British hostage in new ISIS propaganda video panning Obama strategy
The Islamic State (IS) has released a third video showing John Cantlie, a British journalist held prisoner for two years, in which he delivers a scripted propaganda speech criticizing US President Barack Obama's strategy against IS in Iraq and Syria.
Cantlie slams Obama’s tactics of using airstrikes and coalition plans to use Iraqi troops, Kurdish Peshmerga and Syrian rebels to fight the IS. The journalist delivered a response to Obama's recent speech on the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which he described as “prideful chest banging.”
"It was all disappointingly predictable; America is good, the Islamic State [formerly ISIS] is bad; and they will be defeated using aircraft and a motley collection of fighters on the ground,” he said, commenting on Obama's speech.
Criticizing the US airstrikes in Iraq, Cantlie said, “Air power is good at taking out specific targets, but it is not good at taking and holding ground. For that you need effective and disciplined troops and it's hard to see how this hodgepodge army with a long history of underperforming is going to be any form of credible infantry."
The British hostage says organizing the Iraqi army will take months, and he dismissed the Free Syrian Army as an “undisciplined, corrupt and largely ineffective fighting force.” Cantlie adds that weapons, that the West provides to Syrian rebels, are sold by the rebels on the black market and then end up in the hands of IS fighters.
The five-minute, 34-second video was uploaded on Monday night. Cantlie, just like in the previous two videos, sits behind a desk in an orange jumpsuit, a reference to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
In an effort to rebuild the Iraqi army to be able to fight against IS, the Iraqi military command launched a campaign to re-enlist soldiers and officers who previously abandoned their units, so-called deserters. The New York Times reports that the de facto amnesty for deserters shows that the Iraqi army “desperately needs experienced soldiers.”
The video appears to have been filmed before last Friday, as there is no mention of the British decision to join the US-led campaign. Cantlie makes no reference to British or US action in the regions, including US-led coalition airstrikes on Syrian oilfields and IS checkpoints, over recent days.
While the video was released on September 29, in the video Cantlie only talks about Obama’s 9/11 address and how the media reacted to his speech.
Cantlie quotes approvingly from a New York Times article critical of Obama's strategy, written a day after Obama’s speech.
At the end of the video, Cantlie says “the Islamic State say they welcome meeting Obama's under-construction army.”
Cantlie, who has worked for the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times, was kidnapped in Syria at the end of 2012. He had previously been captured in Syria in July 2012, but escaped after one week with the help from the Free Syrian Army.
Since August, the militant group released three gruesome videos showing the beheadings of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and most recently of the British aid worker David Haines. The IS has threatened to execute another British hostage, Alan Henning, if airstrikes hitting IS targets don’t stop.
Meanwhile, the UK has completed five missions over northern Iraq. RAF Tornado jets have not dropped any bombs on IS targets yet, however, and are currently engaged in reconnaissance missions, gathering intelligence of the area and searching for suitable targets.
Just like in the first two videos, Cantlie concludes by saying, “Join me again for the next program.”
