Global SITREP B6-16: Knowledge is Power

Jordan Border Crossing: Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) In Control

7 April 2016: Some time ago I gave the readers of Eschatology Today a warning regarding acceptance of news reporting. The warning to the reader was that during wartime the truth will often be hidden by a bodyguard of outright lies or various levels of disinformation. The war continues and so does my warning. We need to be careful no matter where the information we receive comes from.

A case in point is the above image posted by DEBKAfile yesterday. It carried this opening sentence: "ISIS forces in southern Syria overran several Jordanian border crossings south of the Yarmouk River on Tuesday, April 5. This disastrous turn of events is illustrated by an exclusive picture obtained by debkafile of an ISIS fighter unfurling the organization’s flag at one of the crossings which sports a Jordanian flag."

Everything about this sentence is true except for the most important part - the identification of the terrorist group and flag in the image. As I privately informed the editors at DEBKAfile yesterday  afternoon (we are on the same side in this war, no?) that is NOT an ISIS terrorist waving the ISIS battle flag at an apparently abandoned Jordanian border crossing.  It is a Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) terrorist waving the Al-Qaeda-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra battle flag. 

There is no way on Earth that the astute and experienced editors at DEBKAfile made such a blatant error in the positive identification of an ISIS flag versus the Jabhat al-Nusra flag. It is something a 6-year old child with two minutes of instruction could correctly do with flash cards. 

So, the first question is: For what not-so-obvious political purpose or agenda would DEBKAfile deliberately publish a disinformational report for the whole world to see, and then create a narrative account of reactions to the image by the Israeli government and those of Jordan, the US, the Saudi and UAE military officers? Is the world to believe the military intelligence professionals working for these governments do not know the existent facts on the ground at the Jordanian border? Of course they do. So why the nonsense from DEBKAfile for John and Jane Q. Public to consume?

The second question is: If this photograph is accurate in its depiction, does it provide the first solid evidence that the forces of Islamic State and the jihadists of Al-Qaeda's brand have joined forces in the face of the ongoing Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Syrian military offensive, plus the U.S.led Coalition military operation? 

The third question is: If so, then why is this not the core subject of the DEBKAfile report? Why is it not the subject of Corporate News Media (in the U.S. that's ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CNN and the lot) reporting? Buckle up, a completely unexpected Immelmann maneuver begins with the next sentence. 

DEBKAfile actually got the core issue correct. The Sunni jihadists of the self-declared Islamic State caliphate and the nebulous global jihadists under Al Qaeda's banner are not enemies - they're allies! They are allies in their primary jihad against the secular West, Christianity and Judaism, and secondarily against their enemies of the Russian-Syrian-Iranian axis. How do I know this? I read the stuff the corporate media have embargoed in their boardrooms because they are in agreement with the agenda being pursued by Western governments, led by our own.

Remember the good ol' days? The enemy was known and clearly identified. They were Communists who followed the rigid ideology of Communism. The US and our European and Pacific allies took this clear identification of the enemy and his ideology and crafted a warfighting doctrine with which to defeat the enemy. Ultimately the doctrine succeeded, at least with respect to the former-USSR. 

Now look at the enemy today. We know them as Islamists and their ideology is Islamism. And that's where the similarity ends because the US and our European and Pacific allies resolutely refuse to name Islamists as the enemy and Islamism as their ideology. From this point the failure escalates due to an abject refusal to use this knowledge to craft a warfighting doctrine with which to defeat this enemy. 

This is the reason why this war in many military and intelligence circles, which was fully engaged long before many of us realized that out enemy was at war with us, is known as "The Long War." Without the requisite definition of an enemy and his ideology upon which a warfighting doctrine must be crafted this war will be endless. A perpetual and perfectly good global crisis which those wielding power have no intention of allowing to go to waste.

Remember the "Global War on Terrorism"?  My how the political establishment wailed when this nomenclature was done away with, never mind the fact that no nation has ever successfully waged war against a tactic. Terrorism is not an enemy, it is a tactic used by the enemy. And the recent media headlines across Europe and the US were absolutely predictable: "Terror Attacks San Bernardino" and "Terror Attacks Paris" and "Terror Attacks Brussels."  Terror did not attack anyone or any city. Islamists executing their ideological Islamism attacked the US and French Marines in Beirut in 1983, and every cold-blooded Islamic assault since then to include San Bernardino, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, London, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, PA, just to name a handful.

Why isn't this the real news then? Why propagate falsehood for the public to consume. You see where I am coming from, and where I am going. People are being conditioned to believe the lie. Any lie.  Any lie the regime in power wants the public to believe will be accepted because the public has been pre-conditioned to believe it. Heaven help those who reject the lie, whatever it is. And it took me all of four days to attempt to make some kind coherent sense of this and express it here.

I'm not going to hold my breath on this, but there is just the slightest chance the Islamic State-Al Qaeda alliance might become public knowledge through the global corporate media. I hold out this slim chance because I have seen in the past day or so news from Arab-language media where some exceptionally brave Muslim journalists have actually called out Islam as being responsible for the unending wave of global terror. Muslims usually don't call out other Muslims or cite Islamism as the cause of cold-blooded carnage and live long to tell about it. Chances are they'll be assassinated or beheaded, or worse, but it is a faint glimmer of a chance that will likely evaporate with a new wave of jihadist assaults in Rome, London, New York or WhoKnowsWhere. 

Marana'tha Lord, Marana'tha!

Global SITREP B2-16: Russian Military Deployment in Syria to Commence a Drawdown

First Russian transports got their wheels up Tuesday morning 15 MAR 16.

14 March 2016: In a plot twist that caught most by surprise, with the exception of the governments of Syria and Iran, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin today announced that Russia will commence a redeployment of the bulk of its forces out of Syria and back to Russia tomorrow. 

Apparently Putin believes that Russian forces have completed their primary mission in the rescue of Bashar al-Assad's regime from what appears to be imminent collapse just 6 months ago. Exactly which forces and military assets are withdrawn and their timetable for redeployment remains to be determined. A key consideration revolves around the formidable Russian air defense network and whether it remains, is pared down or removed entirely. It appears certain that a contingent of Russian forces will likely remain at the Tartus naval installation and the Hmeimim Air Base near Jableh for some indeterminate amount of time.

This withdrawal comes at a time where neither of the two primary enemies, Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, have been militarily defeated, so it remains to be seen just exactly what effect this withdrawal with have on the battlefield, other than a reduction in the number and possibly quality of airstrikes jihadist forces will be subjected to, and the bulk of the combat now left to Iranian and Syrian forces and their proxy militias. 

This development makes for a genuine wait-and-see situation for what develops next given what Bible prophecy declares will happen in Syria (Jeremiah 49:23-27 and Isaiah 17), as well as the fact that Israeli air superiority over the Golan, southern Syria and Lebanon will continue as before, as will Iranian belligerence with Hezbollah on Israel's northern frontier.

Global SITREP E4-14: A Psalm 83 Link to the Islamic State?

UPDATE 17 November 2014: According to a knowledgeable Kurdish military leader, the Western nations have severely underestimated the fighting strength and physical numbers of the Islamic State's forces.  The West (think Obama Administration) is operating under a false assessment that IS forces number in total about 31,500 men. However, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff of Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, makes the highly supportable assessment that the West's assessment is seven times lower than the true strength of the Islamic State forces. Kurdish field commanders say the true figure is closer to 200,000 that have joined, been assimilated through baya, or actively recruited from among the Sunni populace.

The Kurdish assessment is backed by the fact that IS is able to muster thousands of troops for major assaults simultaneously from Kobani in northern Syria, to Baghdad in Iraq and in several different locales in Kurdistan in between.  Based upon the territory under IS control in Iraq and Syria (2,500,000sq.km.) there are between 10 and 12 million Sunni men of fighting age in the pool of manpower IS can draw from. A Western commitment of boots-on-the-ground would have to be closer to the numbers of Desert Storm in 1991 (500,000 to 600,000) in order to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State as the Obama Administration's plan exists today. Five bombing mission per day ain't gonna cut it.

16 November 2014: According to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's just released public communique, the list of Islamic State wilayat (provinces) based upon the baya (an Islamic binding oath of allegiance) received from these locales. In addition to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sinai and the Nile valley of Egypt (detailed below) the other acknowledged baya have come from al-Baghdadi's devoted followers in Saudi Arabia; Yemen; Algeria (Army of the Caliph); Libya (Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam). Interestingly, some received baya have been ignored, particularly those received from non-Arab nations such as Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines.

This would indicate a distinct Arab supremacist nature is involved with the initial growth of the Islamic State. The acknowledgement of these baya is found in Islamic State references to these various places as, for example, Wilayat Sinai.  Next on the expansionist agenda are Wilayat Jordan and Wilayat Palestine, meaning all of Israel beginning with Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.  The "liberation" of Jerusalem and the rest of "Palestine" is the primary task assigned to Wilayat Sinai, and their brethren in the Nile Valley who will wage war on the Egyptian government currently led by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi whom they have identified as "Zionist collaborators." The Islamic State war against Egypt from within Sinai and the Nile Valley is to take precedence over the Liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem. (See Isaiah 19 and Ezekiel 29 for related Bible prophecy).

The Islamic State also has declared another of its objectives is to annihilate the Shi'a sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and, obviously, Iran and Lebanon. They will leave the jihad against the "Crusaders" to their core jihadist partners in Al Qaeda and its veterans in Syria, the newly identified Khorsan group.

15 November 2014: Exactly one month ago today in the first paragraph of Global SITREP D8-14: General Observations  I posted information regarding the Sunni terrorist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and how they had sworn their jihadist allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and who are largely funded by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - the same Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that was so steadfastly supported by the Obama Administration in their uprising against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government. Remember this because it is both very instructive about a president with two years remaining in the White House and who has long been at war with the government of the State of Israel.

I now report to you that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, (a/k/a Ansar Jerusalem and 'Supporters of the Holy House' - which is the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount) has gone well past declaring their allegiance to the Islamic State, they have begun declaring that the Sinai which they control is a wilayat (an Arab word meaning an administrative division, a province, a state) of the Islamic State. This is what the Islamic State's twitter feed banner above illustrates, that Sinai is a wilayat under the control of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and is an official province of the Islamic State Caliphate.  

It may well be important for us to begin to understand this development in strictly prophetic terms and thus signalling the closeness of the coming final fulfillment of Psalm 83. At this time it does appear  that the Sinai Wilayat of the Islamic State represents the seventh of the ten groups identified by Asaph in Psalm 83 being an integral part of the confederacy of one consent seeking to destroy the State of Israel. The Sinai Wilayat of the Islamic State are  the Amalekites identified by Asaph in Psalm 83:5-8. There is also a branch of the Islamic State now active in the Nile Valley of Egypt as well.

The Amalekites were the very first enemy Israel encountered going back to antiquity when Israel wandered the wilderness of present-day Sinai and western Saudi Arabia in the days of Moses and Joshua after the exodus from Egypt. Exodus 17:8-16 provides a brief description of the first day-long battle between Israel and the Amalekites at Rephidim. Verses 14-16 foretell the final destruction of the Amalekites in the coming final fulfillment of Psalm 83.

As discussed in the previous series of Operation Protective Edge SITREPs, and as stated many times over by Israel's current leadership, HAMAS is Islamic State and Islamic State is HAMAS. Sunni jihadists are Sunni jihadists. HAMAS is born of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is HAMAS. Islamic State is in Gaza. At some point HAMAS may announce this themselves, but that would merely a confirmation of what we already know. Also at some point the Obama Administration may have to throw their support for the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood under the proverbial bus because it has recently declared war on the Islamic State. Or has it? A few bombing sorties does not a "degrade and destroy" mission make, especially without a serious commitment of American boots on the ground to take and hold territory.

In the north, in Lebanon, the Islamic State has made its presence known in a very big way recently. And along the entire length of the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights the jihadists known as Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) are now in full control and face the IDF directly across the DMZ after having defeated Syrian and Hezbollah forces seeking to regain control of the border town at Quneitra. Jabhat al-Nursa (Al Qaeda) and the Islamic State, as reported here in previous SITREPS, agreed to a merger of their forces and smaller Sunni jihadi militias into a unified Sunni jihadist force to coordinate their strategic war plans for the expansion of the Caliphate, most likely into Jordan. 

Without any significant opposing military force on the ground other than the outnumbered Kurds, it may only be a relatively brief amount of time before the Islamic State Caliphate is either composed of all ten groups identified by Asaph in Psalm 83 or it consults with their Shi'a enemies, perhaps after an unprecedented catastrophe has occurred in Damascus, to turn their weapons upon Israel for the final engagements of Psalm 83. It may well be that Psalm 83 finds its final fulfillment in a final regional war from Lebanon to the Sinai, with strong arm military hardware assistance from the Islamic State-controlled region of ancient Assur, between Israel and the new Caliphate. Keep watching as this develops.

Global SITREP A26-13: The Syrian Crisis Phase Two

CVN-68 USS NIMITZ Carrier Strike Group Eleven (CSG-11)

2 September 2013: The Labor Day holiday weekend is still in full-swing in the United States, but our Sailors, Marines and Combat Pilots are still in the thick of the potential conflagration in the Middle East this morning. One little known secret is that should push come to shove in Syria or in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, our military forces will come under fire from within the Syrian air and sea defense systems by Russian "volunteers" who have recently taken up stations manning those Russian-made defense systems for Bashar al-Assad's government as a part of Russia's commitment to defend its Syrian ally.

Key Syrian government forces of Bashar al-Assad (land and air) and their Iranian and Hezbollah allies have mostly gone into an underground and heavily fortified redoubt. This redoubt is a just completed 32 by 36 mile contiguous bunker complex in the Coastal Mountain Range just northwest of Damascus. It can accommodate more than one million individuals plus the entire Syrian army. It has supplies for a three-year siege and an integrated hydro-electric power grid. There are underground airbases within this complex, as well as missile silos and artillery positions. It will prove to be a tough nut to crack being a much larger and natural version of Hitler's Atlantic Wall of WWII. This Syrian military redoubt will make any adventure begun by Obama a very long and expensive one that he cannot afford. The only effective response to missiles fitted with Syrian chemical warheads launched  from within this 1,152 square mile fortified under-mountain defensive position might well prove to be a nuclear response.

As I predicted a week ago, CVN-68 USS Nimitz (also known as CSG-11) has been moved into a position in the Red Sea from which a strike on Syria can be launched. This is a move that may or may not involve a transit into the already crowded eastern Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal and deeply troubled Egypt. It is no secret that President Obama is in very hot water with the Egyptian interim government for his unwavering support of the Muslim Ikhwan (Brotherhood).

For the record, the other ships of CSG-11 with the Nimitz now in the northern Red Sea are the  USS Princeton (CG-59); USS Stockdale (DDG-106); USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110); USS Shoup (DDG-86) and the USS Higgins (DDG-76). The embarked airwing of CVW-11 includes (VFA = Fighter Strike Wing) VFA-146, VFA-147, VFA-154; (VAW = Carrier Early Warning) VAW-117, (VAQ = Electronic Attack Squadron) VAQ-142; Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Six, and VMFA-323 (Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323). It should also go without saying that US nuclear submarines are a part of this mix.

The military forces of more than a half-dozen nations are now crowded into the Middle East, from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, and from the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf, are on tenterhooks in anticipation of hostilities erupting without further notice. Frontline nations Turkey (which is on high alert and still wanting payback for the 2012 shoot-down of one of its reconnaissance aircraft by Syria) and Jordan have a mix of both NATO and Arab land combat and antimissile forces arrayed, as does Israel, the most powerful and nuclear-armed nation in the entire region. And it could all erupt should U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama decide to fire a "warning shot" without US Congressional approval and with the vast majority of We The People of the United States of America against such action being taken.

3 September 2013: The results of an ongoing poll at the DrudgeReport.com as of 06:20 this morning to the question:  

GIVE OBAMA AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATION IN SYRIA?

YES: 8.35% (20,247 votes)

NO:  91.65% (222,175 votes)

Total votes: 242,422

This is a poll in which the IP of the voter is recorded; a second attempt to vote by that IP is not accepted. That means the votes reflect an accurate sampling of how individual Americans are responding to the question. These results clearly indicate a 10:1 ratio AGAINST Obama conducting any military operation in Syria.  By the way, the Administration has not preliminarily briefed members of Congress about a single strike, but on their plan for a continuing series of strikes against Syria.

In this extremely tense military environment, reports are just coming in from both the US, Israel and Russian military sources that the US and Israel have just conducted and completed a ballistic missile interception test with at least two objects being tracked and having fallen into open waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Sending a message to al-Assad and the Ayatollah no doubt.

Another item that is dated but extremely important to know is that the Obama Administration is issuing a bald-faced lie when they say that the Syrian rebels do not possess chemical weapons. To the contrary, the rebel faction aligned with Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, was caught red-handed with 2kg (4lbs) of sarin gas. The sarin was seized from them by Turkish authorities during a raid as reported on 30 May 2013 by the Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman.

This is extremely important because Russia intends to use this incident to prove before the whole world, most likely in the UN Security Council, that the Obama Administration is hiding the truth and politicizing intelligence to suit its own aggressive agenda against Syria. In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted that the Obama Administration would do exactly this less than three months ago when he demanded that the Turkish government release all of the information regarding its seizure of the rebel jihadists sarin gas. Said Lavrov, “I do not rule out that some force may want to use it [Syrian chemical weapons] to say that the “red line” has been crossed and a foreign intervention is needed.” This statement was carried in the Turkish media but it was not picked up or repeated in Western media, particularly in the United States.

According to an excellent and extremely well-connected source comes new intel that Russia intends to fight for Syria. Russia has dispatched (re-routed actually) some very significant firepower from its Northern Fleet which has been exercising in the Atlantic. The Slava-class guided missile cruiser Moskva (image above) with Admiral Aleksandr Vitko, Commander Black Sea Fleet, embarked is enroute via the Strait of Gibraltar (with three other major surface combatant platforms) to take command of the entire Russian Mediterranean Sea flotilla off Syria. The Russian Mediterranean Sea flotilla will soon also include the extremely silent water-jet propelled hunter-killer (modified Kilo-class) submarine Alrosa.

Global SITREP A2-13

"Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap."

22 March 2013: (Updated 25 March 2013) There are ever increasing indications that the literal fulfillment of Isaiah 17 may well be on the proverbial 'fast track' to prophetic fulfillment.

My assessment in Global SITREP A1-13 reflected two types of known chemical agents, PCl3 and BZ, that were initially suspected in that attack according to most MSM reports. Those chemical compounds led to an early and possibly premature accusatory finger being pointed at the al-Assad regime by the Obama Administration and the European allies. However, what is coming from our intelligence services now is that there was no WMD chemical attack per se, that what occurred in the Khan al'Asal district on the western approaches to the city of Aleppo appears to have been a chlorine IED attack that bears extremely similar fingerprints to the early Al Qaeda chlorine IED attacks that occurred in the Al Anbar Province of western Iraq during 2007, and which re-directs the accusatory finger on the Al Qaida elements within the rebel forces.  It goes without saying that the first casualty in any war is the truth, but if this was Al Qaida then there will be more attacks like it in the very near future and they will mirror those that occurred in Iraq with increasing sophistication and body count. It may be that Al Qaida would like nothing better than for the Al-Assad regime eventually to retaliate with a WMD chemical assault of its own. They may yet get their wish.

(Update) The DEKBAfile report of 25 March 2013 1:03 PM GMT contains these concluding sentences:

"Before he left Amman for home Saturday, Obama received information that the Iraqi Al Qaeda front had begun preparing Chlorine gas-CI trucks ready to push across the border into Syria for the use of its Jabhat al Nusra partners.
This poisonous gas was used more than once for jihadist terrorist attacks inside Iraq. And this peril brought John Kerry hurrying over to Baghdad Sunday, March 24. He was not able to persuade Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to discontinue the Iranian airlift of weapons and troops to Assad through Iraqi skies, but he left al-Malilki with a grave warning that Washington would hold Baghdad responsible if any of the chorine gas trucks reached Syria."

This brings us to a report published in the first week of February 2013 by retired Army intelligence officer LTC Rick Francona entitled "The Coming Battle for Damascus" and "The Coming Battle for Damascus - Addendum" published on 9 March, 2013. Look at the title carefully and consider it... not the battle of Damascus, but rather the battle for Damascus. The thinking goes that whoever controls Damascus controls all of Syria. Now reflect on Isaiah 17 and the image above which is not of Damascus. It is actually an image taken of a section of Aleppo already reduced to ruins by rebel versus government civil warfare. Here we have another possible avenue to the destruction of Damascus, and indeed the entire country. The analysis continues by noting that the FSA has determined that Al-Assad intends to defend Damascus with  four combat divisions all led by loyal officers of Al-Assad's own Alawi sect, the 1st Armored, 5th Armored, 7th Mechanized and 9th Armored, which have been pulled back from their normal positions facing Israel across the Golan. In addition to these four there are also the two most elite divisions of Al-Assad's army, all of whom are loyal Alawis, the 4th Armored Division and the Republican Guard Division. Damascus is now surrounded by and filled to its gills with six of the Syrian army's best divisions. It would not take long for a two or three pronged rebel offensive assault on Damascus to actually reduce the city to something far worse than the image above. Add in the significant potential on this urban battlefield for the use of persistent chemical weapons should the regime's fortunes in war come to the point of collapse and the situation could well turn out to effect a literal fulfillment of Isaiah 17.

The point of this is that while most eschatological views currently hold that Israel will be involved in the fulfillment of Isaiah 17, there are now in place around Damascus the right military forces with the right capabilities to turn this most ancient city to the ruinous heap as foretold by Isaiah in very short order and possibly within a very short span of time from today.