The media nor the Pentagon is reporting but:
U.S. troops serving at the Al Asad air base in Iraq are being targeted with “regular” mortar and rocket fire from Islamic State (IS) terrorists, according to the Pentagon.
The increasingly dangerous situation for the 320 U.S. troops serving at the base is raising concern among Pentagon officials, according to Defense Department spokesman Col. Steven Warren.
While no soldiers have been injured by the IS attacks, the rockets and mortars are landing around the base’s perimeter, according to CNN.
The Pentagon will not say if it is changing base security measures to account for the increased risk, according to CNN.
Raqqa is the defacto headquarters for Islamic State….has anyone questioned why no one including Assad has not bombed Raqqa? We have intelligence services globally that are watching all Islamic State operatives. Islamic extremist’s movements were easily trackable down to the building via geotags in his Twitter post.
People often are unaware that they’re accidentally posting their location on Facebook Inc. (FB) or Twitter Inc.’s (TWTR) social sites. One would be ISIS jihadist from New Zealand found that out the hard way.
IBRABO, a Canadian open source intelligence research firm, posted details of how a would-be Jihadi calling himself the “Kiwi Jihadi” accidentally revealed his current location and his locations during the past few months of 2014, months he’s spent serving the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), a group behind much of the brutal violence in Syria in Iraq.
Posting to his Twitter account, @M_Taylor_Kiwi, the “Kiwi Jihadi” boasted of his exploits with ISIS. But he also inadvertently shared months of maps detailing ISIS hideouts he spent time at. He deleted the Tweets — more than 40 — when he grew wise that they were geotagged and might have revealed his location. But iBrabo had already mapped his movements in glorious detail.
Fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL) is costing up to $10 million a day, the Pentagon has said. According to one estimate released this week, the fight could cost as much as $8.6 billion a year.
So far, that effort has been funded through a war budget that’s not subject to the same budget caps as the Defense Department’s base budget. It’s likely to continue to be funded this way, even though both Democrats and Republicans have referred to this fund as a “slush fund” for the Pentagon.
“Right now, the cost for operations in Iraq are coming out of Overseas Contingency Operations,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations. “For the foreseeable future, we believe that is the case.”
Work and others have made the case that funding the war against ISIS through the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget is the best option available since Congress has no plans this year to put an end to sequestration.
It gets worse….
Isis news: Caliphate unveils first annual budget of $2bn with $250m surplus war chest
Islamic State (Isis) has claimed it has an annual budget of $2bn (£1.31bn) for 2015 and an estimated surplus of $250m (£163m) which will act as the group’s war chest against the West.
In an interview with Arabic outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, religious leader Naji Abdullah from Mosul claimed that the group is using the budget as part of wider plans to develop and expand its self-proclaimed “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.
Another senior religious figure in the city of Mosul, Sheikh Abu Saad al-Ansari, said its first-ever budget would help those in poverty, the disabled and families of Islamic State (IS) fighters who have been killed in operations conducted by the US-led coalition or Iraqi forces.
According to The Economist, the group already pay its fighters a $400 a month, more than any Syrian rebel group or the Iraqi government pays its own fighters.
With the $250m surplus left after projected expenditure, the group plans to use the money to beef-up its fight against the US-led coalition which has been conducting air strikes against IS positions in both Iraq and Syria while arming Kurds in northern Iraq, according to The Washington Times.
As well as the announcement of an annual budget, the group has reportedly opened its own bank, known as the “Islamic Bank”, where customers are able to receive a loan or deposit their money.
Iraq expert Fouad Ali told Al-Araby that the announcement of a budget and an Islamic bank were propaganda tactics to “undermine the morale of the coalition and the Iraqi government”.
The group’s revenue is believed to come from kidnapping, taxes, oil revenues and extortion.
The announcement of the new budget or Islamic bank could not be independently verified by IBTimes UK.
In June last year, the militants launched an offensive across northern and western Iraq, capturing large swathes of land around vital cities such as Ramadi and Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, where they robbed $450m from the central bank.
