Good morning everyone! Happy Thursday to you!

Joining us for today's show, we have: Mike Barnicle, Nicolle Wallace, Sal Lifrieri, Howard Dean, David Ignatius, Rep. Mark Sanford, Rep. Steny Hoyer, Nancy Gibbs, Ed Rapp, Michael Elliot, Piers Morgan, Michael Weiss, Rep. Peter King, Brian Sullivan, Mike Allen, Kevin Lacz and more

The Nicole's are on as they joke about the Madonna fall at last nights Brit awards. I said that her performance at the Grammy Award show was hard to watch and this is exactly why! After all, we have all stumbled on tripping over our Armani cape.

But she recovered and returned to continue her song, Living For Love. The 56-year-old issued a statement later saying she was "fine" and that her cape had been "tied too tight". "Nothing can stop me and love really lifted me up," she wrote on Instagram, referencing the lyrics to her song. "Thanks for your good wishes!"

Anyway, Three (30 people were arrested here in the states (USA) for wanting to join ISIS and/or for wanting to blow up parts of Coney Island (I should say to set off a bomb at Cony island) and to potentially attack our POTUS (Obama). Three men were arrested Wednesday on charges of plotting to help the Islamic State group wage war against the United States, and federal officials said one of them spoke of shooting President Barack Obama or planting a bomb on Coney Island. Akhror Saidakhmetov was arrested at Kennedy Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul on his way to Syria, authorities said. Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev had a ticket to travel to Istanbul next month and was arrested in Brooklyn, federal prosecutors said. The two were held without bail after a brief court appearance. A third defendant, Abror Habibov, is accused of helping fund Saidakhmetov's efforts to join the Islamic State group after Saidakhmetov's mother took away his passport to try to prevent him from traveling. Habibov was ordered held without bail in Florida. The three, who are from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, are charged with attempt and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. If convicted, each could face a maximum of 15 years in prison. "This is real," New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton said. "This is the concern about the lone wolf, inspired to act without ever going to the Mideast."

The Department of Justice has charged roughly 20 people in the past year with planning to travel to the Middle East to fight alongside militants like the Islamic State group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq. Federal officials have been concerned about Americans going overseas to train with these groups and returning with plots to carry out attacks at home. Saidakhmetov is a Brooklyn resident and citizen of Kazakhstan. Juraboev is a Brooklyn resident from Uzbekistan. Habibov is also from Uzbekistan and had been in the U.S. legally, but his visa had expired. He was appointed a public defender on Wednesday. Federal prosecutors say Juraboev, 24, first came to the attention of law enforcement in August, when he posted on an Uzbek-language website that propagates the Islamic State ideology. "Greetings! We too want to pledge our allegiance and commit ourselves while not present there," he wrote, according to federal authorities. "Is it possible to commit ourselves as dedicated martyrs anyway while here? "What I'm saying is, to shoot Obama and then get shot ourselves, will it do? That will strike fear in the hearts of infidels."

Officials said they believed he planned to travel from Turkey to Syria to join the terror group. Prosecutors say Saidakhmetov, 19, also threatened an attack in the U.S. if he was unable to join the Islamic State. Juraboev's plans included attacks against Obama or planting a bomb on Coney Island, officials said. Federal officials say Juraboev identified Saidakhmetov as a friend with a shared ideology. The two exchanged messages on how to get overseas, and Saidakhmetov and an informant watched videos of Islamic State training camps in Syria, according to court papers. Saidakhmetov told the informant in September that he wanted to travel to Syria for jihad, or holy war, but that his concerned mother confiscated his passport, the complaint said. He said he would lie and tell her he planned to go to Uzbekistan to visit relatives. When he called to ask for his passport back, she hung up the phone. "The flow of foreign fighters to Syria represents an evolving threat to our country and to our allies," said state U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, who is Obama's choice to be U.S. attorney general. Saidakhmetov's attorney, Adam Perlmutter, said his client was a "young, innocent kid" who would plead not guilty.

"This is the type of case that highlights everything that is wrong with how the Justice Department approaches these cases," Perlmutter said. Juraboev's attorney had no immediate comment. Saidakhmetov booked a flight to Turkey on Feb. 19 and seemed like just another "regular American teenager," said workers who helped him at Nil Travel in Coney Island. "He was just like anyone around us. He was totally normal. He wasn't nervous," said assistant manager Frank Cakir. "It's just scary." akir said Saidakhmetov asked for the least expensive flight to Turkey and paid $571 by credit card for a round-trip ticket. Habibov, 30, operates kiosks that repair phones and sell kitchenware in malls in Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Philadelphia. He employed Saidakhmetov last fall and winter and said he would help fund his travel, prosecutors said. The two were spotted in Brooklyn purchasing a ticket for Saidakhmetov to travel to Turkey, officials said. Farhod Sulton, president of the Brooklyn-based Vatandosh Uzbek-American Federation, knew Habibov and said he was a "lost man." "Abror was not educated. He was so eager to learn Islam, and he had a lot of questions," Sulton said. "A couple of times I remember warning him about his thoughts and where he was getting his information."

The Islamic State group largely consists of Sunni militants from Iraq and Syria but has also drawn fighters from across the Muslim world and Europe. The FBI for the last year has expressed worries about the flow of Western fighters to Syria. Bratton said this was the first public case in New York, but he hinted at ongoing investigations. (Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Verena Dobnik and Deepti Hajela in New York and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.)

The key element the panel is saying is to figure out whether these acts are 'operational' or 'aspirational' which to me, is a fine line. Like they also just about is that the Boston bombings drew that thin line. Plus, this guy made no bones about what he wanted to do with the FBI. They (FBI Agents) showed up at the guys house and the guy did not make any bones about what he wanted to do. Yet, the FBI let him go or be because there was no weaponry in his place but obviously they had him under surveillance before they snagged him at the JFK Kennedy International Airport.

Now, Richard Engel is on talking about my problem in this entire mess which is Turkey. That is the hub into terrorism. Every schmuck and their brother goes through Turkey to get to be near the Islamic State and to get into Syria. Can we please start to come down on that country and what is funnier is asking them to fight vs. ISIS/ISIL.

Plus, isn’t it a great time to stop the funding of our Department of Homeland security? that’s a great idea and it is so great that it is caught up in the world of our politicians. Joe just mentioned it how ridiculous it is. He also says what I just said here about stopping Turkey from allowing these people to use turkey to get into the terrorist states and groups. We need to step up now and really do something about the borders in and out of Turkey. Turkey needs to have sanctions or anything that is strong handed because enough. I agree with Joe. We should say to Turley that we will work hand and hand with the Kurds if they do NOT start to do the right thing and help out here. For weeks we have been asking what about Turkey. What about turkey? We see what goes on. Everyone uses Turkey to get to Syria and in turn to join ISIS. This needs to stop. We need to make threats at Turkey and to that government. I am not sure why we are now discussing the Ukraine situation and that we should deploy military in Poland, but as far as Turkey, enough. We need to act out with Turkey to say ‘put up or shut up’ so to speak.

Why is the Turkish Government so hard to deal with and why is it so easy to cross those borders into the land of ISIS?

And, did I just hear that La Guardia airport is finally going to have running water? What is that about?

I guess a bunch of snow hit the Southern Parts of the U.S. It is actually quite mild in NJ today. I was out at like 530AM too and I noticed it was way less cold than yesterday and earlier this week. It was brutal this week although, I am sensing we may get some cold burst of weather coming in from the Great Lakes. DC is getting two inches today. I hope they will still work to fund the DHS with a clean bill and then they can take their times with regard to immigration. Because I saw interviews yesterday of people against the immigration bill and they made no bones about using that as leverage to kill this funding of DHS bill. It was so uncanny. They would be asked about funding the DHS bill and answer it by going off about the Mexican borders. It made no sense to me but whatever. Politics at its best this week. Another year, another threat of a department shut down in our Government system. And, another 11th hour rush to solve it. Which of course keeps everyone from doing any real work to help progress.

Joe is having a one on one with David Ignatius about everywhere around the world. They talk about Iran. Germany at one point and many things that happen to be going on around the world. he says that Iranians wants to be powerful and they do not want to use terrorism to gain that power. They discuss what are Iranians military intentions as a whole. I also know or thought that they love the western cultures. Iran seems to have a few parties splitting up that rule in that country. That was a pleasant discussion.

I am hearing the panel say that we have extremist being watched in every state. That is astounding. I wonder why there are so many people that act this way or that hate people or things in that way. I also winder why people just do NOT let people be. It makes no sense to me. Even if there was a caliphate or whatever that term is that means that the world was ending, why do they kill people because of it? I guess it is believed that they get to go to some heaven if they kill people which is the dumbest belief in the history of religion. It makes zero sense.

Regardless of religions, It seems that the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faced a conservative backlash Wednesday after backing off demands that Congress reverse President Obama’s immigration executive actions as a condition for funding the Department of Homeland Security. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, voiced support for the new plan after initially staying coy. A day earlier, McConnell, R-Ky., effectively gave them what they wanted – by agreeing to hold a stand-alone vote on a DHS funding bill, with no immigration measures attached. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure it passes by an overwhelming vote. I think virtually every Democrat will vote for that,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced Wednesday.

Reid’s announcement helps clear the way for passage in the Senate.

Indeed, shortly after his comments, the Senate voted 98-2 to advance the legislation that Democrats had blocked four times in a row. That legislation would reverse Obama’s immigration actions as a condition for funding DHS. But Democrats supported it Wednesday with the understanding it will be changed to what Democrats want. McConnell also earned support from senior members of his caucus, with fellow GOP leaders making clear that the approach may be the only way to fund DHS past a Friday midnight deadline. But vocal conservatives bristled at the change in tactics. And the complaints could create serious turbulence on the House side.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., one of the most outspoken critics on the Hill of Obama’s immigration plan, called the new strategy a “cop-out.” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., called it a "surrender plan." Thirty House conservatives, including those two lawmakers, penned a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and his deputies urging them to "stand firm" against Obama's executive actions. Senior GOP House aides told Fox News that a "clean" DHS bill, without immigration provisions, would be hard to pass among House Republicans. That means Boehner may be forced to rely on mostly Democrats to approve it, should he go along with McConnell's plan.

Boehner, though, declined to say Wednesday what he would recommend to his conservative, fractious rank-and-file if the funding bill clears the Senate. "I'm waiting for the Senate to act. The House has done their job," he said after a closed-door meeting with members. Even so, lawmakers were told to be prepared to spend the weekend in the Capitol to resolve the issue. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released a statement calling the leadership’s current plan “a mistake.” “Congress is obliged to use every constitutional check and balance we have to rein in President Obama's lawlessness, and that includes both our confirmation authority over nominees and the power of the purse,” he said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also opposes the new plan.

McConnell’s change in approach tees up a delicate set of negotiations between both parties, and both chambers. Congress, unless lawmakers can pass a stopgap bill, has just three days to figure out a solution or else parts of the Homeland Security Department will shut down. “This is crunch-time,” DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday. “The clock is ticking. We’re running out of money.” First stop for the new plan would be a new set of votes in the Senate. Some Senate Democrats initially suggested that Boehner should first commit to support the plan – which, so far, the speaker has not done. But Reid made clear Wednesday that his caucus is comfortable with the plan.

The question, then, would be whether Boehner could get enough support from his caucus to pass it – or, as he has before, turn to Democrats to lift the bill over the finish line in the House.

Republican Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona said Boehner would find himself on "very thin ice" if he relied primarily on Democratic votes to pass the DHS funding bill. But another House Republican allied with Boehner predicted Tuesday night that McConnell's plan might win approval. Noting that a federal judge in Texas has issued an order blocking implementation of Obama's plan, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said the court had "effectively stopped the president's executive action," at least now. "So I don't think we'd run the risk of shutting down Homeland Security," he added. Boehner could also change the McConnell plan and send back his own alternative. But Reid warned the House not to add “riders” or “tricks” to the bill.

“If he sends something back that is vexatious with all these riders and anti-immigrant stuff, he won't be able to go to conference, and he has to understand that,” Reid said. Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

And, honestly, Nicole just phrase the question about the funding bill for DHS perfectly. Wow. She basically spelled out that House would be taking the vote and therefore the perception as far as the blame game would be on them. She infers that you can say it’s the Dem’s fault 18 times over till one is blue in the face, but the perception is because of the actual voting process, is not good for the GOP. And, why can’t the GOP start to look better with regard to the public’s perception regarding anything let alone these shut does. That’s a great way to phrase it. Joe then says that we know how this will end. And, that we will fund it and why does the GOP go through these days where they just look badly. I agree. They look like blamers and obstructionists and down right hypocrites. They will get the bad press and the (clean) bill will passed by Friday. They are not, NOT funding the DHS. (Marc) Sanford is saying how the POTUS acts unconstitutional not realizing that no one buys into it.

I also agree with what everyone says about our POTUS but to use it whatever as leverage on a completely different issue is so the 90s. That way of dealing is done. It is a total ego driven power play what we go through in these situations. End of story. They also need to be real about it and they (GOP) should stop allowing the bad press because of it. They should nip things in the bud and stop pandering to the far right part of the GOP.

BTW, its snowing here. Light flurries. I had no clue it was going to snow here again.

And so what is this about ‘Jihadi John (aka Mohammed Emwazi? I guess he is from London, England? I thought we knew that about the executioner that chops peoples heads off their body? Maybe it was confirmed 100% that it was indeed him.

Steny Hoyer is up next to discuss the DHS situation.

I love Nicole Wallace today. She only interrupted her fellow GOPer which BTW, Mark Sanford was the guy that was supposedly hiking the Appalachian trail when he was cheating on his wife. Do we really trust what this guy has to say about us people when he seemingly only cares about himself? After all, he decided that instead of actually doing work, he would gallivant around wherever while lying about his whereabouts during an affair he was having (aka committing adultery and not being at work). He seems selfish. I don’t trust what he says and only in South Carolina would someone like that get elected (again). I wish the guy from that reality show (I forget the name of the show) got elected.

Regardless of (Mark) Sanford, I think passing some bill getting us through the next two weeks or month is stupid. Come on now. Fund this Department. He even just said it was stupid. Its dumb. These are adults. They have jobs. Do them. I cannot believe I have to say that sentence 88 times. Do your goddam jobs. Then again, it is our faults because we allowed these people in their seats. We voted them all in. It is our fault.It is insulting actually.

Nancy Gibbs from Time Magazine is on now and that article is dated. We already know what they are talking about here. Or, maybe they discuss or write about the same thing being debated about not only us going in to fight it, but what next? How long do we say since supposedly we are not ‘occupiers’ but this is a very odd fight. Its fighting an ideology and not a state or country. I do NOT think it’s the same thing as fighting say in Iran and in Afghanistan. Although it kind of is because then, we were fighting the Taliban. I will say it again, there is no easy answer to us fighting vs. ISIS/ISIL.

What’s next after that now?

BTW, where is Mika today. I forgot she is not here but al;so, I had no clue people are not able to afford heat during the winter time. That’s not cool. This one woman owns her house. She owns her car outright and yet she cannot afford to keep her heat on during what is a brutal winter season this year. More than 206K people have had their heat shut down this year. That’s insanity. I really need to make more money. I need to help people and animals more than just writing about it. Oh. This is a lead in to their show about energy. they are touching into that energy driven soccer ball. I remember it when she won the science thing during that White House event.

As Joe just said about it, that is an ‘eye opener’ because we think of poverty being about not eating right, etc. This is mind blowing. Three billion people cook their meals with open fires in their homes. That’s is also insane. And, dangerous in many ways.

Pierce Morgan is up next. Its funny. I just thought about him (Pierce Morgan) for the first time in a long time after or when Larry King was on the show last week. Plus, the Celebrity Apprentice ended last Monday which he not only won one year/season, he is also a guest judge on that show. They discuss Futbal and Liverpool’s team which I know nothing about. I never got into Futbal. I know nothing about that sport. Honestly, I have always like Pierce (Morgan). He seems cool. I would like to hang out with him. I am also not sure what the Daily Mail is either. I am sensing it is some type of ad based media outlet and I think maybe Pierce ran it. Pardon my ignorance about the content in this section.

The top of the hour brings us the breaking news about the identity of Jihadi John. They are actually breaking down that issue and the ISIS issue rather sweetly. It has taken Pierce Morgan to say that fighting the Taliban is way different than fighting ISIS/ISIL. They spell that out greatly. They also discuss the nuances within the Iranian state or maybe the Islamic state and how certain fashions of it, must fight the extremists or not fight them, but they are way different. We lump all of that together. Who is Michael Weiss? he wrote the “Isis: Inside the Army of Terror” piece. Lets try to find it. Oh. here it is. I’ll post down below this recap. It is actually a book written by this guy and another dude. See that article from Newsmax below this recap.

Peter King is on now and he agrees that even though these ISIS people are evil, they are not dumb people. He also makes a good point that they (ISIS/ISIL) are looking for territories. I assume now that they are discussing the fight over DHS will be against the POTUS and I am wrong. He (Peter King) brings up the security ramifications. Good for him. Honestly, from my seat here, the GOPers that are not wing nuts seem to be right on about this situation and this political stance is all driven by the tea party part of that GOP. I hear so many GOPers denouncing it and yet (John) Boehner is acting like Marshawn Lynch which BTW, I hate when he acts that way. it is so childish. I mean when he is asked questions, that he says the same answer over and over and he does that a lot. I hate when anyone acts that way and I certainly do not expect anyone in our Government to act that way. Its not only childish to act that way, its condescending. its arrogant. I hate it. Oh and most of all, its so annoying when he acts that way.

CPAC is coming to DC this week. I assume its DC. It says Washington on the TV now. I cannot imagine them having that CPAC convention if that is not redundant to the acronym CPAC, in Washington state. No matter where it will be this weekend, that is always some great fun for the media to report on so stay tuned for that starting Monday.

BTW, who cares what (George) Bush Jr. has to say although him saying that he misses being on or involved with the air force or airplane rides is perfect. After all, his infamous announcement that the Iraqi War was done (and won by us) happened after he flew on one before landing onto that aircraft carrier ship. But again, he is just not that great at public speaking, let alone thinking fast on the fly. because if that is the thing he misses about being the POTUS, he is ridiculous. He is like a kid. I guess his comment about being accommodated with a shower on air force flights is a joke. Sorry but still, I dunno. He acts like a kid. he annoys me so i may look for things to knock when he speaks. I will mellow out about him. Again, sorry.

BTW, that story about La Guardia needing water was a joke. Sorry. They are evidently entertaining the ability to fly out of there to the west coast or maybe to CA. I thought they did not fly past the Mississippi but that could be a dated thing.

Kevin Lacz is on to discuss the American Sniper trial. He was in the film and I think he was friends with Chris Kyle and maybe Chad Littlefield. I am not sure of he is an actor or normal person.

Overall, please stay in touch!

'ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror'; An Excerpt from Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan

Monday, 23 Feb 2015 11:41 PM

By Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan

Excerpted from the book ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan

Days before the video showing James Foley’s beheading was aired around the world, Iraq’s authoritarian prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, resigned under US and Iranian pressure, ostensibly ad- dressing the political impasse for which the rise of ISIS has been blamed. His successor was a fellow member of the Dawa Party, the sixty-two-year-old Haider al-Abadi, who had spent years of exile in London. Many Iraqi Sunnis we talked to at the time praised al-Abadi as an improvement on al-Maliki, but none thought he could or would make a substantive difference in the way Iraq was governed. This, they all said, owed to the endemic sectarian dimensions of the nation’s politics and Tehran’s overweening influence on Baghdad.

It didn’t bode well for the new premier’s tenure that in one of his first press conferences he advocated a strategic partnership between the United States and Iran in combating ISIS—a partnership that many Sunnis believed started in 2003. “The American approach us to leave Iraq to the Iraqis,” Sami al-Askari, a former Iraqi MP and senior advisor to al-Maliki, told Reuters. “The Iranians don’t say leave Iraq to the Iraqis. They say leave Iraq to us.”

One of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism now presents itself as the last line of defense against terrorism. Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani has overseen the creation of a multipronged shadow army consisting of the very same Special Groups not only responsible for killing American soldiers and countless Sunni civilians in Iraq, but now equally committed to propping up the murderous regime in Damascus. According to Phillip Smyth, there are now more than fifty “highly ideological, anti-American, and rabidly sectarian” Shia militias operating and recruiting in Iraq. The conditions have been recreated, in other words, for exactly the same sectarian holy war envisioned by al-Zarqawi in 2004—only this time, it will be played out in two countries at the same time. As a former Iraqi official put it, “I’m not very hopeful. This is almost like a last chance for Iraq to remain as a unified state.”

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Despite al-Abadi’s calls for national unity, the sectarian bloodletting continues. According to Human Rights Watch, ISF and Shia militias have executed 255 prisoners in six villages and towns since June 9, 2014, a day before the fall of Mosul. Eight of the victims were boys younger than eighteen. On August 22, 2014, the Musab Bin Omair mosque in Diyala—where ISIS has anticipated its fiercest battles—was raided by ISF personnel and Asaib Ahl al-Haq militants dressed in plainclothes. They massacred dozens.

Al-Abadi’s Interior Minister, Mohammed al-Ghabban, is also a senior official in the Badr Organization, which means that a notorious death squad has once again been given purview over Iraq’s police force. The Badr has lately been accused of “kidnapping and summarily executing peopl[and] expelling Sunnis from their homes, then looting and burning them, in some cases razing entire villages,” according to Human Rights Watch’s Iraq researcher Erin Evers. “The [United States] is basically paving the way for these guys to take over the country even more than they already have.”

Nearly every major Iraqi offensive against ISIS has borne Suleimani’s fingerprints. In late October, when ISIS was driven from Jurf al-Sakher, a town about thirty miles southwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River Valley, agents of the Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah were embedded with some seven thousand Iraqi Security Forces soldiers and militiamen, providing training and distributing arms. The entire operation was planned by Sulei-

Indirectly supported by US warplanes, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist entity, played a lead combat role in ending ISIS’s months-long siege of Amerli, a Shia Turkomen town of about fifteen thousand, in November 2014. Suleimani was photographed smiling in Amerli shortly after it was retaken.

US Abrams tanks have been photographed in the possession of Kata’ib Hezbollah, making ISIS not the only terrorist organization to have requisitioned American materiel intended for the ISF.

What has the last seven months of US-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq accomplished? The Pentagon announced that sixteen out of the twenty oil refineries ISIS had been using to fund its activities were rendered inoperable. According to Dr. Hisham al-Hashimi, by the end of 2014, ISIS had lost 90 percent of its oil-driven revenue, nine out of eleven weapons warehouses in Iraq, and three out of ten warehouses in Syria. Adding to this seemingly impressive list of damage was the elimination of thirty ISIS leaders in air strikes. These included a dozen high-ranking officials such as Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, al-Baghdadi’s deputy, Ridwan Taleb al-Hamdouni, the “governor” of Mosul, and the military commanders of Ramadi, Salah ad-Din, Fallujah and Ninewah. Al-Abadi has claimed that al-Baghdadi himself was injured in a sortie on al-Qaim. Washington says that ISIS has lost around seven hundred square kilometers of terrain.

While it is certainly true that the momentum of ISIS’s blitzkrieg in Iraq has been stalled considerably—it no longer threat- ens to take Erbil, much less Baghdad—its defeats so far have been tactical. “Purely from a military perspective, the single factor that stands out the most to me is that ISIS has always had the strategic initiative,” said Chris Harmer. “There are times when they’ve been more active in one place than another. But they’ve never been on the strategic defensive. Tactically, they’ve been on the defensive: they took Mosul Dam, then lost it. They took Bayji Oil Refinery, then lost it. But is ISIS ‘losing’? No.”

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ISIS has suffered mainly within enemy lines rather than in its geostrategic heartlands across Syria and Iraq. Sinjar and Bayji, for example, are crucial to the Kurds. Baqubah and Dhuluiya provide entryways into Baghdad and thus matter greatly to the ISF and Shia militias, which have ethnically cleansed them, according to Ayad Allawi, now the vice president for reconciliation. Despite some 1,700 air strikes, ISIS has still managed to advance in places where it has either a natural constituency or can dominate a Sunni population too fearful or indifferent to rise up against it. Two months into Operation Inherent Resolve, the jihadists sacked Hit, the town where Adam Such glimpsed an early and localized Sahwa in 2005. Other villages and hamlets in Anbar have fallen since.

As Derek Harvey demonstrated a decade ago, just because jihadists have been expelled from ethnically mixed terrain, such as Baghdad, doesn’t mean they’ve been defeated or are less capable of conducting operations. ISIS continues to rule more or less uncontested in al-Bab, Minbij, Jarablous, Raqqa, southern Hasaka, Tal Afar, Qa’im, and outside the city center of Ramadi. Rebellion from within in these areas is extremely unlikely in the short term. In Haditha and Amiriya Fallujah, Sunni tribes are divided over what do about ISIS—and the consequence is tribal infighting, which only forecloses on the possibility of another Awakening.