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US Intelligence WRONG-ISIS Is Winning The War In Syria and Iraq Experts Say
The New York Times reported today that the Pentagon’s inspector general received documents that prove senior military officers altered the conclusions of intelligence reports on the war against the Islamic State. The documents were handed over by a group of intelligence analysts.
“The Pentagon’s inspector general, who is examining the claims, is focusing on senior intelligence officials who supervise dozens of military and civilian analysts at the United States Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees American military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” the paper reported.
The intelligence analysts who investigated the reports say that their superiors in CENTCOM altered conclusions on a number of topics, among them the effects of the air campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This was done in order to present a more positive picture of the war effort against the Islamic State to the Obama administration, Congress and other intelligence agencies.
This was the second time in one week that a media outlet reported that U.S. intelligence reports on ISIS have been inappropriately altered by high-ranking officials in the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East.
Last week, The Daily Beast reported for the first time that a group of 50 intelligence analysts had complained that intelligence on Islamic State was incorrect.
“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official told The Daily Beast.
The news about the manipulations of intelligence on ISIS comes two days after the special U.S. envoy to the global Coalition fighting the Islamic State. General John Allen told reporters, “remarkable progress” has been made in the war against the self-proclaimed Caliphate over the last year.
“In the intervening months, we’ve seen remarkable progress in many respects. We’ve seen the emergence of a capable leader and partner in Baghdad in Haider al-Abadi. Between his national program, his outreach to the Sunnis, his plan for al-Anbar, his close relationship with His Eminence, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, we find in him a hope for a political future in Iraq that we couldn’t have seen under other leadership, and we haven’t seen before, without a political platform, without a political resolution of this conflict, no matter what we do militarily, we will not solve this crisis overall,” Allen told ABC News.
Apparently, Allen read CENTCOM’s altered intelligence reports because of statements made by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Le Drain’s statements on France Inter radio painted a completely different picture. Le Drian reported today that the Islamic State made significant gains in the battle field in Syria over the last year and now threatens to take over Syria’s once most populated city Aleppo that has largely been reduced to rubble in the four years of fighting.
Le Drian explained why France has now joined the air campaign against ISIS.
“What is certain is that things have changed drastically. For several months Daesh (Islamic State) has considerably extended its presence on Syrian territory. It’s true in Aleppo, but also on the Homs-Damascus line. Today Daesh has progressed in a way that it is threatening the Syrian resistance in Aleppo region, but also Lebanon if it manages to break through the Damascus-Homs axis,” Le Drian told France Inter radio.
It could be argued that General John Allen was only talking about the war against the Islamic State in Iraq, and Le Drian about the situation in Syria, but counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen says that the United States is losing the war against the Islamic State in Iraq too.
Kilcullen, who worked as a special adviser under David Petraeus during the surge in Iraq, wrote the following in a blog post for the National Interest:
“My last post examined Islamic State as a global terrorist entity—a complex and constantly evolving threat. This two-part post focuses more tightly on the unfolding war against ISIS in Iraq. Here things are much clearer: we’re losing.”
The counterinsurgency expert explained in detail how the Islamic State has been able to adjust its strategy after the coalition became active, and how it has been able to hold on in strategically important cities like Mosul and Ramadi.
Kilcullen assessed the situation:
The initial goal (of the coalition against the Islamic State) was to blunt the ISIS advance, and this succeeded. The Kurdish front stabilized into a form of trench warfare north and west of Irbil, Mosul Dam was recaptured, and Iraqi forces (a combination of demoralized regular troops and increasingly well-armed and assertive Iranian-backed militias known as the “Popular Mobilization”) retook ground around Baghdad, relieving pressure on the capital.
US leaders spoke confidently at this time of rolling back ISIS, rebuilding the Iraqi army, and then recapturing Mosul with the support of international air-power and advisers. In response, ISIS dropped back an evolutionary stage into guerrilla mode. It went back to small teams in civilian clothes, blending into the population and employing night operations and asymmetric attacks. The large formations dispersed into smaller, platoon-sized combat groups, each comprising a few vehicles and 20-40 fighters, and its leaders went underground.
After a few weeks of this, however—and after suffering a few losses—ISIS leaders realized that coalition air activity was going to be relatively easy to handle. Lacking forward ground observers, and operating under highly restrictive rules of engagement, coalition aircraft could only identify and strike a very limited number of targets. On average, from September 2014 to June 2015, the coalition was only able to mount roughly 10-14 strike sorties per day across both Iraq and Syria. (For comparison, during Operation Unified Protector in Libya the daily average was 48; in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 the average number was roughly 110; and in the Kosovo campaign of 1999 it was closer to 250.)
Kilcullen’s assessment that the U.S. led air campaign against the Islamic State is failing is shared by Russia, who today made clear that it thinks the entire campaign is pointless.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that read: “What results have we got from sending into the region military forces of those countries, which are so fond of counting foreign aircraft overflights? Unfortunately, the achievements of the coalition in the fight against Islamic State look very modest.”
As Western Journalism reported last week, Russia has intervened in Syria and is reportedly building up a ground force that aims to save Assad’s ailing regime. The Russians already have fighter planes in Syria and shipped advanced T-90 tanks and other heavy military equipment to the country this week.
The Russian military built up in Syria caused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Moscow where he plans to warn Russian President Putin against weapon deliveries to Hezbollah.
More bad news about the U.S. war effort against the Islamic State was delivered by General Lloyd Austin, the U.S. top commander in the Middle East, who told the Senate Armed Service Committee today that only four or five U.S. trained Syrian opposition fighters are still on the battlefield in Syria.
The original aim of the program was to form a force of 5,000 fighters. In July, the first 54 members of the force were brought into Syria from Turkey. They were immediately attacked by Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, who killed and captured some of the fighters while others fled.
Source: http://www.westernjournalism.com/us-intelligence-on-isis-cooked-islamic-state-is-winning-the-war-in-syria-and-iraq-experts-say/
