ISIS releases map showing 5-year goal. They want Spain, the Balkans, Central Asia, India...

[mota bhai 2,675]

[Merrytooth 5,748]

The Chinese are nuts, too.

Only $ talk, oriented and driven

[mota bhai 2,675]

Don't say nuthin' mean about the illegitimate regime in Beijing, or she'll report you. She's a tad sensitive about her comrades.

[GandD 5,966]

The Chinese are nuts, too.

Yeah, we can talk.

[Harpa Timsah 13,259]

Sounds like a condition for someone who accidentally drank too much and sat on embers...

I thought it sounded like some sparkly VD.

[Peikko 1,575]

Isn't it nice to see people with aspirations? They really will have to work hard to achieve their goals, I would have thought the protestants would be mightily impressed with all this industry.

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

I wouldn't make light of these guys. They are unlikely to hit any real resistance until they hit Persia. By then, they will have the Arab peninsula (the Saudis will roll over) and all the American equipment that comes with.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1116618/why-isis-militia-may-be-sputtering

WASHINGTON: The Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS), the militia that has overrun much of northern and western Iraq in recent days, may be on the brink of sputtering out.

Exhibit A: This past Sunday, the first day of Ramazan, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared himself the ‘caliph’ of a new Islamic state and ordered all Muslims, not just in the region but worldwide, to pay obeisance to him and to no other Muslim leader. Some may take this as a sign of his movement’s growing strength and confidence. But if the history of grandiose caliph-wannabes is consulted, it resembles more a sign of delusion and desperation.

Only a small fraction of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims have the slightest interest in recreating the caliphate, and many of those who do have someone else in mind as caliph. Some of these dissidents live in the ISIS leader’s neighbourhood, not least the followers of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda. And so we are seeing the deepening of a fissure within Sunni radicalism — a split has been growing rancorous for some time.

The most obvious sign of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s pretentiousness is that the ground his men have overrun hardly constitutes a nation-state. He hasn’t set up a government, collected taxes, provided services, created institutions, or done any of the other things that real states routinely do all over the planet.

Another sign: Baghdadi has plundered certain Iraqi cities, but it can’t be said that he’s conquered them. By all accounts, ISIS troops marauding through Iraq number fewer than 10,000. This is not enough to storm Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah — and leave behind enough men in each place to control the terrain. American troops had this same problem during the early occupation: They would clear a town of bad guys and move on to the next town — at which point the bad guys would come back. Strategists referred to this as a failure to “clear and hold”. ISIS is clearing, but they’re not holding.

In its first few days, the ISIS onslaught met no resistance. The Iraqi army — in Mosul, an entire division of American-trained soldiers — simply fled, leaving behind their uniforms, weapons, and vehicles. But this wholesale surrender had little to do with the military prowess or spiritual appeal of ISIS. In a paper published today by Caerus Associates, Yasir Abbas and Dan Trombly conclude — mainly from interviews with Iraqi soldiers and other insiders — that much of the Iraqi army had been crumbling for the past two years, as a result of corruption, lax maintenance, and the subsequent corrosion of morale.

... clink the link above for the rest

[mota bhai 2,675]

I have read this already. I get a lot of the stuff I post here from Dawn.

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

I have read this already. I get a lot of the stuff I post here from Dawn.

Yes thanks for putting those up.. Some interesting reading.