A look at ISIS's growing struggles internally and with competition for control over its targeted territories, including Al Qaeda

The ISIS, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is definitely a rising force in the Middle Eastern landscape or, rather, in the political and social chaos presently prevailing in the region. It has reached its highest peak in terms of popularity thanks to the well-publicized brutality of its executions of foreigners and enemies, its ruthless use of the media and its military gains on the ground.

If, until now, everything has gone relatively smooth for Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's militias, the scaling up of the military interventions of the United States and its allies in Iraq and Syria will have long term negative effects on the extremists. A quick note on this: aerial strikes, missiles from warships and drones will definitely diminish the military threat, but unless someone regains the territories currently held by the ISIS, the war will never be completely won.

Until todat [sic] we have no idea of who will step up to this task: the Iraqi army or the Kurdish Peshmerga, an international or pan-arabic coalition, or the secular rebel groups waging their fight against Bashar al Assad? And the US forces? This is unlikely to happen during the presidency of Barak Obama, both because his Administration has been actively involved in putting an end to George W. Bush's military adventures, and because the deployment of the American army involves lengthy and costly preparations and is at high risk of human casualties.

If we look at the military side of the equation, there are serious doubts over whether Al Baghdadi's movement will be capable of maintaining, consolidating or expanding the territories under its control. The saying “the more enemies, the more honor” is certainly fascinating, but definitely constitutes an obstacle to the aspirations of the movement. There are too many fronts open for a militia that, according to a recent CIA assessment, can count on between 20 to 32 thousand fighters, in addition to the mass of sympathizers whose reliability is directly proportional to the military successes of the ISIS.

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Associated Press finally reports that Osama Bin Laden was broke when he died, squandering his fortune on the jihad

This is not news. This has been reported extensively in books for the past 15 years. Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower detailed how Bin Laden USED to be wealthy, but once he left his family and spent his inheritance on Al Qaeda, recruiting, and training in the 90's and early 2000's, he was broke. The media, for some reason until now, failed to report this important fact and continued portraying Bin Laden as a charismatic billionaire who could go on funding attacks against the U.S. for decades. It's all hogwash.

Read: "Al-Qaeda leader: Bin Laden spent wealth on jihad", USA Today (AP)

Bin Laden Myths

Early news reports this morning are suggesting that the Saudi Secret Service and French Secret Service both believe that Osama bin Laden died in August in Pakistan of tyhpoid. Whether this story is true or not has yet to be determined, but this does remind us of other bin Laden rumours we've all heard over the past decade. Hugh Hewitt had Lawrence Wright, the author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, on this past week, and he had some interesting things to say about bin Laden and the history of al Qaeda. He mentioned two myths that the media has erroneously propagated:                        Bin Laden is 6'4". Wright says this is ridiculous, and bin Laden's true height is actually around 6'0"-6'1". Bin Laden has kidney failure and requires dialysis. Nobody's sure where this originated, but it is false.

Mark Steyn: "The more the Islamists step on our toes, the more we waltz them gaily round the room."

From The Australian:

WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier. Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could." Read more.

VIDEO: 1999 ABC News Report on Iraq-Terrorism Link

I'm getting even more annoyed than usual at the liberal talking points lately. They keep repeating this line that "Saddam had no ties to terrorism" as part of their standard We-Hate-Bush-And-Blame-America-For-Everything rhetoric. Alan Colmes repeats this garbage fairly regularly and this is exactly what Ron Reagan was trying to put out before Christopher Hitchens put him in his place rather severely the other night.

Saddam had a long history of supporting terrorism and harboring international terrorists, including Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas. But in their effort to discredit Bush and the war effort, liberals have suddenly developed post-9/11 amnesia about Iraq's historical ties to terrorism.

View the Video

The video report details some of Saddam's known ties to terrorism at the time, including Osama bin Laden's attempt to seek assylum in Iraq following the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as tracing bin Laden's effort to locate weapons-grade uranium.

Audio: The War Room radio show out of Pittsburgh also has a spliced audio version of the report.

Christopher Hitchens Scores a 1st Round TKO Against Ron Reagan

On Thursday (7/7/05) night on MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast, host Ron Reagan got his rhetorical derriere handed to him by Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens about the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place. Like all good liberals, Ron Reagan can't think for himself so he simply repeats DNC talking points about the Iraq War daily.

The entire transcript below was taken from Radio Blogger.

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Ron Reagan: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

Christopher Hitchens: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

Ron Reagan: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

Christopher Hitchens: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

Ron Reagan: No, actually, I didn't say that, Christopher.

Christopher Hitchens: At this stage, after what happened in London yesterday?

Ron Reagan: What I did say, though, was that Iraq was not a center of terrorism before we went in there, but it might be now.

Christopher Hitchens: How can you know so little about...

Ron Reagan: You can make the claim that you just made about any other country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.

Christopher Hitchens: Absolutely nonsense.

Ron Reagan: So do you think we ought to invade Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers from 9/11 came from, following your logic, Christopher?

Christopher Hitchens: Uh, no. Excuse me. The hijackers may have been Saudi and Yemeni, but they were not envoys of the Saudi Arabian government, even when you said the worst...

Ron Reagan: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.

Christopher Hitchens: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

Ron Reagan: I guess because I listen to the 9/11 Commission, and read their report, and they said that Saddam Hussein was not exporting terror. I suppose that's how, Christopher.

Christopher Hitchens: Well, then they were wrong, weren't they?

Ron Reagan: No, maybe they just needed to listen to you, Christopher.

Christopher Hitchens: Well, I'm not sure that they actually did say that. What they did say was they didn't know of any actual operational connection...

Ron Reagan: That's right. No substantive operational connection.

Christopher Hitchens: ...which was the Iraqi Baath Party and...excuse me...and Al Qaeda. A direct operational connection. Now, that's because they don't know. They don't say there isn't one. They say they couldn't find one. But I just gave you the number, I would have thought, rather suggestive examples.