Willie Tomg posted:

i can't even imagine what its like to come into fresh in what's basically 2019.

Willie Tomg posted:

hey does anyone have a copy of the intro to State of Myths?

not only was it goddamned hilarious, the full track was a banger. i think it got Memory Holed

Lightning Knight posted:

Ok let's start from the top, I don't have zero background on this topic but my background is fuzzy and untrusthworthy because my politics have changed a lot since 2011, given that... I was in high school in 2011 lol.

So: Daesh, ISIS, does it matter what I call them? Is one or the other more appropriate?

Daesh/ISIS is an off-shoot of Al Qaeda, correct? They came to prominence in 2014 but existed well before, and there's some kind of internal ideological power struggle motivating them?

But, the Syrian civil war started separately from that, correct? It was part of the Arab Spring?

quote:

L. PAUL BREMER, CPA Head:Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!

NARRATOR: There was a palpable sense of relief when he was caught.

MICHAEL WARE: And I was here in Iraq when that happened, and in fact, I was with the insurgency when it was announced, and it was fascinating to watch the reaction on this group of insurgents, most of whom were all nationalists, all ex-military and whatever.

INTERVIEWER: [subtitles] After the capture of President Saddam Hussein, will you continue your Jihad against the occupation?

INSURGENT: [through interpreter] In the name of God, the most beneficent and merciful, with the help of God's good grace, we will defeat his enemy. Our jihad will not stop. We will continue with the resistance.

NARRATOR: The Coalition authorities believed Saddam's capture would have a negative impact on the nationalists in the insurgency, but in reality, it continued to grow and evolve.

MICHAEL WARE: Around this time was when I really started to witness tangible changes within the insurgency in terms of the Ba'athists for the first time beginning to surrender certain power to the Islamists, particularly the imported foreign Islamists. And a lot of it had to do with money. By the beginning of 2004, Ba'athist cells I knew were out there doing shakedowns and extortions and whatever else to fund their ops. That was one of the things that gave the Islamists room to step into the breach, throwing around a lot of money. Zarqawi and his organizations have never been short of cash, always flush with cash.

quote:

NARRATOR: In late 2004, Zarqawi was in control of Tal Afar and, armed with its extensive financial resources, began flexing his muscles in Baghdad. This is Haifa Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. Michael Ware frequently visited the area and knew the local Ba'athists well. In September 2004, he learned that Zarqawi's people were trying to take control of the insurgency there.

MICHAEL WARE: One of the Ba'athists came to me and said that the takeover is complete, basically. Zarqawi's people had become so bold as to actually line the main boulevard with their flags. This was Zarqawi's moment in many, many ways. So I needed to verify this and I wanted to record it.

NARRATOR: Michael Ware's determination to verify Zarqawi's takeover nearly cost him his life. Zarqawi's men spotted Ware. One stepped off the curb, pulling the pin from a grenade.

MICHAEL WARE: They had live grenades and they'd pulled the pins and they were holding them to me, and I thought that was it, that was over. I know what happens to foreigners once they're in the hands of Zarqawi's people. Some of the men there, by their accents, were clearly identifiable as Syrian, not Iraqi. I mean, I felt personally that I was� I was at the opening of a tunnel. But it was very senior Ba'athist commander, who comes from one of the main strains of the Ba'athist insurgency, who eventually said, "Do you really want to start this war between us over this?" It wasn't until the very end that through gritted teeth, after saying, "You bring a Westerner here, and you expect us to let him leave alive," that the Zarqawi people, gritting their teeth, said, "Fine. You can have him. Take him. Get out."

quote:

There would be other exchanges between Maqdisi and Binali later that year, including a failed attempt to secure the release of the Isis hostage Peter Kassig. Their final communication came not long after Kassig’s execution, when Maqdisi once again found himself mediating with Isis. On 24 December 2014, a Jordanian military aircraft was shot down over Isis territory near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, and its pilot taken hostage; Maqdisi heard the news when the prison imam dedicated a prayer to the man. Soon after, Maqdisi sounded out Jordanian officials about an idea, originally suggested by his friend Dr Munif Samara, to secure the return of the pilot. Although Jordanian officials were wary, believing that the pilot could have been killed already, they authorised the plan.

Communicating primarily via Telegram messenger, an app that allows for encrypted communications, Maqdisi sent word to Isis in January of this year that the Jordanians would be willing to conduct a prisoner swap: in return for the pilot, they would release a woman named Sajida al-Rishawi. In 2005, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had sent al-Rishawi and her husband on a mission to Jordan, where they were to explode bomb belts at the Radisson SAS hotel as part of a coordinated series of suicide bombings. Rishawi’s device did not detonate, and she was arrested, languishing on death row for the next decade. In his approach to Isis, Maqdisi said, he reminded the group’s senior leaders that, as the inheritors of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s legacy, they had an obligation to save her now.

Although Maqdisi is not certain about who he was communicating with, he has no doubt that his messages were being relayed to the most senior members of Isis, including Baghdadi himself. The initial response was positive: Maqdisi says he was told that Isis were “eager” to make the trade. On social media, Isis supporters suddenly began calling for al-Rishawi’s release.

Before any deal could be brokered, the Jordanians instructed Maqdisi to obtain proof that the pilot was still alive. In response, the Isis negotiators sent Maqdisi an electronic file that they claimed would provide proof of life – but the file was password protected.

On 3 February, after a few days of tense dialogue, the negotiators finally sent Maqdisi the password to unlock the file. When he received it, Maqdisi realised he had been betrayed: the password, in Arabic, was “Maqdisi the pimp, the sole of the tyrant’s shoe, son of the English whore.”

After he typed it in, one humiliating character at a time, a video appeared on Maqdisi’s screen. He watched in horror as Isis soldiers muscled the pilot into a cage, doused him in petrol, and burned him alive. Three hours later, Isis posted the video on the internet. The next day, Sajida al-Rishawi was taken from her cell and executed.

quote:

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] We found a live car bomb, a black BMW. Inform the friendly forces.

U.S. SOLDIER: [on the radio] Roger. The VBIED is a BMW up on blocks. Roger. IAs [Iraqi army] popped the trunk. There was two shaped charges wired in the trunk. Over. Negative. As soon as they saw it, they all ran back. Over. Roger

U.S. SOLDIER: Ask one of these guys if they'll take my knife and cut the wires to that [deleted] VBIED.

U.S. SOLDIER: Stay back. If that goes off, you don't want to be anywhere near here.

MARTIN SMITH: The Iraqi soldier appears neither trained nor equipped to defuse the device.

U.S. SOLDIER: He's not going to? OK, Shokran.

U.S. SOLDIER: No, he's not going to do it.

MARTIN SMITH: An American bomb squad has to be called in for the detonation.

By late morning, the soldiers find two dozen copper disks. The CIA believes such plates are supplied by Iran. They are used to make some of the most deadly weapons in Iraq, explosively formed penetrators or EFPs.

The Americans consider the operation a big success. But then FRONTLINE's cameraman catches some of the Iraqis having a discussion--

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] I know where it is.

MARTIN SMITH: -- about another cache of weapons.

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] It's not here. It's with the sheikh.

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] Who?

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] It's with the Sayid. It's with my mullah. I'm telling you there's nothing here. This is just kid stuff. The big stuff is not here.

IRAQI SOLDIER: [subtitles] Sir, the videocamera has a microphone.

MARTIN SMITH: We didn't translate the conversation until months later, but the Iraqis never shared with the Americans where the larger cache was.

Willie Tomg posted:

To bring it all together: the SCW started separately, yes. but also it was affected by the iraq war in a way so unalterably organic that honestly i genuinely wish we'd stop talking about "SCW" and "Iraq ISIS whatever" and just call it "the Levantine War" and its been going from 2003-Present, because at this point, aaalllllllllllllllllllllllll the poo poo is connected. we're not dealing with discrete theaters anymore, its just a big swath of gently caress from libya to kashmir.

Willie Tomg posted:

i would offer only this guideline: this war makes a fuckin' mockery of End Of History ideology. if you feel gross and confused and uncomfortable that means your brain is working throughout. turkey is funding salafists, against the gulf which is also funding salafists. the IRGC and Russia allied in the trenches with baathists fighting for urbanist populists. SEALs are taking scalps and calling in airstrikes for kurdish communists. and it turned the Republicans into the loving anti-war faction of convenience in DC outside of the marginalized Bernie Dems. it has tested my anti-war principles to their absolute limits because emotionally i know the usa has a hundred tons of cold liquid to splash on the flames, but academically i know its actually gasoline IRL.

Willie Tomg posted:

if someone offers you The One Serious Opinion they're full of loving poo poo. theres a lot grim about the SCW, there's nothing at all serious about it. not anymore, not from a western observer's perspective, anyway.

quote:

CIA efforts to train the moderate rebel forces were also failing badly. ‘The CIA’s training camp was in Jordan and was controlled by a Syrian tribal group,’ the JCS adviser said. There was a suspicion that some of those who signed up for training were actually Syrian army regulars minus their uniforms. This had happened before, at the height of the Iraqi war, when hundreds of Shia militia members showed up at American training camps for new uniforms, weapons and a few days of training, and then disappeared into the desert. A separate training programme, set up by the Pentagon in Turkey, fared no better. The Pentagon acknowledged in September that only ‘four or five’ of its recruits were still battling Islamic State; a few days later 70 of them defected to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after crossing the border into Syria.

In January 2014, despairing at the lack of progress, John Brennan, the director of the CIA, summoned American and Sunni Arab intelligence chiefs from throughout the Middle East to a secret meeting in Washington, with the aim of persuading Saudi Arabia to stop supporting extremist fighters in Syria. ‘The Saudis told us they were happy to listen,’ the JCS adviser said, ‘so everyone sat around in Washington to hear Brennan tell them that they had to get on board with the so-called moderates. His message was that if everyone in the region stopped supporting al-Nusra and Isis their ammunition and weapons would dry up, and the moderates would win out.’ Brennan’s message was ignored by the Saudis, the adviser said, who ‘went back home and increased their efforts with the extremists and asked us for more technical support. And we say OK, and so it turns out that we end up reinforcing the extremists.’

Dreylad posted:

this is still probably the tweet of the year:

https://twitter.com/Syrian_SR/status/1054347137125883905

Dreylad posted:

Gwynne Dyer, who I usually consider quite good on global politics and war even when he's wrong, predicted that the Kurds would beat back ISIS given that they were one of the more organized and well equipped groups in Iraq and Syria back when ISIS first appeared on the radar of the western press. He figured they'd offer assistance and in return they'd get their Kurdistan. Except that it didn't quite work out that way and the Kurds got pushed back when they did finally get involve, demonstrating that even the most relatively thoughtful takes on the early war proved to be completely wrong.

Baloogan posted:

is there an anime

svenkatesh posted:

Peshmerga are a god-tier martial race and anyone who says otherwise is a Turkish roach. /s

really queer Christmas posted:

what is the lion Assad's opinion on anime

Willie Tomg posted:

hey does anyone have a copy of the intro to State of Myths?

not only was it goddamned hilarious, the full track was a banger. i think it got Memory Holed

Super86 posted:

What do you guys think about what happened in the Lebanese-Israel border with Hezbollah and the tunnels?

reignonyourparade posted:

The only thing you can ever be certain about in the middle east is the Kurds will get thrown under the bus.

quote:

"After discussions with the President and (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph) Dunford, I never felt better about where we are headed. I think we're slowing things down in a smart way," the South Carolina Republican said, adding later: "I think we're in a pause situation where we are reevaluating what's the best way to achieve the President's objective of having people pay more and do more."

HorrificExistence posted:

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1079514527392247809

lol no more pull out

Bastaman Vibration posted:

russia pulled a “mission accomplished” too, early on around 2016 i think, that surprised everyone and they’re still there.

Willie Tomg posted:

"im sure lindsay graham isn't getting owned by donald trump this time" --lindsay graham

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

the worst case scenario here is that we’re only slowing down withdrawals so we actually can coordinate a handover of “security duties” to Turkey.

Plutonis posted:

paul_soccer10 posted:

So we staying lol