Robert Spencer is director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and is a columnist for www.townhall.com. Robert was a guest on Powering America Radio last week and shed some ominous and insightful analysis of what is going on behind the headlines regarding the Islamic State. You can hear the full show here – it is the September 17 episode.
As Spencer noted, Al Qaeda had an internal strategy rift over how aggressively to push their agenda, and one of it’s top operatives split off and started the stepped-up operations in Syria which quickly spilled over into Iraq and beyond.
Priority-one was capturing the Syrian oil fields, where this summer they easily stole 30,000 barrels of oil production a day (11 Million barrels annually), valued at over $1 Billion. They subsequently captured other fields in Syria and northern Iraq and began selling the crude into the Middle Eastern black market, racking up a cool $3 mil a day to fund their senseless slaughter.
Spencer also noted that President Obama’s strategy is to fund and equip the Syrian and Iraqi armies as the anecdote. That’s the same Iraqi army who can still barely lace their boots, and the Syrian army was in cahoots with ISIS from the get-go. His strategy almost seem to be more that of an accomplice than an opponent. And sadly, Spencer reiterated that had Obama moved swiftly, when every military adviser worth their salt knew this was a brewing problem, he could have easily stomped this out in Syria, before the infection spread across the Iraqi border. Therefore, as Spencer pointed out, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to contain, much less eradicate, the Caliphate.
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