Badr Brigade Head: US Airstrikes Against ISIS Failing

Warns US Is Not Hitting Important ISIS Targets

by Jason Ditz, 

Influential Iraqi MP and Badr Brigade leader Hadi Amiri today declared US airstrikes against ISIS to have been a failure, saying they’d killed some ISIS figures but that the group remains large, flush with cash, and in a state of high morale.

“Today, ISIS is a state, it has command centers, their locations are known, their logistics are known,” Amiri said, saying the US is not attacking known ISIS sites and is subsequently not doing major harm to ISIS’ continued control of much of Iraq and Syria.

Amiri also faulted US arming schemes for “moderate” Syrian rebels, saying this was a big source of weapons for ISIS and that what few moderate factions even exist in Syria are so weak that ISIS is just taking the arms away from them.

The Badr Brigade is among the largest of the Shi’ite militias fighting against ISIS in Iraq, and this has made Amiri hugely influential among the nation’s Shi’ite majority. While he hasn’t been as overtly hostile to US deployments as some other militias, he has been very critical of US tactics.

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/01/26/badr-brigade-head-us-airstrikes-against-isis-failing/