(Click on Image to Enlarge)
Tim Mak, Daily Beast: Exclusive: Pentagon Map Hides ISIS Gains
The U.S. military presented evidence that it was beating back the so-called Islamic State but it doesn't even count coalition setbacks.
The Defense Department released a map last week showing territory where it is has pushed ISIS back, claiming that the terrorist group is “no longer able to operate freely in roughly 25 to 30 percent of populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once could.” This was touted as evidence of success by numerous news outlets.
Pushing ISIS back is clearly a good step. But the information from the Pentagon is, at best, misleading and incomplete, experts in the region and people on the ground tell The Daily Beast. They said the map misinforms the public about how effective the U.S.-led effort to beat back ISIS has actually been. The map released by the Pentagon excludes inconvenient facts in some parts, and obscures them in others.
WNU Editor: The Pentagon continues to push their case that the Islamic State is losing .... Pentagon: Strikes forcing ISIS to move weapons, fighters back to Syria (The Hill). What's my take .... Charles Lister is correct when he says the following ....
.... “A far more important facet of assessing our success or failure is measuring ISIS’s capacity to continue offensive operations and to reach beyond its lines of actual control. In that respect, I’d say ISIS has been very minimally challenged since August 2014 and its only this kind of measurement that will persuade local actors on the ground that ISIS is losing,” Lister told The Daily Beast.
An analysis that it appears the Pentagon does not want to be publicly disclosed or discussed.