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“Our campaign plan is first and foremost to collapse ISIL’s
parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, focusing on its power
centers in Raqqa and Mosul,” he added.
Repelling Counterattacks
In Syria, coalition-supported local forces recently took the
town of Shaddadi, repelled ISIL’s counterattacks and
ultimately severed the main artery between Syria and
northern Iraq, making it harder for ISIL’s leaders and forces
to travel between Raqqa and Mosul, Carter said.
Iraqi forces have moved from their staging base at
Makhmur and are advancing to new positions as part of the
early stages of operations to collapse ISIL’s control over
Mosul, the defense secretary added.
U.S. Marines near Makhmur now are providing artillery fire
there at Iraq’s request, he said, to help protect and support
the Iraqi advance against ISIL.
“In both Syria and Iraq we’re seeing important steps to
shape what will become crucial battles in the months to
come,” Carter said.
Relentless Pressure
As local partners move forward, the coalition continues to
bring relentless pressure on ISIL commanders in Mosul, the
secretary added.
Along with killing Imam, U.S. forces targeted Abu Sara, a
top ISIL leader charged with paying fighters in northern
Iraq, and several ISIL associates who were directly
involved in external plotting and training, he said.
“These precise actions came after recent strikes that
destroyed a significant quantity of improvised explosive
devices and bomb-making equipment that could have been
used against our partners headed for Mosul,” Carter added,
noting that the actions are believed to be successful and
damaging to ISIL.
Campaign Momentum
The defense secretary said the momentum of the campaign
against ISIL is clearly on the coalition’s side.
Carter Discusses Counter-ISIL Campaign
“The United States military will continue to work intensively
with our coalition partners to build on this progress, as our
counterparts throughout our governments work to defend
our homelands at the same time,” he said.
Carter also announced that yesterday he and his Saudi
counterpart, Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister
Mohammad bin Salman, agreed to convene a U.S.-Gulf
Cooperation defense ministerial on April 20 in Riyadh
ahead of President Barack Obama’s participation in the
U.S.- Gulf Cooperation Council leaders’ summit there the
next day.
Carter Discusses Future Defense Forum
“This will be an important forum to build on our counter-ISIL
defense ministerial in Brussels last month,” Carter said.
The meeting also will strengthen U.S.-GCC defense
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April 2016 Edition
partnerships by allowing participants to review and discuss
the way ahead for joint regional defense initiatives that all
committed to during the 2015 US-GCC Camp David
Summit last May, the secretary added.
– By Cheryl Pellerin – Reporter, science writer for DoD
News, which provides news and feature
articles for http://defense.gov, the U.S. Department of
Defense website
Follow Cheryl Pellerin on Twitter:@PellerinDoDNews
U.S. Vulnerable to
Belgium-Style ISIS Attack?
The U.S. Congress gave
the FBI $1.3 billion dollars
to modernize information
technology systems that left
America vulnerable to the
9/11 attacks. However, 15
years later, “FBI and the
Department of Homeland
Security”
remain
technologically inferior due
to multiple failures to build a modernized case
management system. The $400+ million Virtual Case File
project by the SAIC Corp. was declared “unfit for use” and
in a 2012 interview with FierceGovernmentIT, former FBI
chief technology officer Jack Israel said that the $900+
million Lockheed Martin Sentinel project’s “demise” was
the FBI’s failure to build an electronic case management
system.
“What Sentinel was designed to do is come up with
automated workflows for all investigative processes that
went on in the FBI,” said Israel. “It was supposed to come
up with new search paradigms, ones that were more used
today, like Google searches,” added Israel. “It was
supposed to promote information sharing, being able to
share with the rest of the law enforcement and intelligence
community information that the FBI had developed. And it
was supposed to go from a paper-based storage of
information,
of
records,
to
electronic
records
management,” explained Israel. “That may sound kind of
strange, because the case file system in ACS is
electronic… But, the records themselves that the FBI uses
to go to court, are, today still paper. Unless you have a
way to certify electronic records, like with a digital
signature,” Israel expounded.
“Our Case Investigative Life Cycle (CILC, pronounced
“silk) software does exactly what Mr. Israel describes,
including digital signatures, electronic case file
dissemination to prosecutors and the courts,” says David
Banks, Chief Operating Officer of the IRP Solutions
Corporation. “And we challenge our federal government to
put us and CILC to the test. “I have no doubt that there
was corporate collusion to criminalize IRP’s debt to