Three ISIS Drones Have Been Destroyed in Iraq, Syria

   The latest official report of a drone in the possession of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is tucked in an August 3rd press release from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the overseers of the air campaign in Syria and Iraq against the terrorist organization.
     The reference is included in a list of targets from the previous day near the Iraqi town of Ramadi: "[T]hree airstrikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL motorcycle, an ISIL drone, four ISIL vehicles and an ISIL resupply truck."
     A CENTCOM spokesperson told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the "remotely piloted aircraft 'RPA' was destroyed on the ground," but that the coalition was unable to confirm whether or not the drone had been armed.
     This drone destroyed in Iraq in August was the third ISIL drone targeted to date by Operation Inherent Resolve and the most recent hit since June. The only ISIS drone destroyed so far in Syria was located near Raqqah and was targeted on June 26th. CENTCOM reported that "five airstrikes struck three ISIL tactical units, destroying five ISIL excavators, an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL remotely piloted aircraft."
    The first instance of an ISIS drone being taken out by Operation Inherent Resolve was reported by the Daily Beast in the spring of 2015 based on a March 18th press release from CENTCOM. The Daily Beast quoted military officials as saying that "they believe the drone in question is one of several owned by ISIS but that fighters only recently started seeing them appear on the frontlines." At the time, it was believed the drone's mission was one of surveillance, not attack, and was described by military officials as "something that could be bought commercially."
     Although the Daily Beast article was entitled "Is ISIS Building a Drone Army?" and noted that experts have said that "ISIS could convert this kind of technology into something deadly," military officials dismissed the idea: "there [is] a big difference between what ISIS could have purchased off of Amazon.com ... and the Reapers and Predators deployed by coalition forces."
     When asked this week if drone use by ISIS was on the rise, a CENTCOM spokesperson told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that "[c]urrently, there is no assessment indicating an increased use of RPA's [remotely piloted aircraft] by ISIL."

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard. Also, The Weekly Standard version of this post was the DrudgeReport's banner headline for about an hour Friday morning:

Admiral: 'Be Prepared' for Kobani, 'Other Towns and Other Cities to Fall' to ISIL

    Rear Admiral John Kirby appeared at a joint press briefing with Spokesperson Jen Psaki at the State Department Thursday and addressed the ongoing airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria. As a number of Pentagon officials have done in recent weeks, Admiral Kirby downplayed the impact that airstrikes alone can have on stopping ISIL, with particular emphasis on Kobani, Syria, which borders Turkey:

What makes Kobani significant is the fact that ISIL wants it. And the more they want it, the more forces and resources they apply to it, the more targets that are available for us to hit there. I said it yesterday, keep saying it: Kobani could still fall. Our military participation is from the air and the air only right now, and we’ve all been honest about the fact that air power alone is not going to be able to save any town in particular.

    Kirby said that ISIL is likely to continue to gain territory in spite of the coalition air campaign, and that Kobani is not the only city likely to fall:

I think we’ve been pretty consistent about the fact that we need to all be prepared for other towns and other cities to fall too. This group wants ground. They want territory, they want infrastructure. We all need to be prepared for them to continue to try to grab that, and succeed in taking it.

    The extra emphasis placed on strikes against ISIL forces around Kobani, Kirby said, is not only a matter of strategy, but also simply a matter of weather:

One of the reasons you’ve seen additional strikes in the last couple of days is because we haven’t been able to strike quite as much, quite as aggressively inside Iraq. There’s been terrible weather there, sandstorms this time of year. It’s made it very hard for us to get intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms up over to see what we’re trying to do in Iraq. So we’ve had resources available that we might not have otherwise had available to strike them there in Kobani.

    Under persistent question from reporters at the briefing, Admiral Kirby used some colorful language to further explain what the overall strategy of the air campaign is and what it is not:

Airstrikes are dynamic, they’re exciting, you can count them, you can get great video of them. I understand the drama around airstrikes, but we’ve said (a) airstrikes alone are not going to do this, military power alone is not going to do this, and it’s going to take some time...
So this isn’t – I hate to use this phrase, but it’s not whack-a-mole. We’re not going after this – the idea isn’t to just put a warhead on a forehead every single day. The idea is to try to get at their ability to sustain themselves and to disrupt their strategy.

    On the question of ground troops, the admiral made clear there are no plans for combat roles for U.S. forces in Iraq or Syria:

The commander-in-chief’s been pretty clear there’s not going to be a return to U.S. ground forces in a combat role in this effort. That said, we do have 12 advisor teams that are working with the Iraqi Security Forces at a very high level, brigade or division level, inside Iraq. They are not going out into the field. They are not accompanying Iraqi troops. They are simply offering advice and assistance at a headquarters level – seven in Baghdad and the other five are up near Erbil. I do not foresee any instance in which we would put ground troops inside Syria.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Kerry Uses Arab Name 'Daesh' to Refer to Islamic State

    Following the lead of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday began using the Arabic acronym "Daesh" when referring to the Islamic State (ISIL), although he continued to the latter acronym as well. Kerry was in Egypt for a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Shoukry, and spoke extensively about the terrorist group in remarks following the meeting. The new terminology appears to be an attempt to bolster the secretary's contention that there is "nothing whatsoever about ISIL that is related to Islam."

    Kerry first referenced "Daesh" when discussing the coalition to defeat ISIL, where he used the two terms interchangeably:

And as President Obama made clear, the United States is committed to degrading and ultimately defeating ISIL. And I’m very pleased to say that more than 60 partners have now committed to joining us in this effort in a variety of ways. Not everybody will play a military role or a direct kinetic role. Some will help with respect to the delegitimization of Daesh’s claims with respect to religion.

    Throughout the run-up to the forming of the coalition and ultimately the bombing campaign against the Islamic State, Kerry has been insistent about the non-Islamic nature of the group, going so far as to say in September that "we must put real Islam out there." Kerry continued in that vein Sunday, saying that the coalition against ISIL is not "primarily military in nature," with a large part of the equation also being an "effort to counter ISIL’s false claims about Islam":

So the coalition required to eliminate ISIL is not only or even primarily military in nature, and we welcome everybody’s contribution to that effort. Particularly, the effort to counter ISIL’s false claims about Islam, a peaceful religion. There is nothing about ISIL, as the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia said, or the council that issues fatwas said, nothing whatsoever about ISIL that is related to Islam.

    Ultimately in his remarks, Kerry used "Daesh" five times and the English acronym ten times. Until now, the US State Department's use of the Arabic acronym has been relatively rare, and a review of Secretary Kerry's previous speeches and remarks did not turn up any prior usage. The White House has not used the term at all.

    In September, France 24 reported the French foreign minister's decision to make the switch:

From now on the French foreign ministry will be calling it Daesh, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS or the Islamic State group. 

Last week, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius asked journalists and media organisations to do the same. 

He said: “This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats’.”... 

Daesh is a loose acronym of the Arabic for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham).

    Although the Obama administration has claimed the fight against ISIL has yielded some positive results, Army General Martin Dempsey acknowledged Sunday on ABC's This Week that he is "fearful Kobani [Syria] will fall" to ISIL, and that ISIL's adaptations since the bombing began will complicate the coalition's efforts to identify and strike ISIL targets:

“I am fearful that Kobani will fall,” Dempsey said, adding that he has “no doubt” ISIL will conduct horrific atrocities if they have the opportunity to do so. 

ISIL is putting pressure on the city’s outskirts, and into the city itself, the chairman said. ISIL forces are becoming more adept with the use of electronic devices, he added, and are making themselves harder to find and identify. “They don't fly flags and move around in large convoys the way they did. … They don't establish headquarters that are visible or identifiable,” he said.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Josh Earnest Versus Ben Rhodes on ISIL in Syria and Iraq

    Josh Earnest appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday in damage-control mode after President Obama's "we don't have a strategy yet" remark during his press conference on Thursday. Almost immediately after the president made the comment in response to a question by Chuck Todd, Earnest took to Twitter to quash the firestorm of criticism that ensued from friend and foe alike:

In his remarks today, POTUS was explicit - as he has been in the past - about the comprehensive strategy we'll use to confront ISIL threat.
— Josh Earnest (@PressSec) August 28, 2014

    Friday, Earnest acknowledged the president's words, but tried to provide additional context to clarify the White House message. CBS's Mark Knoeller tweeted this recap of Earnest's remarks:

On @Morning_Joe, Earnest acknowledges "no plans right now" for ISIL in Syria, but that Pres has "comprehensive plan" for ISIL in Iraq.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 29, 2014

     Rather than tamp down criticism, however, Earnest may have exacerbated the president's problem since his explanation contradicts a statement by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes just a week ago. Rhodes appeared with Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz at a press briefing in Edgartown, Massachusetts during the president's vacation. In response to a question about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey's statement about how to defeat ISIL, Rhodes replied, "[W]e certainly agree that any strategy to deal with the ISIL organization has to deal with both sides of the border, Iraq and Syria." Here is the full exchange:

Q    On Islamic State, yesterday General Dempsey said that Islamic State can only be defeated if the fight is taken to them in Syria.  I wondered, is that -- does the President agree with that?  And if so, how does he intend to undertake it?  And would it mean a significant change in the mission against Islamic State? 

MR. RHODES:  Well, we certainly agree that any strategy to deal with the ISIL organization has to deal with both sides of the border, Iraq and Syria.  The strategy that we are already undertaking does address that in the sense that we are providing training and equipping and assistance to the Iraqi security forces and Kurdish security forces who are fighting them on the ground in Iraq.  We are also providing support and military assistance to the moderate Syrian opposition.  What we would like to see is those efforts squeeze the space where ISIL operates.  

But there are other elements to our strategy.  One is to enlist the support of partners in the region and the international community, because this poses a significant threat not just to the United States and to the Iraqi and Syrian people, but to the entire region.  And there are things that we can do with partners to mobilize communities in places like Iraq to work to expel ISIL.  

Then there’s the question of U.S. military action.  And the President has already authorized U.S. military action on the very specific missions of protecting our people and personnel and our facilities in Baghdad and Erbil.  He’s also authorized military action to deal with the humanitarian crisis on Mount Sinjar.  Again, as we look ahead and look forward, we are going to do what is necessary to protect Americans.  And so if we see plotting against Americans, we see a threat to the United States emanating from anywhere, we stand ready to take action against that threat.  

We’ve made very clear time and again that if you come after Americans, we’re going to come after you wherever you are.  And that’s what’s going to guide our planning in the days to come.

    Earnest has not yet responded to a request to square his remarks this morning with Rhodes's statement from last Friday.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.