Kase Lawal, Hillary, Barack and Boko Haram

Posted on September 8, 2016September 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Bring Back Our Girls: Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai support campaign for return of kidnapped Nigeria schoolgirls

BuzzNigeria.com A video was released in August with new Boko Haram demands but YouTube removed it.

McClatchy: HOUSTON — A Texas oilman who’s accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton’s political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer who was convicted of defrauding Cuba.

There’s no indication that Clinton’s campaign was aware of Lawal’s legal problems when it accepted his help in raising more than $100,000, but a McClatchy investigation in the U.S. and Nigeria suggests that her campaign did little to scrutinize the background of one of its top fundraisers.

****

In 2010, Kase Lawal, Member, Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations for the White House. CAMAC Energy, NYSE (CAK) was founded in 2005. CAMAC Energy Inc. has offices in Hartsdale, New York; Houston, Texas; Beijing, China and Lagos, Nigeria.

****

Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000—the most allowed—to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.

Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.” In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

Hillary Clinton Obstructed Boko Haram Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In

Source: Hillary Obstructed Boko Haram’s Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In | PJ Media

By Patrick Poole

…as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa. …

Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?

It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

Members of Congress discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.

As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but then a group of 21 American academics rallied to the State Department’s aid by sending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.

We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence— obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid— that revealed Boko Haram’s direct connection to al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012. In other words, Hillary’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections, that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat, even though the Obama administration — and likely Clinton herself — knew that was false.

An important two-part investigative series by WORLD magazine reporters Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick provides some insight:

Part 1 of our series on Clinton State Dept & Boko Haram @WORLD_mag https://t.co/Vf1AezkhSF and Part 2 https://t.co/gUTv3yrruF #Nigeria

— Mindy Belz (@mcbelz) June 30, 2016

Belz and Derrick discovered that Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram designation, and the continuing chaos in northern Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and the 10th largest oil producer in the world — directly benefited Clinton Global Initiative donors and a close Clinton confidante who bundled campaign cash for Hillary.

From the second article from Belz and Derrick:

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home — a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000 — the most allowed — to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes.Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot.

He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabaab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

But wait, there’s more:

Beneath the surface, literally, Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent—the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

…

Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram terror designation in the face of FBI, CIA, DOJ, and Congressional urging to do so is a documented fact. But the reason for Hillary’s obstruction, which the establishment media has never pressed Clinton for, remains unanswered.

The New Faces of Illegal Immigrants into America

Posted on September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Mexico issues transit visas to surge of African migrants

MEXICO CITY (AP)— Mexican immigration authorities say 424 migrants from African countries arrived at the southern state of Chiapas over two days last week.

The National Immigration Institute said Tuesday that it has issued them 20-day transit visas that will allow the migrants to reach the U.S.-Mexico border, where they plan to request asylum.

Officials call it an unusual surge and say most of the migrants first went to Brazil or Ecuador to start their journey through Latin America.

Most of the Africans presented themselves voluntarily to immigration officials in the Chiapas town of Tapachula. They did not specify their nationalities. Immigration support staff in Tijuana has been aiding migrants from the Congo, Somalia and Ghana to arrive at the U.S. port of entry at San Isidro.

DailyCaller has more:

Guatemala is facing an influx of African immigrants on their way to the United States, having caught 56 times more so far in 2016 than they did in all of 2015.

Only 13 African immigrants were caught in Africa in all of 2015, and by September 2, 2016 729 Africans had been caught by Guatemalan authorities, La Prensa reports. The majority of the African immigrants are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Senegal, and Somalia.

The country is facing an increase of immigrants in general. In 2015, the national police reported 1,131 immigrants caught from various countries. By August 29, 2016, they had intercepted 2,514 immigrants, an increase of 122.2 percent.

Jorge Pereza Breedy, head of the International Organization for Migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Hondoras, said that changes in the situation in Europe has led these immigrants to come to Central America. “The saturation of the transit route in Europe and the increase in border security is one of the principal factors in the increase of Asian and African emigrants in Central America,” Breedy told La Prensa.

The African immigrants aren’t in Guatemala to stay there and instead are making there way northward towards Mexico and the United States. “It’s not that they want to come to this country to stay, they want to get to the United States,” Danilo Rivera of the Central American Institute for Social and Development Studies said to La Prensa. (RELATED: Mexico Shipping Hundreds Of Illegal Africans To US Border)

Recently, El Salvadoran authorities busted a human smuggling ring which generated $150,000 a year bringing immigrants illegally to the United States from Brazil.

**** But there is still more:

The New Face of American Immigration

This year candidates have focused on migrants from Mexico, but nationally and in most states, India and China have become the top sources for new arrivals.

By Jieqian Zhang, Paul Overberg and Andrew Van Dam WallStreetJournal

Click here for the interactive map.

Mexico: 37,290
India: 13,662
El Salvador: 8,709
Honduras: 7,925
China: 6,249

Additional Notes:

Totals reflect the estimated number of non-U.S. citizens who reported living each source country a year earlier, regardless of immigration status.

Totals for China don’t include Taiwan. Other than that, countries were coded and grouped according to Ipums’ definitions.

Popups on the map show the values for India, China and Mexico, and the two other highest sources of immigrants.

Additional reporting from Janet Adamy

Source: Census Bureau via University of Minnesota (Ipums)

Going back to 2010, the matter of Africans fleeing to Latin America and then to the United States began for several reasons.

YaleGlobal: Latin America is becoming an increasingly common destination for African immigrants as Europe tightens its immigration controls and suffers from xenophobia and migration-related violence. Brazil, for example, which has the largest black population outside Africa, offers a more culturally receptive society. Though most of the population is white, Argentina receives a fair share of African migrants too. That country is attractive because immigrants can legalize their status and receive temporary work permits, even with the high level of unemployment, and have access to free healthcare and Spanish classes taught by Catholic church charities. While Europe shutters its borders, and the US tightens immigration, other countries that have historically grown through immigration are picking up the slack. – YaleGlobal

More African Immigrants Finding a Home in Latin America

As European countries tighten up border controls, a rising number of Africans fleeing trouble in their homelands are arriving at ports in Latin America

From Raqqa to Paris and Other Targets in Europe

Posted on September 6, 2016September 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

ISIS cell behind Paris atrocity ‘planned attacks on shopping centre and targets in Holland’: Full scale of attack revealed as official warns operatives are trying to reach UK

ISIS fanatics killed 130 people in the French capital on November 13
But papers claim murderous team may have been plotting wider attack
Investigators believe shopping centres and targets in Holland identified
Official says ISIS has stepped up moves to infiltrate operatives in the UK

DailyMail: A network of ISIS extremists who targeted Paris in November last year had ambitious plans to carry out yet more atrocities, it has emerged.

Fanatics killed 130 people in the French capital on November 13 when they massacred music fans in the Bataclan theatre hall, set off suicide bombs at the Stade de France and gunned down revellers outside bars.

But the terror group’s external operations wing, known as Amn al-Kharji, may have been planning for the murderous team to hit other targets, including supermarkets and packed shopping centres, it has been reported.

A network of ISIS extremists who targeted Paris in November last year had made ambitious plans to carry out yet more atrocities, it has emerged. People are pictured fleeing from the Bataclan on November 13

There are also suggestions their hit list included targets in the Netherlands while one official said ISIS has stepped up moves to infiltrate its attackers into Britain.

Details of an apparent wider plot emerged after CNN examined tens of thousands of pages of documents from investigations into the Paris massacre.

The papers revealed that the ISIS network may have been planning to follow up the slaughter in Paris with attacks in several other locations.

CNN says the documents show a suspected terrorist called Abid Tabaouni, believed to have been linked to the Paris terror cell, was at large in Europe for months after the atrocity. He was only arrested in July this year.

A European counter-terror official told CNN that Paris was a ‘slimmed-down’ version of a far wider plot.

Sources told the broadcaster that, even now, operatives planted in Europe are waiting for instructions from key ISIS strategists based in the terror group’s Syrian stronghold.

The terror group’s external operations wing, known as Amn al-Kharji, may have been planning for the murderous team to hit other targets, including supermarkets and packed shopping centres. The exterior of the Bataclan, where 90 people died, is pictured above

According to the CNN reporters Scott Bronstein, Nicole Gaouette, Laura Koran and Clarissa Ward, documents revealed that two terror suspects who were delayed in reaching France ahead of the November 13 killings may have been plotting to return to the French capital for a further attack at a later date.

Adel Haddadi and Muhammad Usman had reportedly been looking at train times to Paris and made a number of overseas calls in the days before they were arrested – and investigators believe they were waiting for a third man to join them.

The attack on Paris was one of a series of jihadist strikes on French soil.

In January last year, terrorists shot 12 people dead at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Days later a Jewish supermarket was targeted with four shot dead.

In June this year Police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife were knifed to death inside their home near Paris by a man who said he had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

And on July 14, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, thought to have links with ISIS, murdered 84 when he drove a lorry into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice.

****

From CNN in part:

Suspected ISIS operative map graphic

The documents show:

a fuller portrait of the suspected terrorists’ extensive use of social media platforms such as Viber, Telegram and WhatsApp, many encrypted for secure communication. One app let them pick their own phone number, allowing them to disguise who was calling them and from where.

how ISIS handlers protect their missions by: giving operatives only as much information and money as they need to reach the next phase; contacting them on each leg of their journey; and insisting on pseudonyms, even within teams.

how the suspected terrorists constantly exchanged logistical advice with others in their network, including whether or not to use real names at border crossings and how to sneak across those borders illegally. One tip was to hide in train restrooms.

A senior European counter-terrorism official who spoke to CNN said that according to investigations into the network that carried out the Paris attacks, they were a slimmed-down version of an even more ambitious plan to hit Europe.

After interrogating suspects and gathering intelligence, European investigators now believe that ISIS initially planned for the operatives it sent last year to also attack the Netherlands, as well as other targets in France including shopping areas and possibly a supermarket in Paris, the official said.

In addition, recently obtained intelligence indicates that ISIS has stepped up efforts to infiltrate operatives into the UK to launch attacks there, an official told CNN.

The senior European counter-terrorism official told CNN that security services were “uncovering more and more ISIS operatives” on continental European soil. ISIS operatives dispatched back to Europe have taken advantage of encryption, especially the Telegram messenger app, to communicate securely, the official told CNN, frustrating European security services.

“Encrypted messaging groups have the potential to revolutionize terror plot planning by allowing entire cells to coordinate in real time without compromising themselves,” said CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.

Europe’s security agencies have had important successes, though. One major breakthrough was the capture of two men who authorities believe intended to travel to France alongside the two suicide bombers who eventually blew themselves up outside a Paris stadium.

Investigators: Two ISIS attackers who never reached France

Those two suspected ISIS operatives are identified in the documents as Algerian-born Adel Haddadi and his Pakistani travel partner, Muhammad Usman.

Algerian-born Adel Haddadi is a suspected ISIS operative.

Muhammad Usman is a suspected ISIS operative from Pakistan

Documents that detail their capture and extensive interrogations, particularly with Haddadi, show how ISIS supported the attackers throughout their journey from Syria through Europe — and how future attacks might be organized. The following account of their journey to Europe is based on those documents, which include evidence gathered by investigators, and their conclusions.

Haddadi and Usman, who was identified by investigators as a suspected bombmaker for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, set out from the capital of the self-declared ISIS caliphate in Raqqa, Syria, six weeks before the Paris attacks.

They were part of a team, investigators concluded. The two others, Ahmad al-Mohammad and Mohamad al-Mahmod, would later blow themselves up outside the national stadium in Paris. The team crossed the border from Syria into Turkey in early October and headed for the Turkish coast.

Ahmad al-Mohammad was one of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks.

Mohamad al-Mahmod was one of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks.

The four men didn’t seem to know each other’s real names, or what their final mission would be. All Haddadi knew, he later told interrogators, was that they were being sent to France to do “something for the good of God.”

The documents show that their journey was directed by a shadowy ISIS leader in Syria, known only as Abu Ahmad. Operating like a puppet-master from afar, Abu Ahmad handled their logistics: connecting them with smugglers and cars for transport, providing pre-programmed cell phones and getting them fake Syrian passports.

He wired them money as they moved, using intermediaries who couldn’t be traced, and communicated using encrypted apps.

“Abu Ahmad … is key in sending those individuals, at least the foreigners, into the Paris attacks,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, president and chairman of the French Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, who reviewed the documents for CNN.

“He is the one who recruited them, who funds them, who trained them,” said Brisard. “He was always in contact with them.”

Throughout their journey, Abu Ahmad gave the men only enough money and information to get to the next stop, rarely if ever telling them what would happen next, the documents show.

Posing as Syrian refugees

The documents reveal fresh details about their journey and the way they posed as Syrian refugees, blending in with thousands fleeing the war-torn country.

They made the treacherous crossing from Izmir, Turkey, into Greece in a boat filled with dozens of refugees. But they were then intercepted by the Greek Navy.

The two who would go on to strike the Paris stadium passed through Greece and started moving across Europe toward their target in France. Greek officials declined to explain how the two got through.

But Greek authorities discovered Haddadi and Usman’s fake Syrian passports. The pair were arrested, their money was taken, and they were held for nearly a month.

Sources told CNN that investigators believe that delay was significant; as a result, they would not have a chance to become part of the Paris attacks.

The Greeks released Haddadi and Usman in late October. They immediately contacted their ISIS handler, Abu Ahmad, who arranged for someone to wire them 2,000 euros. Flush with cash, the pair continued along the refugee route.

It was likely a quiet journey.

The documents show that Usman spoke only Urdu, while Haddadi spoke mostly Arabic. And as they travelled north, Usman was preoccupied with a strikingly un-Islamic hobby — using his phone to peruse almost two dozen X-rated sites, including “sexxx lahur” and “Pakistani Lahore college girls … ImakeSex.”

Both men’s phones have given European officials rich investigative veins to mine, revealing dozens of contacts across Europe and the Middle East.

One of the people Haddadi reached out to for help was a technician at one of the most important nuclear research centers in Europe. That man was placed under immediate observation by French authorities, the documents show.

Data pulled from the phones also revealed how the operatives functioned both with extreme care and sometimes, seemingly, by the seat of their pants. In one exchange, Haddadi asks a contact for advice about what to do at a border crossing and whether a friend should use his real name. The friend is so worried about this, Haddadi gripes that he’s “driving me crazy.”

This graphic, featuring suspected ISIS operative Adel Haddadi, shows Haddadi’s global network.

Other online conversations, notably with Abu Ahmad, are clearly in code. One message investigators pulled from Haddadi’s phone shows the ISIS handler counseling patience, though the exact meaning of his message isn’t clear. “Yes, but not yet,” it reads, “the drugs are not good.”

On November 14, the day after the Paris attacks, Haddadi and Usman arrived in Salzburg, Austria, applied for asylum and settled into one of the city’s refugee centers, where they waited for weeks.

Investigators: Planning for another strike

They were waiting with a purpose, according to the documents.

European investigators concluded that Haddadi and Usman were part of the same terror cell as the Paris bombers and, having failed to participate in that bloody day, were planning another strike.

Investigators found that in the days before their arrest, Haddadi and Usman were researching trains to Paris and making a flurry of phone calls overseas , including to contacts in Belgium and France.

The documents also reveal that investigators believe that Haddadi and Usman were waiting for a third man to join them — Abid Tabaouni. Keep reading here from CNN, this was remarkable work by these journalists.

****

Paris attacks: French authorities file terror charges against Pakistani man

29-year-old Algerian Adel Haddadi, 35-year-old Pakistani Muhammad Usman were charged with criminal conspiracy with terrorists

House DHS Chairman Releases Terror Threat Snapshot

Posted on September 2, 2016September 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

September-Terror-Threat-Snapshot

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has released his monthly Terror Threat Snapshot for September 2016. The current edition paints an ominous backdrop for one of the worst years on record for homegrown Islamist extremism.

166 Homegrown Terror Plots; 26 Arrests

According to the snapshot, FBI Director James Comey estimates that around 80 percent of his Bureau’s 1,000-plus active homegrown terrorist investigations can be traced to ISIS, and he calls that statistic “the greatest threat to the physical safety of Americans today.” Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 166 homegrown terror plots were uncovered in the United States; nearly 90 percent of U.S.-based ISIS supporters are male and close to 35 percent of them are recent converts to Islam.

The Terror Threat Snapshot states that 26 people have been arrested in 13 states so far in 2016. The offenses – all related to ISIS – include weapons charges, offering financial support to the Islamic State, and actual plots to attack U.S. targets and citizens. McCaul’s snapshot also points out 47 ISIS-linked plots to attack towns and cities in Europe, and 28 attacks targeting Westerners outside of the U.S. and Europe.

Recent ISIS-Related Arrests in the United States

Here is a breakdown of the recent major arrests, according to the snapshot:

Minnesota: U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident Mohamed Amiin Ali Roble, 20, was charged for his role in a terror network that was dispatching its members to Syria in order to join ISIS.

North Carolina: 35-year-old U.S. citizen, Erick Jamal Hendricks of Charlotte, was arrested after attempting to hire a cell of terror operatives with a goal to ultimately launch attacks within the United States. Hendricks had also previously reached out – via social media – to the ISIS-linked group that targeted a cartoon competition in Garland, Texas in 2015.

Virginia: Nicholas Young, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen from Fairfax, Virginia, and a police officer for the Washington Metro Transit Police, was arrested for ISIS-related charges. Young is the first uniformed police officer in the U.S. ever charged with an ISIS-linked offense.

Michigan: Sebastian Gregorson, a U.S. citizen who recently converted to Islam, was arrested in Detroit for “possessing a destructive device and acquiring explosive materials without a license.” Gregorson is alleged to be a solid ISIS support and also possessed a CD entitled “Anwar al Awlaki” who was one of al-Qaida’s major recruiters.

Guantanamo Bay Detainees Released – Including Bin Laden’s Bodyguards

September’s Terror Threat Snapshot also states that a recent assessment performed by the Director of National Intelligence revealed that 30 percent of released Guantanamo Bay detainees have either returned to or are suspected of returning to jihadist activity. According to the snapshot, the Department of Defense announced that 15 detainees were handed over to the government of the United Arab Emirates. Of those 15, some were explosive experts, some were trained al-Qaida fighters and at least two of them were employed as Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguards.

Other highlights of this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include the ongoing Iranian terror threat, foreign fighter statistics and a full report of foreign Jihadist networks and safe havens.

2 Generals Have a Lot to Say About Obama’s ISIS Strategy

Posted on September 1, 2016September 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

Former U.S. Commanders Take Increasingly Dim View of War on ISIS

As conflict enters its third year, endgame still elusive

Time: It’s a most peculiar war: rarely has the U.S. been killing so many while risking so few. The U.S. is beating ISIS handily, judging by Vietnam’s body-count metric. The total number of ISIS battlefield deaths claimed by U.S. officials has jumped, from 6,000 in January 2015 to 45,000 last month—a bloodbath for an enemy force estimated to number about 30,000. Three U.S. troops have died. That’s an eye-watering U.S.-to-ISIS “kill ratio” of 15,000-to-1. “We’ve got good momentum going,” General Joseph Votel, chief of U.S. Central Command, who is overseeing the war, said Tuesday. “We are really into the heart of the caliphate.”

Yunus Keles / Anadolu Agency / Getty ImagesSyrian Peshmerga fighters outside Mosul Aug. 18, preparing for an offensive to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from ISIS.

But some of his predecessors disagree. James Mattis, a retired Marine general who commanded Central Command from 2010 to 2013, says the war on ISIS is “unguided by a sustained policy or sound strategy [and is] replete with half-measures.” Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine four-star who held the same post from 1997 to 2000, says he doesn’t think he could do so today. “I don’t want to be part of a strategy that in my heart of hearts I know is going to fail,” he says. “It’s a bad strategy, it’s the wrong strategy, and maybe I would tell the President that he would be better served to find somebody who believes in it, whoever that idiot may be.”

Day after day, American warplanes, sometimes joined by allies, have been attacking individual ISIS targets, down to backhoes and foxholes. ISIS has lost 40% of its Iraqi territory, the Pentagon says, and 5% in Syria. It doesn’t seem to have lost any of the terrain it has staked out on the internet. That’s slow progress by a 27-state military alliance against a two-year-old rump state.

The U.S.-led war against the Islamic State is entering its third year (eclipsing the time the U.S. spent fighting World War I). In part, that’s because it’s a small-bore campaign: the U.S. is spending $4 billion a year, equal to a third the cost of a single aircraft carrier (planes not included). “Employing an anemic application of force relative to previous air campaigns has yielded the Islamic State time to export their message, garner followers, and spread their message,” says David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who planned the 1991 bombing campaign that all-but-drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. “A comprehensive strategy to rapidly decompose the Islamic State is still lacking.”

On the ground—the only way to retake territory—the hapless Iraqi army, Kurdish forces, and a motley medley of Syrian rebels are spear-heading the fight. U.S. troops alongside them (about 5,000 in Iraq, and 300 in Syria), serve primarily as advisers, in another unfortunate echo of Vietnam. ISIS continues to hold on to its key centers of gravity: its self-declared capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, 300 miles away. “I’ve talked to some U.S. generals who are really frustrated—they could be in Raqqa in a week,” Zinni says. The U.S. is “losing credibility and they’re actually encouraging the enemy because they’re able to hold the ground for years now.”

But bombs or ground troops, by themselves, can’t cure ISIS or whatever radical group springs up to replace it. “Proposals to escalate or accelerate the campaign in Iraq and Syria in order to hasten the Islamic State group’s defeat would accomplish a lot less than commonly supposed,” says Stephen Biddle, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations who advised then-general David Petraeus on Iraq from 2007 to 2009. “The problem isn’t taking Mosul or Raqqa—it’s what would come afterward. Stabilization is unlikely without an investment vastly larger than most Americans will support.” The U.S. has spent $3 trillion and nearly 7,000 lives trying to bring stability to Afghanistan and Iraq, with little to show for it. (For his part, Petraeus, who ran Central Command from 2008 to 2010, only acknowledges that “we’re waging war in a way that is somewhat unique.”)

ISIS’s tenacity is the oxygen that gives life to would-be jihadists around the globe, pumping violence into places like Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. The significance of Tuesday’s killing of ISIS strategist Abu Muhammad Adnani, apparently in a U.S. drone strike, marks a clear blow to the jihadists. But there are others, waiting in the wings, eager to replace him, U.S. officials say.

Current U.S. commanders say their progress is limited by the lack of local ground forces to retake territory from ISIS. They estimated from the start that the fight could take at least three years, winning credit for candor that was MIA when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. U.S. officials say the anti-ISIS forces are making slow, but steady, gains, and an offensive to retake Mosul may begin by year’s end (originally, the Pentagon had penciled in April 2015 for the effort to retake northern Iraq’s largest city).

Part of the challenge is the Gordian knot that the Iraq-Syrian theater has become. ISIS sprang from the now-five-year-old Syrian civil war, which has killed 400,000 and displaced 10 million. Nearly half have fled the country, fomenting unrest across Europe. Iran and Russian back the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad—a fight the U.S. has resolutely refused to enter (even after Assad, despite a warning of a “red line” by President Obama, used chemical weapons on his own people in 2013). “At the end of the day, our current U.S. policy in the region has failed expensively and shredded our credibility,” says Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general says retired Army general Barry McCaffrey, who led an Army division into Iraq in 1991’s Gulf War.

With more than a dozen air forces overhead, and about 1,000 armed factions on the ground, the risk of crossfires and mistaken shoot downs is ever present. Don’t think that doesn’t pre-occupy U.S. military planners. Given the death-by-fire of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh at ISIS hands last year after his F-16 crash-landed inside the self-declared caliphate, the U.S. is going to great lengths to keep its ISIS-fighting troops safe. U.S. domestic political pressure to smash ISIS would surge following any such capture and torture of a U.S. pilot or commando. That’s why robust combat-search and rescue teams are on alert whenever U.S. warplanes fly in harm’s way, and why the U.S. military is training its forces to elude capture and escape from “a typical remote Iraqi/Syrian village.”

The U.S. has big goals for a small-scale war. Washington sees its mission as destroying ISIS, helping negotiate an end to the Syrian civil war, and keeping the lid on the historic rivalry between Islam’s Sunni and Shiite branches. Iran and Russia back Syria’s Assad. Saudi Arabia and Turkey want him gone. But Turkey is a problematic NATO ally that views Kurdish separatists, a key U.S. ally in the ISIS fight, as a bigger threat than ISIS. The U.S. is backing four major rebel groups with air strikes: the Iraqi army, moderate Syrian rebels, and separate Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. But crushing ISIS helps Assad, fueling the civil war, and bolstering Kurdish fighters angers Turkey, which believes some are allied with a Turkish Kurdish group responsible for terror attacks inside that country.

All this, rightly or wrongly, has tied U.S. hands. “There is no political will in the White House to even listen to serious recommendations from military commands,” says Derek Harvey, a retired Army military-intelligence colonel who spent much of his career in Iraq. “The original strategy explained by the President was barely adequate and even that was not resourced or executed well.” While Obama’s go-slow approach loses its lease in January, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump has detailed a replacement. “First and foremost are we going to be decisive and have some balls, or just continue to try to manage conflict to unacceptable ends,” Harvey adds. “If not the former, then we should not play in the sandbox.”

As the long-awaited showdown to retake Mosul looms, cracks are appearing in the allied front. Iraq’s parliament voted to oust Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi on corruption charges Aug 25. In recent days, it has become clear that the Qayara air base south of Mosul that is supposed to be a major launching pad for the assault was almost completed destroyed by retreating ISIS fighters in July. And Kurdish forces—long lauded as the best fighters in the region—are hungry. “The Peshmerga are not getting enough calories to keep them in the field,” Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland said Aug. 10 as he wrapped up his 11 months in charge of the ISIS fight. “We’re very interested in making sure that they have enough food just to carry on the fight.” Such news could well delay the Mosul fight into 2017.

“Doing nothing would be far preferable to this mess,” says Daniel Bolger, a retired Army three-star who commanded troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq before retiring in 2013. He plucks a quote from the military history he teaches at North Carolina State University, when asked about current U.S. strategy. It comes from a French general after he witnessed the doomed charge of the British Light Brigade against the Russians in the Crimean War in 1854: “It is magnificent, but it is not war,” Pierre Bosquet said. “It is madness.”

****

Then it seems, the matter of Islamic State in Libya is a month by month gig.

Obama extends Libya bombing mission against ISIS, officials say

President Obama has extended the U.S. military’s combat mission in Libya for another month at the request of senior military leaders, two defense officials with knowledge of the order told Fox News.

The decision keeps two U.S. Navy warships off the coast of Libya to continue striking ISIS and assist Libyan ground forces fighting the terror group in the coastal city of Sirte.

One of the U.S. warships had been scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf in September to begin airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and keep an eye on Iran, a week after four provocations between Iranian gunboats and U.S. Navy ships — one of which resulted in warning shots being fired by a U.S. warship. The other, a U.S. Navy destroyer, was supposed to head to the Black Sea near Russia next month. But both plans will be put on hold, according to one defense official.

USS Wasp, a large amphibious assault ship loaded with over 1,000 Marines as well as Harrier jets and Cobra attack helicopters, will remain off the coast of Libya – as will her escort ship, USS Carney, a guided-missile destroyer.

“The destroyer is close enough to be seen from shore,” one defense official said.

U.S. Marine Corps jets and attack helicopters from USS Wasp have conducted 92 airstrikes against ISIS in Libya as of Monday, according to statistics provided from the U.S. military’s Africa Command.

Marine Harrier jets have conducted 124 missions over Libya against ISIS since airstrikes began on Aug. 1. Marine Cobra attack helicopters have flown 31 missions as of Tuesday, according to statistics provided by one defense official who requested anonymity.

Another defense official told Fox News he expected U.S. airstrikes to be ending soon because ground forces loyal to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli which the U.S. military is supporting is now in control of 90 percent of Sirte. The Libyan city is located roughly halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi on the Mediterranean coast.

Earlier this week, Libyan forces suffered heavy casualties while fighting ISIS, according to reports. According to the BBC, 34 Libyan soldiers were killed and 150 wounded in recent fighting.

Estimates about the ISIS presence in Libya vary. In June, CIA Director John Brennan said there were 5,000 to 8,000 fighters in Libya. Recently, U.S. military officials said only “hundreds” remained in the ISIS-stronghold of Sirte, but did not have estimates for the rest of the country.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has officially disclosed the extension for the two U.S. Navy warships and airstrikes against ISIS there. The president’s initial authorization was for 30 days.