Uh, yeah.
In the Age of Twit here's ISIS: “I can report to the Muslims that Amir Al-Momineen Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Hafid hu'allah is alive and well.”
That pretty much lets you know he's dead. Here's a pic out of al-Qa'im in Iraq from a week ago. It depicts the air strike that splattered the ISIS conclave there, still burning midmorning:
The initial missile blast was followed up with a thumper. As you can see, the big blast took out quite a few blocks of residential housing in al-Qa'im:
Surveillance on western Iraq features humans using binoculars. They are male members of Sunni tribes, mostly, not that religion matters all that much to the people fighting ISIS; the fanatic bxllshxt out of ISIS is turning Iraqis and Syrians into Muslim parallels to "ashes and palms" Catholics. Binoculars and maps make an old system for triangulating targets of opportunity and it works.
Same time, the propeller driven Sarir drones can stay up pretty much all day or all night -- simple, slow machines -- so telescopic imagery is available for the attack wings including Al Asad and the Americans for almost anything the spotters can identify.
al-Baghdadi ??? King of the Psychopaths? Fergeddaboudit. This Arab take on Chris Christie has had his 15 minutes of fame.
The Perpetual War Party put their eggs in this loon's basket. You betcha. It was going to be "two or three years to degrade ISIS." That's the American Way: there's no problem that can't be colonized.
But that's not how the Persians do war. They are fighting ISIS and assisting ISF, the Kurds, and their allies to fight ISIS like it was a replay of World War II plus drones and what's called "gasoline bombs."
Contrast with America's creation of the Sunni/Baathist insurgency with Bremer's deliberate infliction of unemployability on 2,000,000 Sunni males in 2002/2003. The idiocy of driving around in Humvee jeeps for no reason other than getting hit with "IED" bombs 2003-2006. And "The Surge" nonsense from Gen. Petraeus that advanced into NW Baghdad and Fallujhah, against which Al Qaeda in Iraqi retreated intact (losing some 2% of its fighting force.)
Yeah, Gen. Petraeus wrote the "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" for the U.S. Army and Marines. That, unfortunately, qualified him as a no-experience beginner. Helluva writer.
Bremer wasn't even a beginner -- more a saboteur.
And now with al-Baghdadi gone we're sure to see a power struggle, fragmentation among the local ISIS commanders, and utter collapse of ISIS inside Iraq. As we go into the New Year the Coalition expands politically out of Samarra-Tikrit and Karballa-Jurf al-Sakhar and the Iraqi Security Force further matures as a fighting machine.
The one big problem eliminating ISIS goes to logistics. ISF and the Coalition since September/October are inflicting about 2,000 KIA a month on ISIS inside Iraq. Basically, they are killing everything they can find.
Perpetual War Party ??? Those guys? Their on-the-take Senators and Representatives ??? The lobbyists? What are they going to do to generate revenue?
O.M.G. That is a crisis !!