack that killed 47 people at a police base, which had been recently retaken as part of efforts to tighten the noose on Anbar.

As they edge towards Ramadi, officials said Iraqi forces risked coming under attack because IS had closed the gates of a dam in the city to dry up the Euphrates.

The move will enable IS fighters to cross or operate near the river more easily and to infiltrate more territory.

- 'Water war' -

"Daesh is now waging a filthy water war," said Sabah Karhout, the head of Anbar's provincial council, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"Cutting the water is the worst crime they could commit. It will force children, women and elderly people to flee and allow them to move in to launch attacks," he said.

"Daesh may not have enough fighters to face us in a conventional battle right now," said Arkan Khalaf al-Tarmuz, another provincial council member.

"So they are using water as a weapon to weaken areas where there are military bases," Tarmuz said.

US Deputy Security of State Anthony Blinken told France Inter radio that 10,000 IS members had been killed since the start of a nine-month-old US-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria.

IS fighters have repeatedly attempted to control dams in Iraq, in some cases reducing the flow of water to areas under government control or flooding swathes of land to impede military operations.

"In the arid lands where the Islamic State fights, control of water is the ultimate weapon of terror," the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy said in a briefing note Wednesday.

After Ramadi fell, Abadi had to call in the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, an umbrella for mostly Shiite Iran-backed militias and volunteers.

He and Washington had been reluctant to deploy them in Anbar, a Sunni bastion, for fear of stoking sectarian tensions.

Speaking at a forum in Qatar, Allen admitted that it would be Shiite forces retaking ground from IS.

"But then we have to secure the population and that should be done with Sunni police or Sunni tribes, and we're trying to invigorate both of those," he said

At a meeting in Paris that wrapped up on Tuesday, Western powers and other members of the 60-nation coalition vowed more support for Abadi's efforts.

- 'Winning strategy' -

Abadi had said that IS's regained momentum on the ground was a sign of the "failure" of the international community to provide adequate support.

But Washington, which continues to refuse to send combat troops back to Iraq, and the coalition insisted they had a "winning strategy" of air strikes combined with thousands of forces training and advising Iraqi forces.

"In Iraq right now we have the right strategy, a combination of air strikes, training and effective global partners," Blinken said at the meeting.

On Syria, where a civil war has raged for more than four years and the humanitarian situation is even worse than in Iraq, Washington and its coalition partners said a solution would have to start with a political process.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's "unwillingness" to fight IS made a UN-backed process for a more inclusive leadership the only way forward, a statement said.

On Wednesday, Syrian regime aircraft dropped barrels bombs in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, killing at least 33 people including 10 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Assad has denied using barrel bombs -- crude weapons made of containers packed with explosives, known for causing indiscriminate damage -- but evidence collected by activists and rights groups includes footage of the barrels being pushed from army helicopters.

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t2contra said:

What is this committee of inquiry in the current context?

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Air Force intel uses ISIS 'moron' post to track fighters
By Walbert Castillo, CNN
Updated 3:10 PM ET, Fri June 5, 2015

Washington (CNN)Although ISIS is known for using social media for recruitment purposes, U.S. Air Force intelligence has been using it to track down Islamic State militants, according to Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command.

"These guys that are working down at Hurlburt (Florida), they're combing through social media. And they see some moron standing at this command and control capability for Da'Esh, ISIL. These guys go, 'ah we got an in,'" Carlisle said at a speech in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday.

Twenty-two hours after seeing the post, U.S. warplanes went in for the kill.

"Long story short...three JDAMs take the entire building out," Carlisle said in the speech to the Air Force Association.

A JDAM is a kit attached to a conventional bomb that converts it into a "smart" weapon, according the U.S. Navy. The kit, made by Boeing and put in the tail of the bombs, uses a global positioning system and internal navigation system to guide the bombs onto targets.

Using GPS coordinates, JDAM bombs have an error rate of less than 40 feet, the Navy says.

Boeing said in 2013 it had produced more than a quarter-million JDAMs for the U.S. and its allies.

JDAM units can placed on 2,000-, 1,000- and 500-pound bombs, which can be carried by a variety of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft. An Air Force B-2 bomber can deploy 80 JDAMs in a single pass, the Navy says.

Carlisle did not give details of the type of JDAM bomb or aircraft used, but he gushed about the team at Hurlburt Field, home of the Air Force's 1st Special Operations Wing.

"Incredible work when you think about it," Carlisle said of the operation. "And it was these incredible airmen out there doing those kind of things," Carlisle said.

The Islamic group has published approximately 1,700 pictures, videos and other publications all across social media and have gained at least 200,000 readers on Twitter, experts told Congress, according to the Air Force Times.

With more than 1,500 pictures, videos and publications scattered across social media, ISIS has managed to capture the attention of around 3,400 Westerners and at least 200 Americans to join their ranks, said Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Social media has been a central focus for propagandists to recruit, share their experiences and show off their triumphs. However, U.S. intel, specifically airmen, have been avidly searching across social media to track down ISIS whereabouts to actively respond.

CNN's Barbara Starr and Brad Lendon contributed to this report.

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Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:49am EDT
U.S. prepares plans for more troops, new base in Iraq: officials
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM | BY MATT SPETALNICK AND PHIL STEWART

The United States is expected to announce on Wednesday plans for a new military base in Iraq's Anbar province and the deployment of around 400 additional U.S. trainers to help Iraqi forces in the fight against Islamic State, a U.S. official said.

The plan would expand the 3,100-strong U.S. contingent of trainers and advisers in Iraq and would mark an adjustment in strategy for President Barack Obama, who is facing mounting criticism for not being tougher in combating Islamic State.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed hope that even a modestly strengthened U.S. presence could help Iraqi forces plan and carry out a counter-attack to retake Anbar's capital Ramadi, which insurgents seized last month.

However, Obama was expected to stick to his stance against sending U.S. troops into combat or even close to the front lines, officials said.

Obama said on Monday the United States did not yet have a complete strategy for training Iraqi security forces to regain land lost to Islamic State fighters, who have seized a third of Iraq over the past year in a campaign marked by mass killings and beheadings.

The fall of Ramadi last month drew harsh U.S. criticism of the weak Iraqi military performance and Washington has begun to speed up supplies of weapons to the government forces and examine ways to improve the training program.

The expected troop announcement was unlikely to silence Obama's critics, who say the modest contingent of U.S. forces is far from enough to turn the tide of battle.

The U.S. deployment would likely entail around 400 trainers, one U.S. official said, adding an announcement was expected on Wednesday. Two other officials also confirmed an expected troop increase of hundreds of troops.

NEW U.S. TRAINING BASE

U.S. forces have already conducted training at the al-Asad military base in western Anbar but U.S. officials said planning was underway for a new installation near the town of Habbaniya, the site of an Iraqi army base.

A new site would allow U.S. trainers to provide greater support for Sunni tribal fighters, who have yet to receive all of the backing and arms promised by the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.

"We are considering a range of options to accelerate the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces in order to support them in taking the fight to ISIL. Those options include sending additional trainers to Iraq," said Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear during a visit to Jerusalem that there were no plans to fundamentally alter Obama's military strategy.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Dempsey did not say how many extra U.S. troops may be involved in the effort to accelerate the training of Iraqis.

As of last Thursday, 8,920 Iraqi troops had received training at four different sites and another 2,601 were currently in some stage of training, he said.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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