Flush with cash and weapons, Islamic State is attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria and withstanding U.S.-led air strikes that are failing to hit the right targets, a powerful Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary leader told Reuters in an interview.

Hadi al-Amiri also said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and in Iraq, despite reports that he had been wounded.

"Many of its leadership have been killed but one should know that Daesh (IS) is still strong," said Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization whose armed wing has been fighting alongside Iraqi security forces to recapture territory seized by IS.

"Their attacks are still daring and swift and their morale is high. They still have money and weapons." Amiri delivered a damning assessment of the air strikes that the United States and its allies have been conducting against Islamic State for almost 18 months.

As time goes on and new information makes its way to the public, it is clear that the 2003 invasion of Iraq will go down in history as one of the most effective misinformation campaigns ever perpetrated on such a mass scale; for using blatant lies and fear-mongering to convince the public that the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein represented a clear and present danger to the American people.

Instead, we now know that the entire pretext for the war was fabricated; that the war was in fact a grand conspiracy orchestrated by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney to provoke a for-profit conflict, reaping billions for defense contractors and the fossil fuel industry while forcing the American people to shoulder the obscene cost of $1.7 trillion dollars and 4,500 American lives. 

A newly declassified report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff only confirms our worst fears. The September 9th, 2002 document, originating from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, details what the Bush Administration knew about the Hussein regime’s attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Which turned out to be almost nothing, as POLITICO reports:

“We’ve struggled to estimate the unknowns. … We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program. Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence.” And while the report said intelligence officials “assess Iraq is making significant progress in WMD programs,” it conceded that “large parts” of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs were concealed. As a result, “Our assessments rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence. The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs.”

President Obama, fresh off the implementation of the nuclear accord and a prisoner swap, may want to believe that Iran is, as he suggested to NPR a year ago while discussing what it would take to get a deal done, now on its way to becoming “a very successful regional power” that will abide “by international norms and international rules.” This flies in the face of Iran’s long record of making war on Americans, using the same tactics time after time.

On Jan. 20, 2007, a dozen or so Iraqi militants wearing military uniforms and driving black GMC Suburbans drove into the Karbala provincial government headquarters in a brazen attempt to kidnap U.S. soldiers. One U.S. soldier died in a gun battle. Four others were seized by the attackers and murdered during the course of a pursuit by U.S. forces.

Coalition forces subsequently captured two leaders of an Iranian-backed terrorist group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH, or League of the Righteous), the brothers Qais Khazali and Laith Khazali, who under interrogation revealed direct involvement by Iran’s Quds Force in planning the attack. A Lebanese Hezbollah operative closely linked to the Quds Force, Ali Musa Daqduq, was subsequently captured and linked to the attack as well in spite of his attempts to pretend that he was deaf and mute.

Two years after the Karbala attack , in 2009, Laith Khazali was freed as part of a prisoner exchange with Iranian-backed Shiite militants who had kidnapped five British men in Iraq and killed four of them. Qais Khazali was freed in 2010 and Daqduq in 2012.

The kidnapping of three Americans is a reminder of their powerful presence

​The kidnapping last week of three Americans in Baghdad underscores the central but volatile role of predominantly Shi‘ite, progovernment militias in the ongoing crisis in Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed to Reuters on Tuesday that the three American contractors who disappeared are being held by a militia, so far unnamed. The incident is the latest illustration of how militias often allied with Iran remain an unpredictable element in Iraq’s shifting landscape of power, posing a dilemma both for the government in Baghdad and for the U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS.

In the power vacuum that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a range of militia groups became a lethal feature, their abuses often overlooked by a U.S. military focused on battling Sunni insurgents. But when ISIS seized a huge chunk of the country and routed the Iraqi army in 2014, it was the Iran-backed Shi‘ite militias that led the charge against them, overshadowing Iraq’s security forces. After the fall of the city of Mosul that year, the militias expanded their local prestige by rushing to defend Baghdad and its environs from the advancing jihadists.​

It is claimed the youngster is from Iraq. A campaign on social media has quickly spread around Europe to find a young kid pictured in a blue and white plastic bag with the words 'Messi 10' on the back.

The improvised shirt obviously resembles Messi's own Argentina national team strip.

The image first appeared on Turkish fan blogs, with the child said to be from the war-torn region of Dohuk in Iraq. The news quickly spread to other European countries via social media, and a campaign of sorts has been started in an attempt to find the youngster and get him a real shirt.

The Tweet from Juez Central reads: "Tremendous image. A child in Iraq manages to play in his idol’s t-shirt. The Beautiful Game".

Western-backed Kurdish forces are deliberately destroying Arab villages in a revenge campaign that could amount to war crimes, according to a new Amnesty International report. 

The human-rights group said it had documented a "concerted campaign" by Kurdish forces to forcibly displace Arab communities "to punish them" for "perceived sympathies" to ISIS. 

Kurdistan's Regional Government rejected the allegations of a concerted campaign, as did U.S. military officials. 

U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have been leading the charge in driving ISIS out of areas the militants seized when they swept through northern Iraq in 2014. 

Iraqi security forces allegedly continued a disturbing pattern of “unlawful killings” and other actions that could be considered war crimes, just weeks after an ABC News investigation exposed a litany of purported atrocities committed by Iraqi forces – crimes that the Iraqi government promised would be investigated fully and would not be tolerated.

A United Nations report released today, and covering a time period from May to October 2015, said UN officials had “received a number of serious allegations of unlawful killings committed by ISF [Iraqi security forces] and associated forces... includ[ing] alleged attacks and reprisals against persons believed or perceived to support or to be associated with [ISIS].”

“For example, on 9 June, a video was posted in social media showing a group of men, wearing what appeared to be Iraqi Federal Police uniforms, burning a cadaver and shouting sectarian chants,” the UN report says. UN sources claimed the body was found in Tikrit, during operations to “liberate” the city in February.

“In a similar incident, a video was posted online purporting to show members of the Shi’a Imam Ali Brigades burning the body of a man hanging by his feet in the town of Garma, northeast of Fallujah in Anbar,” the report says. According to the report, in the video the “perpetrators” accuse the man of being a member of ISIS. Though a UN “local source” corroborated that claim, the UN said it could not independently verify the incident or the authenticity of the video.

Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in an apparent effort to uproot Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support for the so-called Islamic State (IS), said Amnesty International in a new report published today.

The report, Banished and dispossessed: Forced displacement and deliberate destruction in northern Iraq, is based on field investigation in 13 villages and towns and testimony gathered from more than 100 eyewitnesses and victims of forced displacement. It is corroborated by satellite imagery revealing evidence of widespread destruction carried out by Peshmerga forces, or in some cases Yezidi militias and Kurdish armed groups from Syria and Turkey operating in coordination with the Peshmerga.
​
 “KRG forces appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities by destroying entire villages in areas they have recaptured from IS in northern Iraq. The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification, may amount to war crimes,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor, who carried out the field research in northern Iraq.

​Arab residents who fled their homes are also barred by KRG forces from returning to recaptured areas. “Tens of thousands of Arab civilians who were forced to flee their homes because of fighting are now struggling to survive in makeshift camps in desperate conditions. Many have lost their livelihoods and all their possessions and with their homes destroyed, they have nothing to return to. By barring the displaced from returning to their villages and destroying their homes KRG forces are further exacerbating their suffering,” said Donatella Rovera.