24 Feb 15

“All are born ignorant. Many then spend the remainder of their natural lives practicing it to perfection!”

Wiggington

ISIS Update, from a friend in the System:

“We review all ISIS/AlQaeda documents, publications and videos here.

Key learnings:

1) They go to great lengths to identify and recruit potential jihadis from Western cultures. Their literature provides detailed schematics with regard to building bombs from local materials, and detailed instructions on how to smuggle them through security checkpoints. Mostly low-tech, but effective.

Their literature, once rude and crude, is now polished and professional! They obviously pay big money to get good and experienced editors, as well as technical people. Well written articles, features, and interviews. All slanted to appeal to young Westerners.

2) They are no amateurs! I have watched countless videos of ISIS fighters aggressively confronting Iraqi Army troops.

Here are my take-aways:

a High, almost reckless, degree of aggressiveness. They will come right after you, without hesitation! They display no fear of fixed, defensive positions, no matter how formidable. They nonchalantly accept a high level of casualties. Inflicting heavy casualties does not slow down the rest!

b They are extremely competent with satchel-charges and RPGs and dependably employ them in significant numbers.

c. They have good individual gear. Rifles are a mixture of Kalashnikovs and M4s. Mostly iron sights. I see most employing good cheek-welds, competent finger discipline, and using cover appropriately. They’ve obviously been exposed to some degree of Western training.

Most are wearing new, camouflage uniforms, new web-gear, sidearms, and knives.

Lots of Draganov/PSL variants. In fact, these are the only long guns I see equipped with optics.

d. They are well practiced in small-unit tactics. PKMs provide a base of fire, while maneuver elements aggress the objective. The Soviet 7.62x54R round is amazingly effective in unceremoniously converting ‘cover’ to concealment. Oh, that our SAW did anything similar!

e. No body armor, nor helmets on the bulk of ISIS fighters

3) Their cruelty and brutality know no bounds! They delight in inflicting pain on helpless people. No hesitation, no lamentation, and no mercy. When captured, you’re finished!

Obviously, many of these videos are edited, and chosen for their message, but ISIS fighters I’ve seen appear mostly well trained, very well armed, and well motivated.

It is clear to me that these people are not vulnerable to reason, nor negotiation. They believe they are living in ‘end times,’ and that it is their sacred duty to exterminate all of us. And, they mean to do it!

Expecting them to shoot themselves the moment police show up, the way a typical ‘active shooter’ does in the country, represents delusional thinking! They are not afraid, and they are able to plan well, move well, communicate well, equip well, organize well, and fight well as a team. They have no concern, nor reverence, for human life, even their own!

For one, I’m frightened!

And for one, I’m always armed, and I constantly keep an M4 in my car, and another next to my bed!”

“When you will not fight when you can easily win, without bloodshed, and when you still will not fight when victory is sure and not too costly, you may well come to the moment when you will have no choice but to fight with odds against you, and you have only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case:

You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, simply because it is better to perish as warriors than live as slaves.”

Churchill

/John