‘We don’t have a strategy yet’
Obama says that his administration hasn’t yet developed a strategy to combat ISIS, as speculation mounts that the U.S. will bomb ISIS in Syria. To reporters:
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet. I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.
‘Iraqis responsible for their own security’
Obama says that any security gains made by the U.S. against groups like ISIS will be temporary, and that lasting improvements to the situation will need to be domestic:
The idea that the United States or any outside power would perpetually defeat Isis, I think, is unrealistic. We can rout Isis on the ground and keep a lid on things temporarily, but then as soon as we leave, the same problems come back again. We’ve got to make sure Iraqis understand that in the end they are responsible for their own security.
Vatican: Pope threat ‘nothing serious’
The Vatican downplays the possibility of ISIS posing a threat to the Pope, following a report by Il Tempo newspaper that the pontiff is being targeted by the militant group as the world’s most prominent Christian leader. A spokesman:
There is nothing serious to this. There is no particular concern in the Vatican.
Child soldier ‘witnessed atrocities’
A former ISIS child soldier now located in Turkey tells CNN he attended children’s training camps from the age of 13:
My friends and I were studying at the mosque, and they taught us that we should enrol in jihad with the [Islamic State] … I wanted to go, but my father did not allow me to.
He is allowed to go after the group threaten to behead his father for preventing him:
For 30 days we woke up and jogged, had breakfast, then learned the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet. Then we took courses on weapons, Kalashnikovs and other light military stuff.
The children are forced to witness atrocities:
They used to bring young [kids] to the camp to lash them,” Mohammed says. “When we go to the mosque, they order us to come the next day at a specific time and place to [watch] heads cut off, lashings or stonings.” “We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and we saw a woman being stoned [to death] because she committed adultery.
‘Oilfields earn millions a day’
Luay al-Khateeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, estimates ISIS is earning $2 million a day in oil revenues in Iraq and much more in Syria. The Iraqi fields are only producing half of the 80,000 barrels a day they are rated at, black-market crude is selling at $25-$60 a barrel:
From Syria they could be making double or even triple that.
Estimating the Syrian revenues is difficult since most of the oil is sold to the Bashar al-Assad government, which doesn’t disclose oil use figures, but the regime’s struggle means consumption is likely very high:
It’s a war of survival for the Syrian regime and they have no choice but to buy the oil — even though they know the money is going into ISIS hands.
‘It would be an honor to join ISIS’
Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, sends a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking to be made a ‘citizen soldier’ of the self-described caliphate:
I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State … It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don’t compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers.
‘Could reach America in two months’
King Abdullah says terrorists could reach America within months if left unchecked:
If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America. Terror knows no borders and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East.
He adds that ISIS’s beliefs are against Islam and must be opposed:
I do ask you to transmit this message to your leaders: Fight terrorism with force, reason and speed. These terrorists do not know the name of humanity, and you have witnessed them severing heads and giving them to children to walk with in the street.
‘Death before capture’
Shiite Turkmen in Amerli town say they will choose death over capture by ISIS, which considers them apostates. A government employee named Mehdi:
In every three to four houses we have dug graves. If the Islamic State storms our town everyone will be killing their wives and children and they will bury them.
He says the minority’s wives agree to death rather than being used as spoils of war, as ISIS have done with Yazidi minority women:
They say ‘we don’t want to end up in the hands of the Islamic State, being enslaved like those in Sinjar mountain….We don’t want the Islamic State to lay their hands on us.’
Beauty salon owner Fatima Qassim, who has been airlifted to Baghdad:
All the women will kill themselves – either shoot themselves or use kerosene and burn themselves to death.
She says her brother is fighting to defend the town and has remained behind with his wife and six children.
He put eight bullets in his rifle and he said if ISIS enters the town then I will kill my children one by one and then I will kill my wife and myself.
‘ISIS wants Lebanon’
Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s executive council, says ignoring the threat of ISIS could allow the group to seize Lebanon:
The terrorist threat on Lebanon is actual, real and continuous. And whoever doubts or underestimates [this threat] is either ignorant or negligent, and he harms the high national interest of Lebanon … ISIS’s decision has been announced. Their pretended slogan is to create the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria, which includes Lebanon.
He proposes a “tripartite” force to protect the country consisting of the military, the public and the “resistance”:
Whoever denies Hezbollah’s role in protecting [Lebanon is] oblivious to the truth.
Amerli siege ‘broken’
Iraqi Shiite fighters say they have broken the ISIS siege of the town of Amerli, where 15,000 ethnic Shiite Turkmen are trapped with dwindling food and water and under threat of massacre. Lieutenant General Qassem Atta:
Our forces entered Amerli and broke the siege
Iraqi air and ground forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga are supported by U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets as well as international airdrops of weapons and humanitarian supplies, in what is described as the first major success for the federal government in the conflict.
‘They will attack us whenever they can’
King, who sits on the House Homeland Security and Intelligence Committee, issues a warning that the ISIS will target the U.S. at any opportunity:
Al Qaeda didn’t need a grievance to attack us on 9/11. These groups, they don’t need any excuse. They will attack us whenever they can. I believe strongly that ISIS does plan on attacking the United States.
‘Seeks Western attack’
Rogers warns that ISIS wants an attack on the west to raise its profile:
Isis would like to have a Western-style attack to continue this notion that they are the leading jihadist group in the world
A major aspect of the threat to the U.S. is returning ISIS-trained American fighters, and they should be charged under laws prohibiting terror support:
I’m very concerned because we don’t know every single person that has an American passport that has gone and trained and learned how to fight
‘Mosul leaflet drop’
American planes drop leaflets ‘bearing the signature of the Iraqi defence ministry’ over Mosul, apparently as a prelude to bombing ISIS’s headquarters in the city. A source:
The American planes dropped leaflets this evening on the city of Mosul, asking the residents to evacuate their homes, which are close to the headquarters of ISIS, and to stay away from the gatherings of its elements
‘Threat to German security’
Merkel says in a speech to the Bundestag lower house that ISIS now controls an area in Iraq and Syria that is half the size of Germany:
The far-reaching detribalization of an entire region affects Germany and Europe … When terrorists take control of a vast territory to give themselves and other fanatics a base for their acts of terror, then the danger rises for us, then our security interests are affected
‘Cluster munitions’
Human Rights Watch cites ‘credible evidence’ that ISIS has used cluster munitions in at least one location in northern Syria in recent weeks. Local Kurdish officials and photographic evidence show the extremist group used cluster munitions on July 12 and August 14 during fighting around the town of Ayn al-Arab – known as Kobani in Kurdish – in Aleppo governorate near the northern border with Turkey. A statement:
The use of cluster munitions by non-state actors such as the Islamic State shows the urgent need for Syria and all nations that have not yet done so to join the ban on cluster munitions and destroy their stockpiles
‘Bring the battlefield home’
A Scottish-born girl is reported to have have moved to Syria and has disseminated jihadi messages via Twitter. The ‘@Umm Layth_’ Twitter account believed to be operated by is currently suspended. A tweet in June apparently supporting the Lee Rigby murder, Boston Marathon bombing and Fort Hood, Tx., shootings:
Follow the examples of your brothers from Woolwich, Texas and Boston. If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself.
Police spokesman:
A 19-year-old female from Scotland was reported missing to us by her family in November 2013. Inquiries are ongoing in relation to her whereabouts and we are supporting her family.
Starts carrying mattress
After seeking guidance from visual arts professor Kessler over the summer, Sulkowicz starts carrying her mattress wherever she goes on Campus.
Rape can happen anywhere. I was raped in my own dorm bed, and since then that’s become fraught for me. And I feel like I carry the weight of what happened there with me everywhere…For my senior thesis I will be doing a piece called ‘Mattress Performance’ or “Carry that Weight’ where I will be carrying this dorm room mattress everywhere I go for as long as I attend the same school as my rapist.
Kessler:
Carrying around your university bed—which was also the site of your rape—is an amazingly significant and poignant and powerful symbol. I felt I had something to offer in terms of how artists have done endurance performance pieces in the past, and the connection between activism and performance…The best art comes from a very personal place and from personal commitment and belief—otherwise you’re just doing an assignment…As a physical metaphor, the piece has tremendous power.
‘Ethnic cleansing’
Amnesty International says ISIS is carrying out ‘a wave’ of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. A statement says the group have:
…launched a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq, carrying out war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions, against ethnic and religious minorities.
It says several mass killings took place in Sinjar in August:
Two of the deadliest incidents took place when IS fighters raided the villages of Qiniyeh on 3 August and Kocho on 15 August. The number of those killed in these villages alone runs into the hundreds. Groups of men and boys including children as young as 12 from both villages were seized by IS militants, taken away and shot.
Senior Crisis Advisor Donatella Rovera:
Instead of aggravating the fighting by either turning a blind eye to sectarian militias or arming Shi’a militias against the Islamic State as the authorities have done so far, Iraq’s government should focus on protecting all civilians regardless of their ethnicity or religion. The people of northern Iraq deserve to live free from persecution without fearing for their lives at every turn. Those ordering, carrying out, or assisting in these war crimes must be apprehended and brought to justice.
‘We will send ISIS to death’
Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki promises to turn the country into a ‘grave’ for ISIS. During an unannounced visit to the northern Shiite Turkmen town of Amerli, he orders promotions and awards for those who fought in the weekend battle to successfully break an ISIS siege:
I salute you for your steadfastness and patience against those beasts and killers … All Iraq will be a grave for those infidels, and we will send all the [ISIS] gang to death
US will ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS militants
At a news conference in Estonia, Obama promises to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, the group responsible for beheading a second America journalist, Steven Sotloff.
We will not be intimidated. Those who make the mistake of harming Americans will learn that we will not forget and that our reach is long and that justice will be served.
He also vows that the U.S. would continue to lead the battle against “the kind of barbaric and empty vision that [ISIS] represents.”