"U.S. officials say 6,000 ISIS fighters killed in battles"

[applegrove]

U.S. officials say 6,000 ISIS fighters killed in battles

By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/politics/us-officials-say-6000-isis-fighters-killed-in-battles/index.html

"SNIP.................



Washington (CNN)—The coalition fighting ISIS has killed more than 6,000 fighters, including half of the top command of the terror group, U.S. diplomatic officials said Thursday.

The number of fighters killed has not been publicly discussed before but was disclosed by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones, who told Al Arabiya television earlier in the day that an estimated 6,000 fighters have been killed. Jones said the military effort was having a "devastating" impact on ISIS.

The estimate was calculated by U.S. Central Command and finds ISIS fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria by coalition airstrikes, according to a U.S. military official. CENTCOM has kept a running estimate of fighters killed, but has not made it public.

U.S. intelligence estimates that ISIS has a total force of somewhere between 9,000 to 18,000 fighters. However, it is also believed the group can draw on thousands of other fighters whose loyalty shifts and could muster a force upwards of 31,000 total.



..................SNIP"

[niyad]

1. uh huh

[COLGATE4]

4. Makes you wonder how many "ISIS #2 leaders"

do we claim to have killed?

[hobbit709]

8. More#2s than a pencil factory-where have we heard this before

[niyad]

10. exactly

[hedda_foil]

2. Is it just me or does this feel eerily like the bizarrely ginormous Vietnam "body counts"?

Anyone? Anyone?

[applegrove]

3. Kinda does. Important though. The USA and Canada are at war.

Hopefully those chickenshits, who fly over there from the West to become 'big men' and play with people's lives in the name of allah, are dissuaded from going if 1/3 of ISIS is already dead. That is probably why the numbers are published.

[freshwest]

12. However, it's insignificant to a group that thinks in terms of generations and has world ambitions.

Last edited Fri Jan 23, 2015, 02:52 PM - Edit history (2)

These numbers mean little other than an attempt to stall the IS Caliphate:

War with Isis: Islamic Militants Have Army of 200,000, Claims Senior Kurdish Leader

By Patrick Cockburn - November 16, 2014

...The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that "I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken."

He estimates that Isis rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.

Proof that Isis has created a large field army at great speed is that it has been launching attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad at the same time as it is fighting in Syria. "They are fighting in Kobani," said Mr Hussein. "In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi and Jalawla . It is impossible to talk of 20,000 men or so..."

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/16/war-isis-islamic-militants-have-army-200000-claims-senior-kurdish-leader

Not to mention the required amount of time that will be involved:

‘Apocalyptic’ Isis beyond anything we've seen, say US defence chiefs

Senior Pentagon officials describe militants as ‘apocalyptic’ group that will need to be defeated but maintain limited strikes are sufficient

...(General) Dempsey, an Iraq veteran, has long been sceptical of US military involvement in the Syrian conflict, citing among other reasons the threat to US pilots from dictator Bashar al-Assad’s air defences...

Echoing the White House’s stated position, Dempsey said the US needed “a coalition in the region that takes on the task of defeating Isis over time,” something the administration this week has put effort into broadening and strengthening.

But the group’s ultimate defeat, the general said, would only come “when it is rejected by the over 20 million disenfranchised Sunnis that happen to reside between Damascus and Baghdad.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/isis-us-military-iraq-strikes-threat-apocalyptic/print

While no doubt not all 20 million displaced people support ISIS, that's a significant number of refugees. They want a homeland. That is why this isn't going away any time soon.

Also the IS is kidnapping women and girls who will be forced to reproduce more cannon fodder for ISIL. They have an end goal, the deaths of their followers and those they kill mean nothing. They believe in their cause. Which I contend is nothing more than 'Lebensraum.' They're preparing for a multi-generational war, like it or not.

BTW, the idea of a world caliphate is nothing new:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025357236#post23

[Art_from_Ark]

5. That's immediately what I thought of

I remember the body count reports back in the late '60s and early '70s-- It was always something like 700 Viet Cong/NVA killed/wounded, 2 Americans killed. Later it was revealed that those numbers were sometimes fudged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uncounted_Enemy

[KingCharlemagne]

14. "sometimes fudged" - methinks you should win an award for diplomatic

understatement of the year. Stll, props for your tact!

[TwilightGardener]

6. Did you read the whole article?

There's a lot of discomfort with using body counts as a measure of progress.

[cwydro]

7. First thing into my mind.

Spot on.

[niyad]

11. deja vu all over again

[KingCharlemagne]

13. Pretty soon, I predict we will hear them wax triumphant about seeing

a 'light at the end of the tunnel' (Westmoreland's prophecy in November 1967).

[JonLP24]

9. The most scary thing about these cults

Is they have a lot of these fighters convinced they're going to Jannah if they get killed. I tried to find some Quran text to reference this next part and you won't believe how easily I ran into ISIS propaganda (I hear so much but never knew specifically where it was) but basically they hijack & corrupt it, use it, claim to speak for Allah. That is if it was true--but if it was and they were right, if a whole bunch of terrorists are in Jannah then I'd probably rather be in hell. Beside the point, this Baghdadi dude out of nowhere claimed he is the leader of all Muslims which is where Al-Qaeda broke off feeling a Caliphite should be a little more democratic than that.