ISIS THE CAPABLE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  We learn almost each day about the expanding capabilities of the Islamic State.  This report is based on information from Australia.  From AFP: 

The Islamic State group has shown it is prepared to use chemical weapons and is likely to have among its recruits the technical expertise to develop them, Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said.

In a speech late on Friday, Bishop said Australia had no doubt the Syrian regime had used toxic chemicals including sarin and chlorine over the past four years.

But she said apart from some crude and small scale endeavours, the conventional wisdom had been the Islamic State group’s intention to acquire and weaponise chemical agents was largely aspirational.

“The use of chlorine by Daesh, and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the west, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development,” she said in Perth, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

“Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons.”

The use of chlorine in homemade bombs has been reported in several parts of Iraq and Syria, with car and roadside bombs easy to rig with chlorine canisters.

And in March, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan government said analysis of soil and clothing samples showed IS used chlorine gas in a car bomb attack in January.

COMMENT:  Why do we have to learn this from an Australian official?  Because it is the practice of the Obamans, with their solidly left-wing roots, to minimize the capabilities of our enemies.  It's part of the left-wing party line, which begins with the idea that we are the problem, not the barbaric forces we face.

June 8, 2015