While President Obama and his administration have spent more than a year assuring everyone that Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is ‘on the run’, the reality has been doggedly telling us something else altogether. While Obama administration would like us to believe that its strategy — or rather lack thereof — has somehow ‘contained’ ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate has been spreading like an ugly rash, with new terrorist bases and strongholds popping up across the map.
NBC has obtained a copy of a classified ‘heat map’ showing the global expansion of ISIS. The document dated August 2016 is reportedly part of the White House briefings prepared by National Counterterrorism Center. According to the report, ISIS now has bases in 18 countries. The map shows branches of ISIS extending wide over Middle East, Africa and Far-East Asia. If the document is to be believed, ISIS now has a bridge head in continental Europe with its base in Russia’s North Caucasus.
This latest revelation destroys Obama administration’s narrative of downplaying the threat of Islamic terrorism and depicting ISIS as a terrorist threat in ‘decline’. NBC reports:
As the U.S. launched more airstrikes Tuesday against ISIS targets in Libya — representing an expansion of the U.S. military operations beyond Iraq and Syria — NBC News has exclusively obtained a map showing the global expansion of the terror group.The map is part of a classified briefing document received by the White House dated “August 2016” and prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center. It shows a stunning three-fold increase in the number of places around the globe where ISIS is operating.U.S. State Department documents indicated that in 2014, when the U.S. military began its campaign to destroy the extremists, there were only seven nations in which the fledgling state was operating. (…)In an election year in which the fight against terror has taken center stage, even the U.S. government seems to acknowledge the battlefield is growing.
London-based newspaper Daily Mail shared the copy of the map on Twitter:
Obama Administration is unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone fight, the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. The limited aerial campaign in Syria led by NATO forces has neither deterred ISIS from carrying out horrendous crimes on the captive populations nor diminished its ability to direct terrorist attacks across the world.
In the face of this deteriorating reality, President Obama hopes to crush ISIS through his ‘powerful rebukes’. With United States disengaged from the War on Islamic terrorism and the Europe powers pursuing their ‘time-tested’ policy of appeasement in face aggressive political Islam, one doesn’t have been an astute observer of history to know how things might turn.
Video: As the world burns, Secretary of State John Kerry tells CNN, “We have ISIS on the run” [July 17, 2016]
[Cover image courtesy CBS, YouTube]
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