Reality Check: When A Boy Tries Playing A Man's Game_The threat heard 'round the world

 

Obama warns Syria not to cross ‘red line’ 

President Obama's remarks at the White House Monday appear to ratchet up his stance on Syria. Getty Images

 

the CNN Wire Staff
Updated 5:25 AM EDT, Tue August 21, 2012 

 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should heed U.S. warnings to neither use nor move chemical or biological weapons, lest he risk crossing a “red line” and provoke a U.S. military response, President Barack Obama said Monday.

“We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime – but also to other players on the ground – that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.

“That would change my calculus; that would change my equation.”

Obama added that U.S. officials are monitoring the situation “very carefully” and have put together a number of contingency plans.  

                                         Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto.

                                        Takuya Yoshikawa/Magazine House Inc.

 

 Saudi support for Syrian rebels shaped by tribal, religious ties

 

“We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons.”

Obama’s remarks appeared to ratchet up his stance on the matter. Last month, talking about Syrian forces, he told a VFW convention, “They will be held accountable by the international community and the United States should they make the tragic mistake of using those weapons.”

The Syrian regime “probably has the largest and most advanced chemical warfare program in the Arab world,” Michael Eisenstadt, director of the military and security studies program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told CNN last month.

It includes “thousands of tube and rocket artillery rounds filled with mustard-type blister agents, thousands of bombs filled with the nerve agents sarin and possibly VX, and binary-type and cluster CW warheads filled with nerve agents for all its major missile systems.

“Its CW infrastructure is believed to include several production facilities and numerous storage sites, mostly dispersed throughout the western half of the country,” Eisenstadt said.

Syria is thought to have a biological warfare research and development program, but is not known to have offensive biological warfare agents, Eisenstadt said.

The nation is not a party to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. That’s the body of the Chemical Weapons Convention dedicated to eliminating the weapons.

Israeli President Shimon Peres has said his country too is preparing contingency plans to attack Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal if Israel is directly threatened. In September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a building in Syria that the U.N. nuclear agency eventually concluded was “very likely a nuclear reactor.”

Obama’s warning on Monday came as Muslims in Syria celebrated the second of three days of feasting to honor the end of the holy month of Ramadan, with the holiday’s message of amity and tolerance contrasting sharply with reality.

U.N. observer mission in Syria ends, violence continues

At least 150 people were killed Monday, including two children and their mother in Daraa, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said.

A Japanese journalist was killed during a gun battle in Aleppo, the Japanese foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Mika Yamamoto, 45, worked for the independent Japan Press news agency and had been reporting on the Free Syrian Army. Her body was taken to Turkey, where officials were working to get more information, the ministry said.

Also among the dead in Syriawere 10 bodies discovered splayed on the ground in the Damascus suburb of Qaboun. Video posted by activists showed at least one of the victims lying on his back, blindfolded, his arms stretched above his head. Others showed victims with bruised flesh and dark red splotches on their clothes. CNN cannot authenticate the video.

Another video, said to have been shot Sunday in the town of Talbeesa, north of Homs, showed children being pushed on swings. The swings are attached to the gun of a tank on which adults are standing, chanting, “Victory for the rebels!”

In a third video, showing the same tank, a man says to the camera, “We will enter Homs with this tank and liberate all of Syria, God willing!”

Daraa province, where the conflict began in March 2011 as peaceful anti-government demonstrations, has suffered heightened violence in recent days.

It is also the home province of Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa, who rebels say has defected from the regime.

On Sunday, the charred bodies of 20 people were discovered in the Daraa city of Hirak, and 31 other people were killed in the province, the LCC said. Government forces executed 14 people in Daraa hours after they were detained, the opposition network said.

Hirak took another beating Monday, when mortars and rockets rained down on the city, the LCC said.

Inside Syria: Nobody imagined it would turn into this

Since the Syrian crisis began 17 months ago, more than 20,000 people – most of them civilians – have been killed, opposition activists say.[SOURCE]

Reality Check: Before the Mandella Affect Erases The Facts_Obama's 'Red Line' threat was exactly what we said it was, from their own nasty mouths

 

Obama’s ‘red line’ haunts Clinton, Trump 

Hillary Clinton issued several public statements in 2013 supporting Obama's decision of a red line in Syria. | Getty

By Michael Crowley
10/11/2016 05:07 AM EDT

On Sept. 9, 2013, Hillary Clinton returned to the Obama White House for the first time since leaving her job as secretary of state seven months earlier. Still undecided about a presidential bid, Clinton kept her profile low. But the occasion — a White House summit on animal trafficking — seemed to promise a photo-op with zero political risk.

Instead, Clinton walked into a national security crisis and found herself huddling in the Oval Office with President Barack Obama about an issue that haunts them both to this day, and which Donald Trump invoked in Sunday night’s presidential debate as evidence of Clinton’s poor judgment.

The issue was Obama’s chemical weapons “red line” in Syria, an ultimatum that led Obama to threaten the use of force against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad before ultimately accepting a peaceful resolution. Although Obama defends the outcome, critics in both parties — including three former Obama defense secretaries — accuse him of dangerous indecision and lack of resolve. Trump has called the episode a national “humiliation.”

Trump told the debate audience that the episode “was laughed at all over the world, what happened,” and he sought to pin it directly on Clinton.

“She was there as secretary of state with the so-called line in the sand,” the Republican nominee said, in an apparent reference to what is usually called Obama’s “red line.”

“No, I wasn’t. I was gone,” Clinton protested. “At some point we need to get the facts out.”

But the facts are less convenient than either Clinton or Trump suggested.

Although she was a private citizen at the time, Clinton did play a supporting role in the red-line saga. As it unfolded in late August and early September 2013, she had several conversations with Obama and his top aides and with Secretary of State John Kerry. She issued several public statements supporting Obama, including unplanned remarks on the day of her White House visit.

In doing so, Clinton put her stamp on one of the most consequential episodes of Obama’s presidency, one she has sometimes defended — and at other times tried to distance herself from, as she did on Sunday night.

Trump’s own position is not simple, either. Though he now ridicules Obama’s aborted military action, at the time he urged Obama in a tweet not to follow through on his threat to bomb Syria. He did so even after many observers argued that American credibility was on the line, a view Trump now appears to endorse. But Trump also argued that Obama never should have issued his red-line ultimatum in the first place.

But it was Clinton who had the direct role in the saga.

When she arrived at the White House on Sept. 9, she found Obama’s national security team scrambling.

Two weeks earlier, Obama had threatened airstrikes against Syrian government forces to punish them for using chemical weapons — a violation of a rhetorical “red line” Obama had drawn months earlier.

Obama was wary of entanglement in Syria. Hours before Clinton’s arrival, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave him an escape hatch. Putin offered to force his ally, Assad, to surrender his chemical arsenal if Obama promised not to bomb.

Clinton had not spoken publicly on the subject since Obama’s initial threat, drawing snarky jibes for a two-week silence on Twitter — though she had already been advising Obama and his aides behind the scenes. Now she found herself meeting with Obama in the Oval Office, huddling with top White House officials, and hastily revising her planned remarks before the media to include a public statement on the Russian offer, in which she called Putin’s plan “an important step.”

Obama accepted the Russian proposal a few days later; there would be no U.S. airstrikes. But Obama traded a military conflict for a political one. On the right, the phrase “red line” has become mocking shorthand for weakness and indecision.

Clinton has mostly defended Obama’s performance, backing him at key points as the drama unfolded and declaring its outcome a “net positive.” Since she began running for president, however, Clinton has conceded that the episode left U.S. allies uncertain about American resolve.

“I do think that not being able to follow through with it cost us. I’m certain of that,” Clinton said in a September 2015 event in Washington, D.C.

Lately, Clinton and her aides have preferred to avoid the subject altogether. In a January debate, Clinton refused to say whether she thought the saga had harmed America’s credibility. And during a Sept. 21 appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” her campaign manager, Robby Mook, also dodged the question, saying the decision “was made after she was out of office” and refusing to characterize Clinton’s view. Her campaign did not provide a comment for this story.

The subject puts Clinton in an uncomfortable spot, caught between one of Obama’s most criticized foreign policy decisions and her close embrace of a president beloved by Democratic voters whose support she needs in November.

Trump has eagerly exploited the awkwardness. In a Sept. 7 news release, his campaign said Clinton “strongly backed” Obama’s red line and that she “backed measures that fell far short of the steps that needed to be taken to swiftly resolve the situation.”

“According to experts, this vacuum of American influence directly led to the rise of ISIS,” the release added.

Many experts would dispute that. Trump’s release also did not specify what “steps” should have been taken.

Trump also neglects to mention his own evolving view. In a Sept. 7, 2013, tweet, he urged Obama not to follow through on his threatened attack: “President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside,” Trump wrote.

It is true that Clinton backed Obama’s original red line. Obama established that marker in an August 2012 news conference after being asked what could prompt him to take military action in Syria. Obama replied that “a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. … There would be enormous consequence

Obama’s comment surprised some White House officials who worried about its implications. But four months later, in December 2012, Clinton doubled down on it. “We have made our views very clear. This is a red line for the United States,” she said. Clinton said she wouldn’t “telegraph in any specifics what we would do … but suffice to say we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”

Clinton left the State Department in February 2013. That August, Assad’s forces fired nerve gas into a Damascus suburb, killing a U.S.-estimated 1,429 people, including more than 400 children.

Obama couldn’t ignore it. “There need to be international consequences,” he said on Aug. 28, vowing two days later to take “limited, narrow” military action. Pentagon planners drew up targets and moved warships. On Sept. 3, Kerry laid out the case for action. “It is directly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the United States when it says something,” Kerry said.

Clinton watched the drama in cautious silence at first. She’d been burned by her support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and knew the public had little appetite for a new military intervention in the Arab world. “Parallels were drawn with the run-up to the war in Iraq,” she recalls in her 2014 book “Hard Choices.”

But the absence from the all-consuming debate of Clinton — the presumed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee — quickly grew conspicuous.

“Hillary has no right to remain silent,” former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted on Sept. 3. BuzzFeed mocked Clinton when she finally broke a two-week Twitter hiatus not to comment on Syria but to congratulate a woman who swam from Cuba to Florida.

The plot took an abrupt twist on Aug. 31, when Obama startled the world — including many of his own advisers — by announcing he would ask Congress to authorize a strike beforehand. Critics said Obama was losing his nerve and passing the buck for his own red line.

But Clinton came to his defense. “Secretary Clinton supports the president’s effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a strong and targeted response to the Assad regime’s horrific use of chemical weapons,” a Clinton aide told reporters on Sept. 3.

Now Clinton was drawn into the unfolding drama. In the following days she spoke multiple times with both Kerry and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, offering them political and diplomatic advice. She urged McDonough to enlist the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, to push through a quick bipartisan vote in his committee authorizing the use of force against Syria — a move she felt would give Kerry and Obama leverage before an upcoming meeting with Putin. Clinton even lobbied other senators, including New York Democrat Charles Schumer, to back the controversial measure.

The White House more than welcomed Clinton’s advice. At one point in early September, according to Clinton’s book, McDonough told Clinton that the president wanted to call her again. Clinton demurred, saying that Obama must be too busy. He phoned her anyway.

By then Obama was losing control of the situation. On Aug. 30, Britain’s Parliament unexpectedly voted against military action. Support in the U.S. Congress began to look perilously weak.

Trump, meanwhile, tweeted almost daily as the crisis played out, repeatedly imploring Obama not to strike Syria. “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval,” Trump tweeted on Aug. 29, 2013.

But Trump also condemned Obama for having drawn the red line in the first place. “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.,” he tweeted several days later.

The Trump campaign declined to comment.

Then, on Sept. 9, Clinton arrived at the West Wing for the summit on animal trafficking, joined by her daughter, Chelsea, who had made the issue a high-profile cause for the Clinton Foundation. By then, the plot had thickened further in the form of the Russian offer to force Assad to relinquish his chemical weapons if the U.S. agreed not to bomb. (Putin strongly opposed U.S military action against his Syrian ally.)

Soon after her 1 p.m. arrival, Clinton was briefed on the latest developments, then ushered into an Oval Office meeting with Obama. With Congress poised to deal him an embarrassing defeat, she advised that he accept the Russian plan. “I told the President that if the votes for action against Syria were not winnable in Congress he should make lemonade out of lemons and welcome the unexpected overture from Moscow,” she recounts in “Hard Choices.” Clinton told Obama she was wary of a possible Russian stalling tactic, and understood that the deal would do little to resolve the larger Syrian crisis — but that it was still worth trying. Obama, in need of political cover, asked her to make a public statement to that effect.

 

Rescue workers work the site of airstrikes in a rebel-held part of eastern Aleppo, Syria, on Sept. 21, 2016. (Photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets.) 

After huddling with Obama’s national security speechwriter, Ben Rhodes, Clinton appeared before a press corps that had been expecting to hear her views on elephant poaching. Reading from a new introduction to her planned remarks, Clinton said that “it would be an important step” if Syrian leader Assad surrendered his chemical stockpile, one possible thanks only to a “credible military threat” by the U.S.

A few days later, Obama formally agreed to the Russian proposal and halted Pentagon planning for airstrikes. Some key U.S. allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, were appalled, saying Obama had sent a dangerous signal of weakness to adversaries like Iran. In the months to come, three Obama defense secretaries — Leon Panetta, Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel — would say he mishandled the situation. “The credibility of the United States is on the line,” Panetta told Yahoo News in October 2014. “It was important for us to stand by our word and go in and do what a commander in chief should do.”

“If you cock that pistol,” Gates told Business Insider in January 2016, “you have to be ready to fire it.”

“I wouldn’t have drawn the line, but once he drew it, he had no choice but to go across,” Trump argued during a Republican primary debate in September 2015. “Somehow, [Obama] just doesn’t have courage. There is something missing from our president. Had he crossed the line and really gone in with force, done something to Assad, if he had gone in with tremendous force, you wouldn’t have millions of people displaced all over the world.”

Obama’s backers call that ridiculous and contend that the final outcome was a clear success. Defying skeptics, international inspectors removed 1,300 tons of chemical weapons from Syria — some from sites now controlled by the Islamic State.

“We ended up getting rid of a weapons-of-mass-destruction threat that was worse than what the CIA wrongly estimated was in Iraq, for which we went to war. Why is that considered a failure?” said Derek Chollet, a former senior Obama Pentagon official who advises Clinton’s campaign. (Recent evidence has emerged suggesting that Assad may have hidden some of his arsenal. The U.S. also believes that the Syrian regime has since attacked civilians with chlorine gas, a substance not covered by the 2013 agreement.)

Clinton’s instincts are more hawkish than Obama’s, and since joining the presidential race she has repeatedly said she would take stronger action in Syria than Obama has. She cites her support for a 2012 plan to arm Syria’s rebels, which Obama rejected, and says she would consider imposing a “no fly” zone in northern Syria.

Yet when it comes to Obama’s “red line,” Clinton has never directly criticized him. In a September 2015 discussion about military force with The Des Moines Register editorial board, however, Clinton did argue generally that, “If we say we’re going to do something publicly,” a president must explain “why we have to go through with doing it ... so that we don’t raise expectations and cause miscalculations.”

She did not link Obama or Syria directly to that comment. And, when asked specifically about the red-line saga during a Jan. 17 Democratic primary debate, Clinton defended Obama, calling the agreement with Russia “a very positive outcome.”

“We were able to get the chemical weapons out. Getting those chemical weapons out was a big, big deal,” she said.

The debate moderator, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, then followed up by asking again whether the episode had damaged American credibility abroad. Clinton would not take the bait. “I think as commander in chief, you have to be constantly evaluating the decisions you have to make,” Clinton said.

Then she quickly changed the subject.[SOURCE]

Russia Launches Airstrikes In Northern Syria, Senior Military Official Says

Russian warplanes began bombarding Syrian opposition targets in the war-torn nation's north Wednesday, following a terse meeting at which a Russian general asked Pentagon officials to clear out of Syrian air space and was rebuffed, Fox News has learned.

A U.S. official said Russian airstrikes targeted fighters in the vicinity of Homs, located roughly 60 miles east of a Russian naval facility in Tartus, and were carried out by a "couple" of Russian bombers. The strikes hit targets in Homs and Hama, but there is no presence of ISIS in those areas, a senior U.S. defense official said. These planes are hitting areas where Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad groups are located, the official said.

Activists and a rebel commander on the ground said the Russian airstrikes have mostly hit moderate rebel positions and civilians. In a video released by the U.S.-backed rebel group Tajamu Alezzah, jets are seen hitting a building claimed to be a location of the group in the town of Latamna in the central Hama province.

The group commander Jameel al-Saleh told a local Syrian news website that the group's location was hit by Russian jets but didn't specify the damage.

A group of local activists in the town of Talbiseh in Homs province recorded at least 16 civilians killed, including two children.

According to a U.S. senior official, Presidents Obama and Putin agreed on a process to "deconflict" military operations. The Russians on Wednesday "bypassed that process," the official said. [source]

Kerry: If Russia Targets ISIS, "We Are Prepared To Welcome" Help

Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to the United Nations Security Council about Russian military actions happening right now in Syria.

Kerry said that U.S. forces had launched "a number of strikes [in Syria] over the past 24 hours, including some just an hour ago... And these strikes will continue," even though Russian forces are also active in the area.


"We must not and we will not be confused in our fight against ISIL," Kerry said, before repeating assurances made by President Obama to Vladimir Putin earlier this week: "If Russia’s recent actions and those now ongoing reflect a genuine commitment to defeat [the Islamic State], we are prepared to welcome those efforts and find a way to deconflict and therefore multiply our efforts."

However, he said that any Russian actions that "should strike targets where ISIL and affiliated targets are not operating," would raise "grave concerns," for the U.S.


"My colleague," Kerry said, referring to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, "has said we must support Assad to defeat ISIL. The reality is that Assad himself has rarely chosen himself to fight ISIL….Instead, it has focused all of its military power on moderate opposition groups who are fighting for a voice in Syria."

"The answer cannot be found in a military alliance with Assad."[source]

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Execution Videos by ISIS Are Now Banned

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has banned any more execution videos by the Islamic State, but the orders reportedly have created a division with the organization's ranks.

ARA News reported that, according to sources, al-Baghdadi was responding to the feelings of Muslims who regarded the videos as "disgusting and scary to children."

The video ban has upset some within ISIS who see the execution videos as an extension of terrorism activities.

"Some of IS militants supported Baghdadi's decision, taking into consideration criticism of the public that describes scenes of beheadings as barbaric," wrote ARA News' Jan Nasro. "While other militants rejected the decision saying that such scenes are meant to intimidate their enemies, represented by western powers, and not the common folk."

According to the website Middle East Eye.net, a number of Arabic-language news agencies said on Friday that Baghdadi explained his decision in a statement delivered to media offices in Syria and Iraq.

The website said Baghdadi ordered that his followers don't include scenes of the actual executions in their videos and limit them to moments before or after the act.

ISIS execution videos often show men in orange jumpsuits kneeling, heads bowed, with a black-clad masked gunman behind each one, with the ISIS flag in the background, noted Middle East Eye.net.

Past videos of executions of hostages – which have included non-combatants such as journalists and aid workers – had sparked anger not only in the United States, but in other parts of the Middle East.

In February, an ISIS video showing a Jordan pilot being burned alive, sparked Jordanians to call for acts of revenge against the organization, according to CBS News.

"(The video ban) won't eliminate the IS-led horrors that have been seen by people around the world over the past couple of years," Ferid Hisso, a Syrian politician and lawyer, told ARA News. "Instead of banning the release of such videos, Baghdadi should have rather banned the crimes behind the scenes. But he has already justified the barbarism of his followers, and his decision makes no sense."[source]

U.S. Caution in Strikes Gives ISIS an Edge, Many Iraqis Say

Islamic State fighters paraded along the streets of Raqqa, Syria, in 2014. Credit Reuters

WASHINGTON — American intelligence analysts have identified seven buildings in downtown Raqqa in eastern Syria as the main headquarters of the Islamic State. But the buildings have gone untouched during the 10-month allied air campaign.

And just last week, convoys of heavily armed Islamic State fighters paraded triumphantly through the streets of the provincial capital Ramadi in western Iraq after forcing Iraqi troops to flee. They rolled on unscathed by coalition fighter-bombers.

American and allied warplanes are equipped with the most precise aerial arsenal ever fielded. But American officials say they are not striking significant, and obvious, Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians. Killing such innocents could hand the militants a major propaganda coup and alienate the local Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and Sunni Arab countries that are part of the fragile American-led coalition.

But many Iraqi commanders and some American officers say that exercising such prudence with airstrikes is a major reason the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, has been able to seize vast territory in recent months in Iraq and Syria. That caution — coupled with President Obama’s reluctance to commit significant American firepower to a war the White House declared over in 2011, when the last United States combat troops withdrew from Iraq — has led to persistent complaints from Iraqi officials that the United States has been too cautious in its air campaign.

 

Iraqi officials say the limited American airstrikes have allowed columns of Islamic State fighters essentially free movement on the battlefield.

“The international alliance is not providing enough support compared with ISIS’ capabilities on the ground in Anbar,” said Maj. Muhammed al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi officer in Anbar Province, which contains Ramadi. “The U.S. airstrikes in Anbar didn’t enable our security forces to resist and confront the ISIS attacks,” he added. “We lost large territories in Anbar because of the inefficiency of the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.”

Much of the American caution comes from experience. Civilian deaths from American airstrikes during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were sometimes unacknowledged or understated by the military and caused a great deal of anger, which is a reason for the United States’ current skittishness and what commanders say is their overriding goal to prevent those deaths now.

The military’s Central Command on Thursday announced the results of an inquiry into the deaths of two children in Syria in November, saying they were probably killed by an American airstrike. It was the first time the Pentagon had acknowledged civilian casualties since it began the air campaign. A handful of other attacks are under investigation.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain that tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria, more than 120 civilians have been killed by coalition strikes inside Syria.

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By far the largest episode was in the remote northeastern village of Bir Mahli, where more than 60 people, including numerous women and children, were reported killed this month in a series of strikes. Military officials acknowledged that the coalition had struck the village but said that those killed were Islamic State fighters.

Human rights advocates say that it remains unclear how many civilian lives the restrictions on airstrikes have saved.

“The U.S. has indeed put in place rigorous policies and procedures to minimize civilian harm, but with no combat troops on the ground, it is hard to evaluate how successful these policies have been,” said Federico Borello, the executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, an advocacy group.

Islamic State troops, however, appear to be taking advantage of the restrictions, as the militants increasingly fight from within civilian populations to deter attacks.

In Iraq, more than 80 percent of the allied airstrikes are supporting Iraqi troops in hotly contested areas like Ramadi and Baiji, the home of a major oil refinery. Many of the other strikes focus on so-called pop-up targets — small convoys of militants or heavy weaponry on the move. These have been a top priority of the campaign, even though only about one of every four air missions sent to attack the extremists have dropped bombs. The rest of the missions have returned to the base after failing to find a target they were permitted to hit under strict rules of engagement designed to avoid civilian casualties.

In Syria, the United States has a limited ability to gather intelligence to help generate targets, although the commando raid there this month that killed a financial leader of the Islamic State may signal a breakthrough. Many Islamic State training compounds, headquarters, storage facilities and other fixed sites were struck in the early days of the bombing, but the military’s deliberate process for approving other targets has frustrated several commanders.

“We have not taken the fight to these guys,” the pilot of an American A-10 attack plane said in a recent email. “We haven’t targeted their centers of gravity in Raqqa. All the roads between Syria and Iraq are still intact with trucks flowing freely.”

These critics describe an often cumbersome process to approve targets, and they say there are too few warplanes carrying out too few missions under too many restrictions.

“In most cases, unless a general officer can look at a video picture from a U.A.V., over a satellite link, I cannot get authority to engage,” the A-10 pilot said, referring to an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid punishment from his superiors.

To be sure, the air campaign has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons. The campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters and helped Iraqi forces regain about 25 percent of the territory seized in Iraq by the Islamic State, according to American military figures.

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It has blunted the advance of Islamic State fighters in most areas by forcing them to disperse and conceal themselves. Allied warplanes have attacked oil refineries, weapons depots, command bunkers and communications centers in Syria as part of a plan to hamper the Islamic State’s ability to sustain its operations in Iraq and to disrupt communications among its senior leaders.

But American officials acknowledge that the Islamic State has remained resilient and adaptive. Fighters mingle with civilians more than ever. Islamic State commanders routinely change their methods of communication to avoid detection. Militants used a sandstorm, which made it more difficult for the Iraqis to identify targets, to seize an advantage in the recent Ramadi attack.

“We have always said this fight will be difficult, and there will be some setbacks,” Lt. Gen. John Hesterman III, the top allied air commander, said in a statement from his headquarters in Qatar. “Coalition air power has dramatically degraded Daesh’s ability to organize, project and sustain combat power while taking exceptional care to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties.”

The air campaign has averaged a combined total of about 15 strikes a day in Iraq and Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011 carried out about 50 strikes a day in its first two months. The campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war in 2003 about 800 a day. American officials say targeting is more precise than in the past, so fewer flights are needed. A major constraint on the air campaign’s effectiveness, critics say, has been the White House’s refusal to authorize American troops to act as spotters on the battlefield, designating targets for allied bombing attacks.

Some members of Congress, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, have advocated this idea.

The absence of air controllers is a particular complication for battles in urban places like Ramadi, where Islamic State units cannot always be readily identified by American pilots flying overhead.

The administration is considering training a cadre of Iraqi troops to designate airstrike targets from allied fighter jets.

Canadian special forces advising Iraqi troops are designating targets “on a case-by-case basis,” said Ashley Lemire, a spokeswoman for the Canadian defense ministry.

The American-led coalition has imposed other conditions on its use of airstrikes. During the operation in March and April to liberate Tikrit, the United States initially refrained from bombing runs because of the involvement of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the fighting who were not under Iraqi government control. Once those militias failed to retake the city, they pulled back, and the Americans began bombing before Iraqi security forces and the militias advanced.

Iraqi officials have praised those airstrikes as an important component in the liberation of Tikrit. But many of the Iraqis involved in that operation complain that the Americans refused to strike targets that they had provided.

One army commander in Salahuddin Province, of which Tikrit is the capital, said he had passed along a long list of potential targets, including weapons caches, training centers and the homes of local Islamic State leaders.

“The least important 5 percent of them were targeted,” said the officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did not want to be identified as criticizing Iraq’s ally. “We also asked the U.S. coalition to attack ISIS convoys while they were moving from one place to another, but they either neglected our requests or responded very late.”

These same Iraqi commanders drew criticism on Sunday from Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Iraq’s troops had shown no will to fight in Ramadi and had abandoned the city.

Civilians from Raqqa, who were interviewed in Turkey and often go back and forth across the border, said the Islamic State offices were well known around the city and had not been targeted by coalition airstrikes. Locals assume that this is because the Islamic State holds civilian prisoners in each location to deter the coalition.

The Islamic State’s primary security office is known as Point 11 and is inside a soccer stadium, where its central prison is also believed to be. The extremists’ Islamic court is in a building that used to belong to the Syrian Finance Ministry; it, too, holds prisoners, residents say. The office of the militant group’s so-called Islamic police is also near Point 11 and contains a small jail.

An American military spokeswoman declined to comment on specific targets in Raqqa.

Civilians who now rely on the Islamic State for services often come and go from the offices, according to a middle-aged real estate agent who lives in Raqqa and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of the extremists.

“The civilians like the coalition because it doesn’t hit civilians, but ISIS hates it because it targets their fighters,” he said.

But even residents who oppose the Islamic State said they could not imagine the group’s leaving Raqqa at this time, because it has learned to deal with the airstrikes and there is no force on the ground to challenge it.

“If they had acted when ISIS was small, they could have stopped them, but now it has settled and grown, and people have gotten used to it,” said an aid worker from Raqqa who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he travels in areas controlled by the Islamic State. “As long as there is no plan to get rid of them, they are staying, and it is clear that there is no plan.”[source]