Category Archives: Whistleblower

Hey John Kerry Read the Genocide Convention

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The Genocide Convention, it IS a Treaty:

Article 2 of the convention defines genocide as

…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2

Article 3 defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 3

In part from CNS: “I will make a decision on it as soon as I have that additional evaluation and we will proceed forward from there,” Kerry said.

Kerry was responding to a question put to him by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R.-Neb.), who is the sponsor of a resolution that would declare on behalf of Congress that it is in fact genocide.  The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians are sponsoring an online petition asking Kerry  to “declare that Christians, along with Yazidis and other minorities, are targets on ongoing genocide.”

Feb 25, 2016 – Congressman Rohrabacher slams Secretary of State John Kerry with the truth. Many Americans are proud in supporting Israel while ignoring the slaughter of innocent Christians in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt. They are deaf to the cries of Christians in SE Ukraine (Donbass). They ignore the resurrection of Christianity in Russia. Is America still a Christian nation? If so, then why won’t they defend Christians around the world?

     

Report details ISIS atrocities against Christians, presses State for ‘genocide’ label

FNC: Holding a bloody shirt he carries with him to remember the Islamic State’s crimes against Iraqi Christians, Douglas Bazi described for a Washington audience Thursday how he’s suffered at ISIS’ hands: He was kidnapped, had his teeth bashed in with a hammer and watched as his church was bombed.

“There is not ‘life’ in Iraq,” Bazi said, noting his congregation has been targeted so often it is called the “church of the martyrs, or the church of the blood.”

Bazi joined Middle Eastern Christian leaders and human rights advocates from the Knights of Columbus on Thursday as the group, along with In Defense of Christians (IDC), released a powerful and comprehensive report they say makes the case that the terror campaign against Christians and other minorities in Syria, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East can only be called one thing: genocide.

The report, along with the personal accounts conveyed at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday, put even more pressure on the Obama administration to officially label the atrocities as genocide.

The State Department and White House so far have not done so, but are facing a congressionally mandated March 17 deadline to make a decision.

“We are forgotten, and we are alone,” Bazi, a former ISIS hostage and now a priest at an Irbil refugee camp, lamented.

Bazi was joined by Irbil-based Dankha Joola, who pointed out that of the 2 million Christians who lived in Iraq before the war, fewer than 300,000 reside there today — many victims of killings and kidnappings, others forced to leave their homes by radicals, Al Qaeda, and now ISIS.

Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, which produced the 278-page document with IDC, hopes this report will help advance their cause.

*** Christian population in the Middle East

*** Map of Christian Persecution in the Middle East

 

“The evidence contained in this report as well as the evidence relied upon by the European Parliament fully support — I would suggest compel — the conclusion that reasonable grounds exist to believe the crime of genocide has been committed,” Anderson said.

The report lists 1,131 Iraqi Christians killed between 2003 and June 9, 2014, including where they were killed and when. It also incorporates 24 pages of witness statements collected between February and March of this year, and nearly 200 documented attacks — including destruction of property, sexual assaults, enslavement, torture, imprisonment and killing — in Iraq, Syria and North Africa. Also included is a documenting of attacks on 125 Iraqi churches from 2003 to 2014.

The report also features a legal brief arguing that the crimes committed rise to the level of the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The European Parliament in February already declared that genocide is taking place in the Middle East against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities at the hands of the Islamic State.

“While we believe this to be the most comprehensive report on this subject to date, covering incidents in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, we continue to receive new reports and new evidence,” Anderson said Thursday. But with new reports pouring in every day, he cautioned: “It may only be the tip of the iceberg.”

There have been widespread reports of crucifixions, beheadings and kidnappings, with women and girls forced into marriages with ISIS fighters, or sold into sexual slavery. In Syria, Christians once accounted for 10 percent of the population, but today their numbers have declined to an estimated 1 million or less. Last summer, ISIS kidnapped nearly 300 Christians from Syrian villages and later ransomed them back for $100,000 per person. The money was raised by the Assyrian Christian diaspora.

On March 4, gunmen stormed a Catholic retirement home in Yemen and gunned down 16 people, including four Indian nuns affiliated with the order established by Mother Teresa. According to reports, the city of Aden where the attack occured has seen its Christian population flee.

While groups like the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, press the administration to make the genocide designation, Congress is applying similar pressure.

There are bills with strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate expressing the sense of Congress that those who commit or support violence against Christians and other ethnic minorities including Yazidis, Turkmen and Kurds for ethnic or religious reasons are committing genocide.

When pressed, Secretary of State John Kerry said in a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that “you have to get facts from the ground, more than just anecdotal.”

The Knights of Columbus say they were asked to conduct Thursday’s report by David Saperstein, ambassador at-large for religious freedom at the State Department, to give the administration the evidence “on the ground,” and hopes it will clarify matters in Foggy Bottom.

When asked on March 1 why the administration has yet to make the determination, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the word genocide “involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached.”

Advocates say this report proves the legal thresholds have been met, and then some.

“We think the legal question is met and I would reiterate that what is required by the statute is a finding of probable cause, which is not beyond a shadow of a doubt, it that there are reasonable grounds to believe that this crime has occurred and is occurring,” said Anderson, “and I think the facts in this report establish, compellingly, that there are reasonable grounds to believe this crime is being committed.”

The State Department did not return a request for comment, though administration officials have said they recognize and will work to address the violence against Christians and other groups regardless of the words used to describe it.

At least three presidential cadidates — Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on the Republican side, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side — have called on the administration to designate this as a ‘genocide.’

 

Arms Dealers, Chicago, Middle East and the Donald

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To gain top security clearance, the background investigations are rigorous and rightly so. The investigations are designed to ensure there are no nefarious relationships, events or people of which embarrassment and extortion are made of and most of all to ensure no future compromises are possible.

Can Donald Trump pass these investigations?

Phillydotcom: Donald Trump is another rich guy who doesn’t have it so easy. Trump, of course, is the real estate developer who, while he might not have the biggest fortune in the world, has one of the loudest. He brought his yacht, the Trump Princess, into Washington last week where commoners could gawk at it.

He bought the boat last year from Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer who is his chief rival for the title of World’s Most Obnoxious Zillionaire, for a mere $30 million. He did have to spend $10 million fixing it up, but everyone agreed it was a steal.

This is not your everyday run-of-the-mill millionaire’s yacht. It is roughly the size of Cleveland. It makes the president’s yacht, Sequoia, parked across the way, look like a dinghy. It has, among other things, two marble waterfalls in the formal dining room, which also features suede-covered walls and leather-tiled ceilings. It has a master bedroom suite with a walk-in closet, a leather barber chair, a sauna and a 600-pound pop-up bar made of solid onyx. It has a movie theater, a swimming pool, an exercise room, two 30- foot speedboats, as well as gold fixtures in the bathrooms. Oh, I almost forgot, also a discotheque with a marble dance floor. Also 210 phones.

Adnan Khashoggi enjoyed life beginning in the 1970’s. He created great wealth being an arms dealer and several years later, his fortune collapsed do to the scandals of BCCI, Bank of Credit and Commerce International, while he was also part of the Iran Contra Affair and played in investment circles that included Donald Trump and Ferdinand Marcos. A Saudi, Adnan’s father was an opportunists who was a vehicle dealer selling trucks toMuhammad bin Ladin, Osama’s father.

Then there was the time Trump financially screwed TV game show owner and entertainer, Merv Griffin. There is something about Trump applying Chicago tactics, a city that so enamored Trump he thought the ‘windy city’ would be a great place for another home. Additionally, Trump was looking for re-financing for his real estate project in Atlantic City. Banks and investors told Trump he could not use junk bonds to do so. ‘Oh, I would not do that, ever to keep the other investors’. Don’t look now but he did use junk bonds and the first missed debt payment came do and it was late. The junk bond market tanked.

In 2001, Chicago was booming or was it? Seems some seedy people saw opportunity.

Will big names, big egos, bring big trouble?

July 20, 2001|By David Greising.

ChicagoTribune: We now know Donald Trump and Marvin Davis are coming to town with big real estate deals. Mark my words: These won’t be the last out-of-gas 1980s egoists to make their move on Chicago.

Throwback titans are like ants that way: If you see one, there’s bound to be a whole colony.

Keep your eyes peeled and your hands on your wallets. Before you know it, Ivan Boesky will be betting on takeovers from deluxe office space in Marvin Davis’ new building.

Michael Milken will show up, too. He’ll reassemble his famous X-shaped trading desk inside Trump’s tower.

The top floor, no doubt. Which, given the expected skinniness of the soon-to-be Trump Spindle Chicago, should be about the size of an isolation cell at Cook County Jail. This should make Milken feel very much at home.

Both Milken and Boesky are felons banned from the securities business. I’ll bet you’re thinking they can’t possibly set up investment shops in the Trump and Davis spaces.

But no worry. Problem solved. If the Securities and Exchange Commission comes after them, Boesky will simply call his old defense lawyer, Harvey Pitt, who now just happens to be President Bush’s nominee to run–you guessed it–the SEC.

Watch for Marc Rich to revive his commodities business here. The Hunt brothers–best remembered as the men who killed the Chicago Board of Trade’s silver pit–will resume trading the not-very-precious metal.

Boone Pickens will make a comeback. He’ll resume haranguing CEOs and launch hostile takeovers against Ameritech, Amoco or First Chicago.

Wait a second. Those big names from the 1980s didn’t survive the mismanagement of the 1990s. Pickens will have to find a new target. Motorola, maybe.

High-finance hangers-on will come flocking in, too.

Milken will need a valet. This means Bill Farley will have a job again. After his embarrassing bust-out at Fruit of the Loom, Farley gets a second chance to be a Milken-made man.

And if Milken chooses to abandon the natural look and resume wearing the toupees he favored during the 1980s, he’ll need an experienced wig dresser. Someone who really knows fashion. Revlon’s Ron Perelman would be just the person for the job.

The Davis name will lure some tarnished glitterati from the days when the one-time wildcatter owned 20th Century Fox. Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis will sell Davis on a new restaurant concept: “Planet Washed Up Movie Star.”

Former Beatrice deal maven Jim Dutt will work the grill. John Sculley can sell the Pepsi. Former R.J. Reynolds chief Ross Johnson will probably even try to sell cigarettes.

It won’t all be gravy and glory for Trump and Davis. Merv Griffin will stop by–not to star in a TV show, but to rag on Trump for bankrupting the Taj Mahal Casino after he wrestled it away from Merv.

And another Davis, Al, will come into town. The longtime Oakland Raiders owner hasn’t seen a winning Raiders team since the 1980s, but that won’t stop him from chiding Marvin Davis for his failed effort to bring an NFL team to Inglewood, Calif.

Before you know it, junk bonds will trade in the Board of Trade’s pits. It will get so raucous the FBI will send undercover agents to investigate again. And just as they did in the 1980s, they’ll come out full of suspicions but mostly empty handed of criminal convictions.

And this time, the feds will be fighting some new top-notch legal talent. Attorneys who know the way the government thinks when it goes under cover into the pits. Dan Webb and Tony Valukas will be the go-to lawyers on the traders’ defense side.

This is the life that awaits Chicago now that Davis and Trump are coming to town.

Mayor Daley has embraced the idea. He met with Trump and emerged visibly awed by the glint of Trump’s celebrity. Or maybe that was just the glare from the top of Trump’s head.

Trump says he may even make Chicago his second home. Consider the way Chicago could become with Trump and Davis in town, and you’ve got to wonder: Is that a promise, or a threat?

Upon Trump’s announcement for the Oval Office, he filed this 92 page financial disclosure.  There are countless companies in Trump name variations, some successful, others not at all but all over the globe including Turkey, Qatar and Azerbaijan.

In closing, one final point needs to be made. Where does Trump have his products made? He has been outsourcing since 2006.

WashingtonExaminer; Donald Trump has been offshoring the production of Trump-brand products since 2006, despite his unrelenting criticism of companies that send jobs overseas, according to a new report.

The report comes less than a week after Trump was caught defending outsourcing as “not always a terrible thing” and sometimes “a necessary step” in a 2005 blog post unearthed by Buzzfeed News.

Trump-brand products have been outsourced to China, Japan, Honduras and Brazil as well as European countries Norway, Italy and Germany since 2006, according to data collected by ImportGenius, a company that gathers information related to exports and imports.

Everything from slippers and men’s shirts to ballpoint pens and “Trump body soap” has come to the U.S. from Asian and South American countries, the data shows. Trump has previously admitted that clothes such as ties, which belong to his menswear line, are manufactured in China and Mexico. Full article here.

IBM: Organized Cybercrime Threat

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How Open Security Outpaces Cybercrime

To combat the increasingly organized cybercrime threat, we’ve built an open security platform that helps the world fight the bad guys.

 

Cybercrime Pays, Which is Why it’s Becoming Organized
 Cybercrime has rapidly moved from the world of small-stakes theft to become one of the most profitable types of crime in the world.

Seeing the enormous opportunity in everything from identity theft to large-scale corporate incursions, hackers are banding together to run much larger attacks, similar to traditional crime rings.

80% of cyber-attacks are driven by criminal organizations, in which data, tools and expertise are widely shared.

Moats are Not Keeping the Intruders Out
Years ago, in the world of local networks, enterprises were able to focus attention and resources on protecting their own security “endpoints.” If threats couldn’t pierce the perimeter, critical data would remain safe. Now, enabled by a combination of ubiquitous connectivity, data availability, open networks and the growing Internet of Things, hackers are storming the castles in waves. In fact, they’re already inside—the average security breach isn’t discovered for months. What’s needed is not a moat, but an intelligent immune system that detects anomalies and marshals rapid response. And most in-house cybersecurity teams are stuck piecing together multiple sources of intelligence to try to keep up.

Organized Threats Require a Coordinated Response
Recognizing the increasing dangers posed by hackers—both freelance and organized—we opened up our own global network of cyberthreat research and invited the industry to share intelligence—creating an entirely new approach to fight the threat.

In April 2015 we opened the IBM X-Force Exchange, a 700-terabyte threat database that includes two decades of malicious cyber-attack data from IBM, as well as anonymous threat data from the thousands of organizations for which IBM manages security operations. Already, more than 2,000 organizations across 16 global industries are active on the platform, including:

  • 5 of the 10 largest banks in the world
  • 6 of the top 10 retailers
  • 6 of the top 10 automakers
  • 3 of the top 10 healthcare providers

Expanding on our open approach to security, we also launched the IBM Security App Exchange, allowing partners, vendors and customers to share and build applications, security app extensions and enhancements to IBM Security products.

****  Ever wonder how cyberattacks and malware are created, and how they get into your system to steal your data? See the life of a cyberthreat first hand, from the moment of its inception within the Dark Web of hackers, to when it is sent around the world to infect as many systems as possible. With collaboration across the networks of “the good guys,” we can help stop these exploits from being shared and spread. Similar to how vaccinations and health warnings can help to stop a disease pandemic, having the right protocols in place can help send malware back to the Dark Web for good.

Join the fight against hackers at http://bit.ly/1IrvwLu

Lynch Keeping WH in Dark on Hillary Email Case?

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Clinton emails: GOP sues, senators press attorney general

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday she hasn’t discussed the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails with the White House and doesn’t plan to.

The investigation deals with the potential mishandling of sensitive information that passed through the former secretary of state’s private email server, and Lynch’s assurance to the Senate Judiciary Committee came shortly after the GOP sued for access to Clinton’s emails.

The two lawsuits spring from Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year seeking copies of emails and text messages sent or received by the Democratic presidential candidate and her top aides. In court filings, the GOP says it has not received any documents in response to the requests.

The GOP litigation brings the total to at least 34 civil suits so far involving requests for federal records related to Clinton’s service as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. The Associated Press is among those with a pending case at the Washington courthouse.

“For too long the State Department has undermined the public and the media’s legitimate right to records under the Freedom of Information Act, and it’s time it complies with the law,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said.

The State Department has released more than 52,000 pages of Clinton’s work-related emails, but her private lawyers have withheld thousands more that they deemed to be personal communications unrelated to her job. Also left unresolved are questions about how Clinton and her closest aides handled classified information.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the department was aware of the RNC lawsuit but would not comment on pending litigation.

“We take court orders seriously, but I can’t go into predictions about our ability to produce what’s in these suits in a specific time frame,” he said.

The AP last year discovered Clinton’s use of the private email server, which had been set up in the basement of Clinton’s New York home by former State Department staffer Bryan Pagliano, for her to use exclusively for her work-related emails while she was secretary.

The FBI for months has investigated whether sensitive information that flowed through Clinton’s email server was mishandled. The State Department has acknowledged that some emails included classified information, including at the top-secret level. Clinton has said she never sent or received anything that was marked classified at the time.

The inspectors general at the State Department and for U.S. intelligence agencies are separately investigating whether rules or laws were broken.

Republican senators questioned Lynch on Wednesday about whether she had discussed the FBI’s investigation with President Barack Obama or anyone at the White House, alluding to comments in January from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that Clinton herself was not at risk of being charged with a crime.

“No, sir, I have not,” she replied adding that she did not anticipate doing so in the future.

Asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whether she would advise Earnest to “just stay silent” about the investigation, she replied, “Certainly it’s my hope that when it comes to ongoing investigations that we all would stay silent.”

She said she didn’t know where he was getting his information.

“I can assure you that neither I nor anyone from the department has briefed Mr. Earnest or anyone at the White House about this matter,” or other law enforcement investigations, she said.

Lynch was also asked about media reports that the Justice Department had offered Pagliano immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for his cooperation. Pagliano previously declined to testify before Congress, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee chairman, asked Lynch whether Pagliano’s immunity offer carried over to congressional committees. Grassley, R-Iowa, wants to recall Pagliano to testify if he has received immunity.

Lynch declined to answer the question.

“We don’t go into the details of the agreements that we have with any witness in any matter in ongoing investigations,” the attorney general said.

“The consistency with which the department handles the ongoing matters, whether they involve someone with a famous last name or not, is something that we take very seriously,” Lynch said. “We treat them the same, and that is how the public has confidence in the investigations that we conduct.”

Hat Tip Delta Force, Capture of Islamic State CW Expert

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Update: He was captured last month: Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, Iraqi dictator’s chemical and biological arms specialist, captured by Delta Forces. He worked directly for Saddam Hussein.

(CNN) The U.S. military has conducted airstrikes against targets it believes are crucial to ISIS’ chemical weapons program based on information provided by a senior ISIS operative involved in chemical weapons, several U.S. officials told CNN.

The information he provided to interrogators has given the U.S. enough information to begin striking ISIS areas in Iraq associated with the group’s chemical weapons program. One U.S. official said the goal is to locate, target and carry out strikes that will result in the destruction of ISIS’s entire chemical weapons enterprise — mainly mustard agent ISIS produces itself.

It was not immediately clear if the U.S. was able to strike all of the necessary targets. Intelligence and surveillance of the targets had indicated in some Iraqi locations that civilians were present at prospective sites, officials told CNN.

While the goal is to end ISIS’ capability to manufacture and use mustard agent, the actual targets being struck include people, facilities and vehicles. The agent itself is made in relatively small quantities and has a fairly short shelf life, the U.S. government believes. Since the weekend, the U.S. has struck what it is calling “improvised weapons facilities” and other targets near Mosul, Iraq, but officials would not say if these were chemical weapons sites.

The operative was captured in one of the first missions of the so-called Expeditionary Targeting Forces. It is a group of some 200 Special Operations troops assembled in northern Iraq to gather intelligence and pursue ISIS operatives on the ground by either capturing or killing them in Iraq, and eventually in Syria. Carter recently acknowledged the ETF is “having an effect and operating.

U.S. Captures, Interrogates Top Islamic State Chemical Weapons Expert

Capture is among recent U.S. advances in ongoing effort to counter terror network

WSJ: WASHINGTON—The U.S. military captured one of Islamic State’s top chemical weapons experts in a recent raid—and has spent several weeks interrogating him about the terror network’s capabilities and planning, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The detainee, who wasn’t named by U.S. officials, is expected to be released to the Iraqi government at the end of this week, the officials said.

Iraqi military spokesmen declined to comment on his capture. A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The capture was among recent U.S. advances in an ongoing, though uneven, effort to counter Islamic State, which has maintained a foothold in Iraq and Syria while also recently expanding into parts of Libya as well.

In one airstrike last week in Syria, Pentagon officials believe they killed Abu Umar al-Shishani, a top Islamic State commander known fairly widely by the nickname “Omar the Chechen.”

The chemical weapons expert was captured in recent raid the Pentagon acknowledged last week. However, officials at the time said they had captured a high-ranking operative, without providing further detail. His actual role in the organization was disclosed on Wednesday.

The move came as U.S. and Western officials have grown increasingly concerned about the terror network’s plans to use chemical weapons against enemies and in the U.S.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress last month that Islamic State already has used chemical weapons “numerous times” in Iraq and Syria, adding that “aspirationally, they would like to do more.”

It was at least the second time that the U.S. military was able to capture and interrogate a person with valuable intelligence about Islamic State’s operations. In May, U.S. special-operations forces conducted a raid in Syria that killed Abu Sayyaf, considered to be one of the group’s financial chiefs. His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was detained and interrogated by the U.S. military. The intelligence from that raid helped U.S. officials run numerous operations and crack down on the group’s access to money, officials have said.

*****

In part from ToI: The two Iraqi officials identified the man as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who worked for Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Military Industrialization Authority where he specialized in chemical and biological weapons. They said al-Afari, who is about 50 years old, heads the Islamic State group’s recently established branch for the research and development of chemical weapons.

He was captured in a raid near the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, the officials said. They would not give further details.

The officials, who both have first-hand knowledge of the individual and of the IS chemical program, spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to talk to the media. No confirmation was available from US officials.

Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the intelligence officials said. They and the Western official also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

IS has been making a determined effort to develop chemical weapons, Iraqi and American officials have said. The militant group, which emerged out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is believed to have set up a special unit for chemical weapons research, made up of Iraqi scientists from the Saddam-era weapons program as well as foreign experts.

Iraqi officials expressed particular worry over the effort because IS militants gained so much room to operate and hide chemical laboratories after overrunning around a third of the country in the summer of 2014, territory which they then joined with territory they controlled in neighboring Syria. Full article here.