NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’

A blanket of northern snow and lake-effect snow from the Great Lakes and clouds behind an Arctic cold front are seen in an image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite taken January 7, 2015. REUTERS/NASA/NOAA GOES Project/Handout via Reuter. 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.
New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years.
“Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s [National Centers for Environmental Information] do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus,'” wrote NOAA scientists in their study presenting newly adjusted climate data.
To increase the rate in warming, NOAA scientists put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays, adjusted ship-based temperature readings upward, and slightly raised land-based temperatures as well. Scientists said adjusted ship-based temperature data “had the largest impact on trends for the 2000-2014 time period, accounting for 0.030°C of the 0.064°C trend difference.” They added that the “buoy offset correction contributed 0.014°C… to the difference, and the additional weight given to the buoys because of their greater accuracy contributed 0.012°C.”
NOAA says for the years 1998 to 2012, the “new analysis exhibits more than twice as much warming as the old analysis at the global scale,” at 0.086 degrees Celsius per decade compared to 0.039 degrees per decade.
“This is clearly attributable to the new [Sea Surface Temperature] analysis, which itself has much higher trends,” scientists noted in their study. “In contrast, trends in the new [land surface temperature] analysis are only slightly higher.”

Global surface temperature data shows a lack of statistically significant warming over the last 15 years — a development that has baffled climate scientists. Dozens of explanations have been offered to explain the hiatus in warming, but those theories may be rendered moot by NOAA’s new study.
NOAA’s study, however, notes the overall warming trend since 1880 has not been significantly changed. What’s increased is the warming trend in recent decades.
“Our new analysis now shows the trend over the period 1950-1999, a time widely agreed as having significant anthropogenic global warming, is 0.113 [degrees Celsius per decade], which is virtually indistinguishable with the trend over the period 2000-2014″ of 0.116 degrees per decade, according to the study.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “statement of two years ago — that the global surface temperature has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years’ — is no longer valid,” the study claims.
But that’s not all NOAA did to increase the warming trend in recent decades. Climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts noted that to “manufacture warming during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward.”
“If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” Tisdale and Watts wrote on the science blog Watts Up With That.
“It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise,” Tisdale and Watts added. “Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”

NOAA’s updated data was also criticized by climate scientists with the libertarian Cato Institute. Scientists Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger argue the adjustments made by NOAA were “guaranteed to put a warming trend in recent data.”
Cato scientists also argued that NOAA’s new data is an outlier compared to other global temperature records, which overwhelmingly show a hiatus in warming.

It “would seem more logical to seriously question the [NOAA] result in light of the fact that, compared to those bulk temperatures, it is an outlier, showing a recent warming trend that is not in these other global records,” the three scientists wrote.
“Adjusting good data upwards to match bad data seems questionable, and the fact that the buoy network becomes increasingly dense in the last two decades means that this adjustment must put a warming trend in the data,” wrote Michaels, Knappenberger and Lindzen, who is a top climatologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scientists and climate experts skeptical of man-made global warming have become increasingly critical of temperature adjustments made by government climate agencies like NASA and NOAA. Skeptics charge that agencies like NOAA have been tampering with past temperatures to make the warming trend look much more severe than is shown in the raw data.
“It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much,” they wrote. “And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.”
Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry also chimed in, arguing that NOAA excluded extremely accurate sea buoy data in order to erase the hiatus in warming. Curry wrote that it “seems rather ironic, since this is the period where there is the greatest coverage of data with the highest quality of measurements — ARGO buoys and satellites don’t show a warming trend.”
“Nevertheless, the NOAA team finds a substantial increase in the ocean surface temperature anomaly trend since 1998,” she wrote. “This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. The global surface temperature datasets are clearly a moving target. So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.”[source]

China Suspected in Massive Breach of Federal Personnel Data

FILE - This Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, shows the Homeland Security Department headquarters in northwest Washington. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday, June 4, 2015, that data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been hacked. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers, American officials said Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been compromised.
“The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the statement said.
The hackers were believed to be based in China, said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.
Collins, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said the breach was “yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington called such accusations “not responsible and counterproductive.”
“Cyberattacks conducted across countries are hard to track and therefore the source of attacks is difficult to identify,” spokesman Zhu Haiquan said Thursday night. He added that hacking can “only be addressed by international cooperation based on mutual trust and mutual respect.”
A U.S. official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the data breach, said it could potentially affect every federal agency. One key question is whether intelligence agency employee information was stolen. Former government employees are affected as well.
“This is an attack against the nation,” said Ken Ammon, chief strategy officer of Xceedium, who said the attack fit the pattern of those carried out by nation states for the purpose of espionage. The information stolen could be used to impersonate or blackmail federal employees with access to sensitive information, he said.
The Office of Personnel Management is the human resources department for the federal government, and it conducts background checks for security clearances. The OPM conducts more than 90 percent of federal background investigations, according to its website.
The agency said it is offering credit monitoring and identity theft insurance for 18 months to individuals potentially affected. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers in 31 federal agencies, said it is encouraging members to sign up for the monitoring as soon as possible.
In November, a former DHS contractor disclosed another cyberbreach that compromised the private files of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands of other federal employees.
Cyber-security experts also noted that the OPM was targeted a year ago in a cyber-attack that was suspected of originating in China. In that case, authorities reported no personal information was stolen.
One expert said it’s possible that hackers could use information from government personnel files for financial gain. In a recent case disclosed by the IRS, hackers appear to have obtained tax return information by posing as taxpayers, using personal information gleaned from previous commercial breaches, said Rick Holland, an information security analyst at Forrester Research.
“Given what OPM does around security clearances, and the level of detail they acquire when doing these investigations, both on the subjects of the investigations and their contacts and references, it would be a vast amount of information,” Holland added.
DHS said its intrusion detection system, known as EINSTEIN, which screens federal Internet traffic to identify potential cyber threats, identified the hack of OPM’s systems and the Interior Department’s data center, which is shared by other federal agencies.
It was unclear why the EINSTEIN system didn’t detect the breach until after so many records had been copied and removed.
“DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion,” the statement said.
Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright of the Center for Digital Government, an advisory institute, said EINSTEIN “certainly appears to be a failure at this point. The government would be better off outsourcing their security to the private sector where’s there at least some accountability.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called the hack “shocking, because Americans may expect that federal computer networks are maintained with state of the art defenses.”
Ammon said federal agencies are rushing to install two-factor authentication with smart cards, a system designed to make it harder for intruders to access networks. But implementing that technology takes time.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the government must overhaul its cybersecurity defenses. “Our response to these attacks can no longer simply be notifying people after their personal information has been stolen,” he said. “We must start to prevent these breaches in the first place.”[source]
 

ISIS Alternates Stick and Carrot to Control Palmyra

 

Civilians looked out into their neighborhood in Palmyra, Syria, on May 18, the day after ISIS fired rockets into the city. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hours after they swept into the Syrian city of Palmyra last week, Islamic State militants carried out scores of summary executions, leaving the bodies of victims — including dozens of government soldiers — in the streets.

Then, residents say, they set about acting like municipal functionaries. They fixed the power plant, turned on the water pumps, held meetings with local leaders, opened the city’s lone bakery and started distributing free bread. They planted their flag atop Palmyra’s storied ancient ruins, and did not immediately loot and destroy them, as they have done at other archaeological sites.

Next came dozens of Syrian government airstrikes, some killing civilians. That gave the Islamic State a political assist: Within days, some residents had redirected the immediate focus of their anger and fear from the militants on the ground to the warplanes overhead.

In Palmyra, the Islamic State group appears to be digging into power in a series of steps it has honed over two years of accumulating territory in Iraq and Syria.

But Palmyra presents a new twist: It is the first Syrian city the group has taken from the government, not from insurgents. In Raqqa, farther north, and in Iraq, the group has moved quickly and harshly against anyone perceived as a rival.

The Islamic State alternates between terrorizing residents and courting them. It takes over institutions. And it seeks to co-opt opposition to the government, painting itself as the champion of the people — or at least, the Sunnis — against oppressive central authorities.

That method has helped the group entrench itself in the cities of Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, and is now unfolding in Palmyra.

The Palmyra takeover was detailed by half a dozen residents of the city, including supporters and opponents of the government, via phone or electronic messaging. All asked not to be fully identified, to avoid reprisals from the government or from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh. Most cast themselves as caught between the threats of government airstrikes and ISIS beheadings or other killings.

On Wednesday, for example, several residents reported that the Islamic State had killed 20 army soldiers in an ancient amphitheater. Others recalled seeing the bodies of soldiers burned alive or beheaded by militants.

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“They slaughtered many,” a cafe owner exclaimed about ISIS, then switched to the subject of air raids that he would later blame for the deaths of several friends: “God knows what they’re bombing, it’s so scary!”

Some expressed surprise that so far ISIS abuses had not been even worse — while at the same time they worried that the group might be refraining from wider brutality while it courted support.

“They are treating Palmyra’s people as if they were captured as human shields by the regime,” said a Palmyra native who is outside Syria and receives daily updates from family members there.

The resident, who asked to be identified by a nickname, Dahham, said the group’s message to everyone but pro-government fighters seemed to be: “We have nothing to do with you. We know that you were under this regime and nobody helped you.”

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That was unexpected, Dahham said; he had feared ISIS would punish Palmyra for the freewheeling approach of its heavily Bedouin population, and what he called its relationship with the West. Traditional and tribal but not always strictly religious, many mixed easily with the foreign tourists whose business long sustained them.

But in Palmyra, where a small local insurgency was crushed in 2012, there is no armed antigovernment rival. Perhaps feeling less threatened, ISIS militants have not immediately attacked activists who oppose both them and the government.

One such activist, Khaled al-Homsi, said he had relatives in ISIS and was able to sit and talk with a group of fighters. The largest number, he said, were foreigners, mixed with a few locals and many Syrians from all over the country.

Their only demand, he said, was to discard his cigarette, saying he could smoke in his house, not in public.

“Daesh are trying to show some leniency,” he said. “But I don’t know how long it will last.”

Asked how residents viewed the group, Mr. Homsi, who uses a nom de guerre for safety, said civilians had little choice but to submit.

“They can do nothing,” he said. “Of course, we have a few who support the Daesh presence since their sons are with them.”

Ali, a government security officer from another province, told a different story, saying some residents helped ISIS. He had served for years in Palmyra and fled last week “with my weapon only, no clothes, no nothing.”

“The civilians didn’t collaborate with us,” he said. “How do you expect the government to operate if a sniper uses your building and you don’t notify the army?”

Ali said most of those summarily executed were soldiers and government employees. Residents described personally seeing 30 to 80 corpses, mostly soldiers and some civilians, including some known as recruiters for pro-government militias.

Mr. Homsi said he saw the bodies of a large group of soldiers burned in a truck, perhaps while preparing to flee, and another four who refused to come out of a house, and were burned inside.

By contrast, residents in the security forces who had been avoiding the battlefield — by paying bribes to stay home — were offered a chance to “repent,” Dahham and others said.

Members of prominent families are calculating where to throw their support. The director of the Palmyra Museum, Khalil al-Hariri, a government supporter, fled. One of his relatives, said to be a pro-government militia recruiter, was killed. Another, residents said, pledged allegiance to ISIS.

In speeches broadcast from mosque minarets, residents say, ISIS has been laying out rules and intentions. It has ordered them to surrender any soldiers hidden in their houses. It has distributed black, flowing chadors to stores, saying women should wear them. It has declared that people can leave town for Raqqa, but only with permission.

So far, ISIS appears to have placed a priority on establishing Palmyra as a new outpost of its self-declared caliphate, rather than immediately harming or looting the city’s magnificent Greco-Roman ruins, one of the best preserved remnants of antiquity.

ISIS’ record of destroying or smuggling artifacts in Syria and Iraq has raised worldwide alarms, particularly after it bragged of having bulldozed ancient sites near Mosul this year.

On Wednesday, in a radio broadcast, a man identifying himself as Abu Layth al Saudi, the leader of the group in Palmyra, offered a clue to its plans. The sprawling ruins “won’t be damaged, God willing,” he said. “We will not touch it with our bulldozers as some tend to believe.”

But he said the fighters would smash statues “worshiped by infidels in the past.” (ISIS members had already entered Palmyra’s museum once, Mr. Homsi said. Most portable statues had already been removed by officials, so they smashed plaster statues depicting prehistoric life in the area, locked the door and left.)

On Wednesday, though, according to Mr. Homsi and others, ISIS used the ruins to stage a macabre spectacle, shooting 20 government soldiers in an ancient amphitheater better known in prewar days for a music festival.

Residents focus on a survival strategy, cowering from airstrikes and digging wells when the pumps fail. The cafe owner, now in another city, said he had lost several friends in bombardments; seven people from two families died, including a gym teacher and a general’s wife. Now, he said, was fretting over how to evacuate his parents.

“We will lose a lot of martyrs in the upcoming days,” he said.

Ahmad, the owner of a souvenir shop, said he had driven all the way to Raqqa to fill his car with canned food. Roads to government-held Homs were impassable, he said, with military forces stopping Palmyra residents, “calling them traitors because they didn’t fight with them,” and arresting some.

“I feel sorry for the civilians: They are being used as fuel,” he said. “Between us, I might become an infidel to all the world’s religions.”[source]

Fall of Ramadi to ISIS Weakens Rule of Iraqi Premier

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq in Washington last month. Mr. Abadi is facing challenges from Shiites tied to Iran. Credit James Lawler Duggan/Reuters 

BAGHDAD — As Shiite militiamen began streaming toward Ramadi on Monday to try to reverse the loss of the city to the Islamic State, the defeat has given new momentum to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s rivals within his own Shiite political bloc.

At the urging of American officials who sought to sideline the militias, Mr. Abadi had, in effect, gambled that the combination of United States airstrikes and local Sunni tribal fighters would be able to drive Islamic State fighters out of the city as fighting intensified in recent weeks. The hope was that a victory in Ramadi could also serve as a push for a broader offensive to retake the Sunni heartland of Anbar Province.

But as the setback brought the Shiite militias, and their Iranian backers, back into the picture in Anbar, intensified Shiite infighting appeared to leave the prime minister more vulnerable than ever. And it presented a new example of how developments on the Iraqi battlefield have sometimes instantly shifted political currents in the country.

“Abadi does not have a strong challenge from Iraq’s Sunnis or Iraqi Kurds,” said Ahmed Ali, an Iraqi analyst in Washington with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center. “It’s from the Shia side.”

Mr. Abadi’s rivals within Iraq’s Shiite political bloc have been accusing him for months of doing too much to work with Sunnis rather than empowering the militias and fellow Shiites.

He became prime minister last year with strong backing from the United States on the belief that he would be a more inclusive leader than his predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and would reach out to the country’s minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Mr. Abadi has done so, by pushing for the arming of local Sunni tribesmen and reaching a deal with the Kurds to share oil revenue.

But at every turn he has been thwarted by powerful Shiite leaders with links to Iran, including Mr. Maliki. Now, the latest setback in Ramadi has given Mr. Abadi’s rivals even more ammunition.

Some Shiite politicians, including Mr. Maliki, and powerful militia leaders linked to Iran, whose fighters are now preparing to fight in Anbar, have become increasingly critical of Mr. Abadi. Either they have spoken out themselves or news media outlets they control have taken aim at the prime minister through distorted coverage that has highlighted security failures in Anbar.

In one instance, the television news channel Afaq, which is run by allies of Mr. Maliki, gave running coverage to the supposed slaughter of 140 army soldiers last month at an outpost in Anbar, spurring public criticism of Mr. Abadi. Western diplomats and military officials say the story was untrue, and the Islamic State, notably, never claimed to have killed that many.

The effect, though, was to undermine Mr. Abadi’s rule, analysts said. There were calls for Mr. Abadi to resign.

Flashing uncharacteristic anger, Mr. Abadi appeared in front of Parliament and essentially dared his rivals to remove him from power.

“Iran is using Maliki against Abadi,” said a diplomat in Baghdad with close ties to the Iranians who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain relationships in the capital. “They don’t want Abadi to become pro-Western. The Iranians want Abadi weak.”

An official close to Mr. Abadi, who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations, related a joke that has been told among the prime minister’s inner circle: “Even if two fish fight in the river, it is Maliki stirring them up.”

The official added, of Mr. Abadi, “He is obsessed with Maliki.”

The largely Shiite militias are grouped under an umbrella organization called the Popular Mobilization Forces and, on paper at least, are under Mr. Abadi’s command.

Some of the newer units, formed last year after Shiite clerics called on young men to take up arms and fight the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, do answer to the prime minister. Some of the most powerful groups, though, such as the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, may answer to Mr. Abadi in individual cases — they did not advance on Anbar until the prime minister gave orders, for example. But those militias were trained and supported directly by Iran, and the militias’ leaders have grown immensely in popularity with the Iraqi public as they have won significant battles against the Islamic State.

This has presented serious challenges to Mr. Abadi’s authority. For instance, in March, at the beginning of an operation to retake the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the plans were drawn up by militia leaders, and then Mr. Abadi was told it would happen. Once those fighters failed to retake Tikrit decisively, Mr. Abadi asked them to withdraw and called for help from American airstrikes, reasserting his authority for the moment.

Now that the militias have been called upon to fight in Anbar, Mr. Abadi’s authority seems to be waning again, and the militias’ cachet has only grown. One of the most popular pictures circulating on social media in Iraq on Monday showed Hadi al-Ameri, the powerful head of the Badr militia, examining a map and seemingly plotting out a new campaign in Anbar.

Fanar Haddad, an Iraqi analyst, recently wrote in an online column that the militias have “provided a potent rallying point for a reinvigorated sense of Iraqi nationalism, albeit one with distinctly Shiite overtones.”

In an interview, Mr. Haddad said Mr. Abadi was limited in his ability to constrain the Popular Mobilization Forces — or Hashid in Arabic, as the militias are known here. “If you want to be part of Iraq’s evolving political game, you can’t go against the Hashid,” he said. “It’s just too popular.”

The militias’ growing popularity has coincided with an even more powerful approval of Iran’s role in Iraq, at least among Shiite Iraqis.

Once, even many Iraqi Shiites looked at Iran with some suspicion, partly because of the legacy of the long and bloody war that Iraq fought with Iran in the 1980s. A frequent gripe of the past was about low-quality Iranian goods, such as cheese and yogurt, clogging the shelves of grocery stories.

Now, though, in the words of Ali Kareem Salman, a 31-year-old government worker in the south, “Shiites think that Iran is the protector of the Shiite sect.”

Hanan Fatlawi, a Shiite lawmaker who is one of Mr. Abadi’s most vocal critics, said: “Previously, you could divide the Shia into two sides: those who hate Iran and those who love them. But after the entrance of ISIS, and with the situation we are in, many people are grateful to Iran. Their opinion changed.”

Of the militias, she said, “Without them, there would be no Baghdad.”

There is an essential paradox to Mr. Abadi’s leadership thus far. In nearly every way he has proved to be the inclusive leader mandated by the United States, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds and seeking consensus. But within Iraq, he is increasingly viewed as weak and unable to effectively shift Iraq’s tragic trajectory.

“This term ‘inclusive personality,’ I only hear from foreigners,” Ms. Fatlawi said. “He was weak from the start.”[source]

Ramadi, Anbar Province Capital And Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee

Iraqi security forces withdrawing from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, on Sunday. As the city fell to the Islamic State, militants from the group carried out executions of people loyal to the government. Credit Associated Press

BAGHDAD — The last Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and killed people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

The fall of Ramadi, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls. The defeat also laid bare the failed strategy of the Iraqi government, which had announced last month a new offensive to retake Anbar Province, a large desert region in the west of which Ramadi is the capital.

“The city has fallen,” said Muhannad Haimour, the spokesman for Anbar’s governor. Mr. Haimour said that at least 500 civilians and security personnel had been killed over the last two days in and around Ramadi, either from fighting or executions. Among the dead, he said, was the 3-year-old daughter of a soldier.

 

“Men, women, kids and fighters’ bodies are scattered on the ground,” said Sheikh Rafi al-Fahdawi, a tribal leader from Ramadi, who was in Baghdad on Sunday and whose men had been resisting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

He also said, “All security forces and tribal leaders have either retreated or been killed in battle. It is a big loss.”

Ramadi fell a day after the Pentagon said Special Operations forces, flying in helicopters that took off from Iraq, carried out a raid in eastern Syria that resulted in the death of an Islamic State leader and the capture of his wife, along with the recovery of a trove of materials American officials hope will yield important intelligence on the group.

American officials said recently that the Islamic State was on the defensive in Iraq, noting that the group had lost territory in Salahuddin Province and in some other areas in northern Iraq near the border with the autonomous Kurdish region. Yet the fall of Ramadi shows that the group is still capable of carrying out effective offensive operations.

Anbar Province holds painful historical import for the United States as the place where nearly 1,300 Marines and soldiers died after the American-led invasion of 2003. Since the beginning of 2014, months before the fall of Mosul and the start of the American air campaign against the Islamic State, the United States has been working with the Iraqi government to drive the extremist group from Anbar, sending vast supplies of weapons and ammunition and, more recently, training Sunni tribal fighters at an air base in the province.

With defeat looming in Ramadi on Sunday afternoon, the Anbar Provincial Council met in Baghdad and voted to ask Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send Shiite fighters to rescue Anbar, a largely Sunni province. In response, Mr. Abadi issued a statement calling for the militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and including several powerful Shiite forces supported by Iran, to be ready to fight. Some of the Shiite irregular units, which were formed last summer after Shiite clerics put out a call to arms, are more firmly under the command of the government, while others answer to Iran.

The involvement of the militias in Anbar had been opposed by the United States, which leads an international coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces. American officials had worried that the militias could inflame sectarian tensions in the province and ultimately make it harder to pacify.

As they considered asking for the militias’ assistance, Anbar officials met over the weekend with the American ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones, to ascertain the United States’ position on the issue. According to officials, Mr. Jones told the Anbar delegation that the United States would continue its air campaign, provided that the militias were under the command of Mr. Abadi, and not Iranian advisers, and that the militias were properly organized to avoid American bombing runs.

At the outset of an offensive to liberate Tikrit, in Salahuddin Province, in March, the Iranian-backed militias took the lead, and American warplanes stayed away. Once those militias stalled, Mr. Abadi ordered them to retreat, which was followed by airstrikes by the United States, an advance by Iraqi security forces, and the liberation of Tikrit.

In the wake of that victory, Mr. Abadi promised a new effort in Anbar, a campaign to be led by the Iraqi security forces and supported by American airstrikes, with Iranian-backed militias on the sidelines. A crucial component of that strategy was to arm local Sunni tribesmen to fight, but that plan never materialized on a large-scale, partly because of resistance by powerful Shiite political leaders in Baghdad.

The deterioration of Anbar over the past month underscored the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi Army, which is being trained by American military advisers, and raised questions about the United States’ strategy to defeat the Islamic State. At the same time, now that the militias are being called upon, the collapse of Ramadi has demonstrated again the influence of Iran, even if its advisers are unlikely to be on the ground in Anbar, as they were during the operation in Tikrit.

The Islamic State, which has held areas around Ramadi for nearly a year and a half, began an offensive on the city late Thursday night, and on Friday afternoon captured the provincial government headquarters.

Mr. Abadi on Friday promised to send reinforcements, but only about 200 soldiers arrived from Baghdad to help resist in one of the last contested neighborhoods in the city, according to a security official in Anbar.

American officials in Washington played down the situation Friday, saying it was similar to the up-and-down fighting there since the beginning of last year.

Yet the Islamic State was able to consolidate its hold of the city over the weekend, and on Sunday seized one of the last government redoubts, the local operations command center. The remaining officers and soldiers had fled, and one of them reached by telephone Sunday afternoon said they were stuck in a convoy southwest of Ramadi, with Islamic State militants closing in from four sides.

Another soldier who had been stationed at the Anbar Operations Command headquarters said the forces had left behind a huge cache of weapons recently sent by Baghdad, including rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. The weapons had been supplied by both the United States and Russia.

“ISIS is gaining more weapons, and the battle will be harder in the future,” said the soldier, who declined to give his name because he feared for his life.

Shiite militia leaders, who had mostly watched the collapse from afar, were scrambling on Sunday to mobilize their men.

Mueen al-Kadhumi, a leader in the Popular Mobilization Forces and a member of the Badr Organization, a longstanding militia with ties to Iran, said, “We have recalled all off-duty fighters to join their units as soon as possible to participate in the upcoming battle for Anbar.”

Pentagon officials said Sunday that it was premature to declare that Ramadi had fallen.

“We’re continuing to monitor reports of tough fighting in Ramadi, and the situation remains fluid and contested,” said Col. Steven H. Warren, a Defense Department spokesman.

Coalition warplanes carried out more attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq, with seven airstrikes on militant positions in or near Ramadi over the weekend, according to official statements. But the advance by Islamic State fighters was evidence again that American air power alone could not hold territory for the Baghdad government, or dislodge the militants, without an effective Iraqi force on the ground.

The wife of the Islamic State’s senior financial officer remained in American custody in Iraq on Sunday. Umm Sayyaf was captured during the Saturday raid into Syria that killed her husband, Abu Sayyaf, and about a dozen militant fighters.

A senior American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, said Abu Sayyaf’s death was likely to cause only a minor disruption in the Islamic State’s financial operations, including black-market sales of oil petroleum products.

“This will be short-lived,” the official said. “Organizations like this are designed to have succession plans.”[source]

Obama: First Memorial Day In 14 Years Without Ground Combat

 Memorial Day 2015, Arlington Cemetery.

President Obama used his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery to note that today marks the first observation of the holiday in 14 years without any U.S. involvement in a major ground war.
"For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful; it is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end," he said. "On this day, we honor the sacrifice of the thousands of servicemembers who gave their lives since 9/11."
Obama remarks made special mention of those who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama briefly mentioned tensions in Afghanistan, saying the country "remains a very dangerous place." He reiterated his commitment to withdrawing American personnel until only an "embassy presence" remains by the end of next year.
"Several years ago, we had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan," he said. "Today, fewer than 10,000 troops remain on a mission to train and assist Afghan forces."

But Obama didn't get into many specifics about violence in the Middle East, which remains a major challenge for his administration as the Taliban advances in Afghanistan and Islamic State fighters grab more territory in Iraq.
Most recently, Islamic militants have seized the town of Ramadi and are fortifying it against Iraqi military and paramilitary troops.
The extent to which the U.S. should be involved in the conflicts continues to divide policymakers and the public. Obama has taken a middle ground in Iraq, where U.S. troops are conducting airstrikes and helping train the country's military but aren't engaged in ground combat.
Before Obama took the podium, he appeared deep in thought as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter thanked U.S. military members for their service.
"We do know what your sacrifice means to us, to this nation and to a world that still depends so much on American men and women in uniform for its security," Carter said.[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]

Rulers Snub Obama's Arab Summit, Clouding U.S. Bid for Iran Deal

Saudi Arabia's King Salman, who met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Riyadh, on Thursday, has delegated Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to lead the Saudi delegation to the Gulf summit at Camp David. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By

Jay Solomon and

Carol E. Lee in Washington and

Ahmed Al Omran in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Updated May 11, 2015 1:24 p.m. ET 

Saudi monarch’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board with nuclear accord

 

WASHINGTON—Saudi Arabia’s monarch pulled out of a summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama on Thursday, in a blow to the White House’s efforts to build Arab support for a nuclear accord with Iran.
King Salman’s decision appeared to ripple across the Persian Gulf. Bahrain said on Sunday that its ruler, King Hamad bin Isaa Al Khalifa, had opted not to travel to Washington.
The only two monarchs from the six countries confirmed to attend the summit at the White House and the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., were the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait.
At stake for the White House is Mr. Obama’s key foreign-policy initiative, an Iran pact that is proceeding toward a June 30 deadline without support from regional powers. King Salman’s decision signals that the Arab states aren’t on board and could continue to act on their own to thwart Tehran, as Saudi Arabia has done in leading a military coalition against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.
Senior Arab officials involved in organizing the meeting said not enough progress had been made in narrowing differences with Washington on issues like Iran and Syria to make the Saudi ruler’s trip worth it.
“There isn’t substance for the summit,” said an Arab official who has held discussions with the Obama administration in recent days.
Senior U.S. officials said as recently as Friday that they expected King Salman, who took power in January, to travel to Washington.
The Obama administration planned the summit as a way to build Arab support for the Iran nuclear deal by giving more arms and security guarantees to members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
The White House on Sunday sought to play down any rift with Riyadh or the other GCC countries, stressing Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and his deputy would be at the meetings.
“We look forward to the attendance of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, with whom the president has met on several occasions, including in the Oval Office in December 2014 and January 2013,” said Bernadette Meehan, spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said King Salman was staying in Riyadh to focus on the Yemen cease-fire and humanitarian aid effort.
“Minister Al-Jubeir reiterated King Salman’s commitment to achieving peace and security in Yemen and his eagerness to the speedy delivery of humanitarian aid to the brotherly people of Yemen,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said.
The Obama administration has cited the GCC summit as crucial for building regional support for the U.S.’s Middle East policies, particularly its diplomatic engagement with Iran.
Saudi Arabia has been sharply critical of the White House’s efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear capacity in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Riyadh has also pressed the U.S. to take more-aggressive steps to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest Arab ally, and to push back the Tehran-supported insurgency in Yemen.
Secretary of State John Kerry met with King Salman on Thursday in Riyadh to discuss the Camp David agenda, U.S. officials said. He then met with the GCC’s foreign ministers in Paris, where he offered to give the GCC countries non-NATO major-ally status, said a senior U.S. official. But the Arab diplomats showed “very, very tepid interest,” the official added.
“It’s something we’re prepared to consider, and we had raised it with them,” the U.S. official said. “But they seemed to think it was not that critical or even important a step.”
Last Monday, French President François Hollande met in Riyadh with King Salman and other Gulf Arab leaders to discuss regional security matters. Within the international bloc of countries negotiating with Iran, France has emerged as the most critical of the effort.
Saudi officials told Mr. Kerry on Friday that King Salman would attend the Camp David summit, U.S. officials said, and that the overall message in Paris was positive.
The White House said that day that the Saudi monarch would meet President Obama on Wednesday ahead of the dinner.
“We have heard nothing negative about what we are trying to do,” the U.S. official said on Sunday.
In Paris, Messrs. Kerry and al-Jubeir agreed on a plan to forge a cease-fire in Yemen and to promote a political transition in the Arab country.
The Obama administration also pushed for better integrating the U.S.’s and GCC countries’ missile defense systems as a way to contain Iran.
“Whoever comes will be empowered to speak in the name of their government and will sign onto whatever‎ is agreed to at Camp David,” the administration official said. “So the dynamics may change based on who’s there and there will have to be maybe some adjustments.”
Some Arab officials said they didn’t believe the agenda at Camp David would go far enough to address their concerns about Iran.
Some of the Arab states said they were hoping the GCC could sign a mutual defense treaty with Washington, similar to South Korea’s and Japan’s.
Such treaties would bind the U.S. to defend the Persian Gulf states if they faced Iranian aggression.
The White House, however, didn’t believe it could win congressional approval to back such a treaty, said U.S. and Arab officials involved in the discussions.
Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Qatar also are seeking more-advanced weaponry to counter Iran, including surveillance equipment, cruise missiles and drones.
These countries also have expressed interest in buying the Pentagon’s more-advanced jet fighter, the F-35.
Sales of such military gear are complicated by the U.S.’s strategic alliance with Israel, these officials said. Congressional legislation mandates the Jewish state must maintain a “qualitative military edge” over its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
Two people briefed on the presummit negotiations said the Saudis ultimately decided the agenda wasn’t substantive enough to require the attendance of 79-year-old King Salman.
The Sultanate of Oman, which hosted secret negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in 2012 and 2013, said its deputy prime minister, Sayyid Fahd bin Mahmoud al-Said, would lead his country’s delegation. The country’s ruler returned home in March to Muscat from Germany, where he had received months of receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness.
The U.A.E. is sending a delegation led by Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. [source]

Iranian Authorities Release Maersk Tigris

Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz were raised after the cargo ship was seized 

By Asa Fitch

Updated May 7, 2015 7:55 a.m. ET 

 

DUBAI—Maersk Line said Thursday that the M/V Maersk Tigris, a cargo ship under its charter, had been released more than a week after its seizure by Iranian naval vessels raised tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement, the Danish shipping giant said it was “pleased and relieved” to learn that the ship had been freed and that, according to Rickmers Shipmanagement, which managed the vessel, its crew was in good condition.
It said the ship had resumed course to its original destination, the port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates.
According to Maersk and Rickmers, the Marshall Islands-flagged M/V Maersk Tigris was seized April 28 near the Strait of Hormuz, as it was en route from Jeddah to Jebel Ali. Iranian patrol boats fired warning shots across its bow and directed it to a rendezvous point near the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
Iranian officials have said the vessel was seized because of a previous court ruling ordering Maersk Line, which charters the ship, to make a payment to settle a dispute with a private Iranian company called Talaieh Pars Oil Products Co.
“The release follows a constructive dialogue with the Iranian authorities, including the Ports and Maritime Organization, and the provision of a letter of undertaking in relation to the underlying cargo case,” Maersk Line said in its statement on Thursday. “We will continue our dialogue with the aim to fully resolve the cargo case.”
The seizure came at a time of heightened tensions in the region. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival for power in the Persian Gulf, is leading an air offensive against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The U.S. and five other world powers are attempting to finalize a deal to limit Iranian nuclear activities, in exchange for an easing of international sanctions against the country.
In response to the Maersk Tigris’s seizure, the U.S. military began providing escorts for American-and British-flagged vessels passing through the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf outlet through which flow about 30% of the world’s seaborne oil shipments. On Wednesday, a Pentagon spokeswoman said those escorts had ended.[source]
—Costas Paris contributed to this article.