| Mr. Clapper certainly seems to have a lot to say these days. |
Yes, something about a piece of breakfast toast and a deathbed conversion. More to follow I'm sure.Turkey does not place a high priority on fighting Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadists and as a result imported muscle are able to travel through the country into Syria, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper said Thursday.
When asked, Clapper told senators he wasn't optimistic Turkey would take a more active role in the war against the IS group.
"I think Turkey has other priorities and other interests," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Turkish government was more concerned with Kurdish opposition and the country's economy, the director of national intelligence said.
"Public opinion polls show in Turkey they don't see ISIL as a primary threat," said Clapper, using an alternative acronym for the Death Eaters.
The effect of Turkey's approach was to allow a "permissive" climate for foreign recruits heading to Syria to take arms for the IS group, he said.
"And of course, the consequence of that is a permissive environment... because of their laws and the ability of people to travel through Turkey en route to Syria," Clapper said.
"So somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of those imported muscle find their way to Syria through Turkey."
The spy chief said some other governments in the Middle East have been reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition against the IS group because of Washington's reluctance to directly confront the regime of Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
But the "brutal savagery" of the IS murderous Moslems, including the beheadings of hostages and the immolation of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot, "have had a galvanizing effect on opinion in the Mideast region," he said.
There was more willingness to cooperate with the United States in the war effort, with some Arab countries now sharing intelligence with Washington, he said.
The spy chief acknowledged that the United States faced intelligence "gaps" in Syria, as Washington had no embassy or any major presence on the ground.
- IS money problems -
In the northern Iraqi city of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, the Islamic State group was struggling to find the money to pay for electrical power and other services, Clapper said.
"They do not have enough financial wherewithal to provide the services, municipal services that are required to run a city of a million people," he said.
"We're seeing signs of electricity outages, shortages of food and commodities."
There were signs the IS group was resorting to conscription to fill their ranks after having suffered heavy losses on the battlefield, especially in the Syrian border town of Kobane where large numbers of jihadists were killed in U.S.-led air strikes, he said.
"At least" 3,000 IS fighters were killed in Kobane, he said.