ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On Firday evening, ISIS militants bombarded the government-hedl Deir Ezzor Airport with mortars and missiles, destroying two warplanes belonging to the Syrian Air Force. The attack on the Deir Ezzor Airport was a part of the ongoing efforts of the ISIS terrorist group to put pressure on government forces in Deir Ezzor . On Sunday, ISIS units continued attacks on the Syrian army inside and outside the city of Deir Ezzor, but they failed to achieve notable gains. Meanwhile, ISIS propaganda outlets claimed that “regime forces” suffered dozens of casualties in the recent clashes for this Syrian city. No videos or photos confirming these claims were provided.

A fighter loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad hangs his picture as fellow fighters rest by a Syrian national flag after gaining control of the area in Deir al-Adas, a town south of Damascus, Daraa countryside on February 10, 2015.Reuters Written by Valentin Vasilescu ; Originally appeared at Veterans Today The Syrian Arab Army, with a strength of 125 000 soldiers, fighting since nearly six years against 200 000 so-called “insurgents” who are in fact 90% of the Islamist mercenaries armed, trained and paid for by foreign Governments and their intelligence services. At the beginning of this war of national defense, the Syrian Arab Army has committed a series of errors that allowed mercenaries to get their hands on 1/3 of its combat equipment and 45% of its ammunition depots. The Syrian Arab Army has lost more than 40,000 troops who could not be replaced by voluntary reservists, since 75% of the national territory had been occupied by the Islamists. Subsequently, especially with the

Russian warplanes, based on Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, destroyed 1,252 terrorist targets in Syria over 2 months, commander of the Russian military group in the country Col. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov told journalists on Friday. “Over two months, naval aviation pilots carried out 420 sorties (including 117 at night). Nearly all sorties were accompanied by severe hydrometeorological conditions. A total of 1,252 terrorist targets in Syria were destroyed,” Kartapolov said. Now, the Russian Navy is returning Admiral Kuznetsov and its battlegroup from the Mediterranean to its home base in Russia’s Severomorsk, the chair of the Russian General Staff, Army Gen. Valery Gerasimov, announced on Friday. The move comes as Russia begins reducing its military presence in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial pullout of military forces from Syria after the announcement of the ceasefire deal in Syria in December, 2016.

The map shows the current military situation in Iraq. Click to see the full-size map

A hacker has breached the FBI official website for the second time and said that its security systems are very “lazy.” Photo: naimun.modelun.org A hacker, known by the nickname CyberZeist, claims that he has breached the official website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the second time. According to CyberZeist, who posted some of the private information, which he managed to obtain to the open source site Pastebin, the FBI security systems are very “lazy.” “This leak is totally devoted to the Anonymous Movement,” CyberZeist wrote. Reportedly, vulnerability in the Plone Content Management System (CMS) of the FBI was exposed by the hacker, who allegedly penetrated the website’s systems without prior warning. According to RT TV-network, the Plone CMS security system is also used by Google and federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . According to CyberZeist, he managed to obtain information on 155 FBI agents, including such personal details as their

The Scapegoating of the Military Leaders at Pearl Harbor Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, authors of A Matter of Honor: Pearl Harbor: Betrayal, Blame, and a Family's Quest for Justice. Photo credit: Eileen Hyland; Harper Collins There has been a lot of loose talk lately about news reporting that should be factual and truthful, particularly with respect to political and geopolitical events. The Kennedy assassination and 9/11 are two contemporary examples where the search for the truth has consumed the lives of so many who cared deeply about the facts. Anthony Summers has studied and written about both 9/11 and the JFK murder. Now, together with hispartner Robbyn Swan, he turns his focus to the events at Pearl Harbor, 75 years ago. Pearl Harbor was the deadliest attack against the US before 9/11 as 2,403 men perished on that day in 1941. Immediately following the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a commission to go to Hawaii and try and find out what happened. Su

Not the First Time a Terror Suspect Apparently Left a Paper Trail -- or Was Previously Known Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from DutchGamingCommunity DGC / YouTube , Bundesrepublik Deutschland / Wikimedia and Screenshot Today, WhoWhatWhy has seen heavy traffic coming from Google searches that point to a story we ran almost two years ago. Why the sudden interest? It took us only a moment to discover the connection: We had written about the odd phenomenon of terrorists repeatedly leaving ID papers behind at the scene. And now, with the Berlin truck attack, we see yet another such example. We also see that, in a pattern we have previously reported on with other terror incidents, the suspect was already known to authorities — had even been in custody, but was released. From CNN: The Berlin truck attack suspect had been arrested in August with forged documents on his way to Italy but was released by a judge, a German security official tells CNN. The suspect’s identity papers were fo

Above left: Saddam at trial. Inset, top left: Saddam, 1979. Inset, top right: captured, 2003. Bottom right: Hussein family, pre 1995. Photo credit: Department of Defense / Wikimedia , Iraqi News Agency / Wikimedia , Unknown / Wikimedia and Iraqi State Television/ Wikimedia Here we are on the tenth anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s hanging As with the removal and ghastly end of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, another tyrant the US didn’t like, and with a third, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, hanging on despite a concerted effort to topple him, we’re inclined to ask: How’s all this regime-changing and “democracy building” in the Middle East working out? By almost every measure, it has been a disaster. There’s a lot of blame to go around: the US government, the US media, and the American public all bear some responsibility for provoking massive bloodshed and creating a more unstable world without any noticeable improvement in the lives of the people directly affected and at a great cost to the US. In a