SHOCKING – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  Field Marshal Obama finally admits what we all knew, that he has no real strategy to defeat ISIS.  From an editorial in the Washington Examiner: 

Speaking Monday at a news conference in Germany, President Obama acknowledged that the United States does not yet have a "complete strategy" for training Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq.

If that admission sounds familiar it's because Obama said almost the same thing last August when he told White House reporters "We don't have a strategy yet" for defeating the Islamic State.

So, what exactly has the administration been doing for the last 10 months?

We know that the U.S. has been conducting air strikes over both Syria and Iraq. The main result, according to a top State Department official, has been more than 10,000 dead Islamic State fighters.

But that's a dubious claim. With no American troops on the ground to assess death tolls from air strikes, the number of terrorists killed cannot be known. What's more, the administration's emphasis on body counts is eerily evocative of Vietnam, a war in which the number of enemy casualties became the subject of frequent official reports as a measure of military success. In those times, the emphasis on body counts concealed just how badly the war was going in every other respect.

By most other measures, the Islamic State has been flourishing in the time since Obama's first "no strategy" remark. Not only has the terrorist group seen an influx of recruits — including as many as 100 from the U.S. — but it has also made significant territorial gains in both Iraq and Syria.

COMMENT:  And then there's the little matter of the wealth that ISIS is building up from oil revenues and other sources.  You can buy a lot of firepower in this world with real money, and you also have the power to bribe.

ISIS is doing well.  It will have setbacks, but there's a good chance it's here to stay, and a direct threat to those it despises, including us.

June 9,  2015