Deliberate futility expands like Bill Clinton at an intern convention:
Even as American intelligence agencies say the number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria has dropped to about 25,000 from a high of about 31,500....
At least a fifty percent lowballing of their actual numbers, perhaps more, by this time.
....partly because of the United States-led air campaign there, the group’s ranks in Libya have roughly doubled in the same period, to about 6,500 fighters. More than a dozen American and allied officials spoke of their growing concern about the [Muslim] organization’s expanding reach from Libya and across Africa on rules of anonymity because the discussions involved intelligence and military planning.
That's floundering anyway, so I don't know what the big secret is all about. Hell, thanks to Mrs. Clinton, when have we had ANY secrets for the past seven years about which the whole world didn't know?
Islamic State leaders in Syria are telling recruits traveling north from West African nations like Senegal and Chad, as well as others streaming up through Sudan in eastern Africa, not to press on to the Middle East. Instead, they are being told to stay put in Libya. American intelligence officials, who described the recent orders from Islamic State leaders, say the organization’s immediate goal is to carve out a new caliphate in Libya, and there are signs the affiliate is trying to establish statelike institutions there.
“Libya has become a magnet for individuals not only inside of Libya, but from the African continent as well as from outside,” John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A., told a Senate panel this month.
Makes a lot of sense, actually. Obviously, Caliph al-Baghdadi and his inner circle feel that they've got things well in hand in Syria and Iraq and don't need any additional reinforcements to continue their occupation of (most) of those two countries. So they're extending, expanding, and formalizing their imperial reach, and Libya - the perfect staging area for a(n additional) invasion of Europe - is the natural next ISIS province.
And what is the Obama Regime planning to do about it?
The same things that failed in Iraq and Syria:
Before resorting to any wider military action, however, the White House and Western allies like Britain, Italy and France are trying to help create a unity government in Libya. The goal is to use such a new central authority to rally dozens of fractious militias to fight against a common enemy — the Islamic State. American and European Special Operations forces could help advise and assist those militias, officials said.
Actually, there was such an anti-jihadist "unity government" in Libya five years ago; his name was Muammar al-Qaddafi. But King Hussein got rid of him via a behind-led, illegal war of aggression, and now wonders why all his horses and all his pajamaed androygenes can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
“Our strong preference, as has always been the case, is to train Libyans to fight,” Mr. Obama said last week at a news conference in California. “There’s a whole bunch of constituencies who are hardened fighters and don’t ascribe to ISIS or their perverted ideology. But they have to be organized and can’t be fighting each other.”
As a result, the administration and its allies are taking several steps to prepare to train Libyan troops, should a newly formed unity government request such aid. They are also rushing to bolster pivotal African allies outside of Libya as a bulwark against Islamic State expansion on the continent.
The [Obam]agon has proposed spending $200 million this year to help train and equip the armies and security forces of North and West African countries. The United States is about to break ground on a new $50 million drone base in Agadez, Niger, that will allow Reaper surveillance aircraft to fly hundreds of miles closer to southern Libya.
Aaaaaaaand we know how this "strong preference" turns out, now don't we?
There's only one way to purge ISIS from Libya, precisely the same as there is to purge ISIS from Iraq and Syria: U.S. boots on the ground in massive numbers. Libyans can't fight worth bleep, neither can "African alies," or al Qaeda and ISIS wouldn't be overrunning north Africa already. And, even more to the point, none of them share our worldview or strategic objectives, which is why they're not already banded together for this purpose and are highly unlikely to do so even with us clucking at and bribing them to do so.
Nobody else can or will our fighting for us. We have to do it ourselves.
And Barack Obama will not take up arms against his jihadist brothers. It's that simple. And it is never going to change.
And ISIS knows it, which is why their behavior is unmodifiable by anything short of all out military force. and will therefore continue ever onward on its bloodmisting path.
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