Photo bomb: US general boasts strike on ISIS HQ based on jihadist ‘selfie’
US intelligence officers were able to locate and bomb an Islamic State command center within 24 hours, based solely on a photo and comments in social media – at least according to an Air Force general praising the strike.
“It was a post on social media. Bombs on target in 22 hours,” said General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, head of the Air Combat Command, addressing the Air Force Association breakfast meeting in Washington, DC. “It was incredible work, and incredible airmen doing this sort of thing.”
READ MORE: Go to war or go home: House resolution
to force debate on fight against ISIS
At the meeting, Carlisle told the story on how analysts with the
361st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, based
at Hurlburt Field in Florida, spotted a “selfie” of an
Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighter in front of what
was said to be a command facility, and used the comments to track
the building down.
“They see some moron standing at this command,” Carlisle
said, “bragging about the command and control capabilities for
[IS]” in some open forum. So they “did some work,” and
about 22 hours later, three Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs)
“took the building out,” he said.
Carlisle used the speech to describe the extent of Air Force and coalition operations against Islamic State, citing a figure of 4,200 strikes dropping 14,000 munitions and killing “about 13,000 enemy fighters,”reported the Air Force Times.
Air Force uses ISIS moron's selfie to pinpoint Daesh HQ and level it http://t.co/Mp9mic1f2K
— Jarhead (@LCplSwofford) June 4, 2015
He said that the coalition airstrikes had destroyed over 1,000
vehicles and 50 factories of improvised explosive devices, and
also claimed that the group’s chief revenue sources were
destroyed, namely oil collection and refining facilities.
Two days after the general’s speech, experts testifying before
the House Homeland Security Committee said that Islamic State has
published 1,700 pictures, videos and other publications, and
reached up to 200,000 readers on social media platforms.
READ MORE: US-led airstrikes kill 52 Syrian civilians in a day, not 1 ISIS fighter – monitor
Previous claims of major US successes against Islamic State
forces have been contested. For example, US Central Command
claimed that “more than 50 ISIL fighters” were killed in
an April 30 airstrike near Birmahle in Syria.
However, according to the UK-based group Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, all of the victims of the strike were civilians,
including seven children. Another 13 people were buried under the
rubble, SOHR spokesman Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
After US-backed Iraqi forces captured Tikrit in April, the IS
routed the major Iraqi garrison in Ramadi, capital of the Anbar
province only 60 miles west of Baghdad.
General John Allen, the top US envoy in the coalition fighting
the IS, told a US-Islamic World Forum in Qatar on Wednesday that
defeating the group might take “a generation or more.”
Some US lawmakers are balking at the cost and the commitment,
considering the US has not officially declared war. Jim McGovern
(D-Mass.) is now pushing for a vote in the House of Representatives
that would either back the US war effort or bring the troops
home.
“If we are going to invest a generation or more of our blood and our treasure in this war, then shouldn’t Congress at least debate whether or not to authorize it?” McGovern asked on the House floor on Thursday.
According to the budget watchdog National Priorities Project,
every hour of military operations against IS costs the US
taxpayers $615,482.
