Finding an ISIS Training Camp Using Google Earth 134
An anonymous reader writes: Terrorist organization ISIS has been in the news a lot lately for their hostile activities in Iraq and Syria. They've also been very active online, posting propaganda and photos on various social networking sites to try to recruit more members. Frequently, they'll have pictures of themselves in nondescript locations — but even carefully selected images give clues to a real location. Citizen journalists at Bellingcat analyzed a group of these photos, comparing buildings and bridges in the background to images from Google Earth. With very little to go on, they were able to pinpoint the location of a terrorist training camp.
Re:I'm looking now (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sorry but where have you been these last few months?
Iraq has been asking the US to send in the troops for a while now. We have been ignoring them and playing games claiming that the Maliki government caused ISIS to happen and more or less forced him out of office before we would help. Now we are doing limited bombings and offering strategy meetings with about 1000 troops in the area supposedly to protect US personnel. We were going to go in and rescue some people on a mountain but I guess they were either killed or escaped by other means. We did drop food and water I think.
http://www.dispatch.com/conten... [dispatch.com]
Re:Time to build a cruise missile and send it over (Score:3, Informative)
> Seriously, after that sawing off a live man's head, I have NO problem with blowing these assholes away.
If a video of a man's head being sawed off makes you frightened and impairs your judgement, then you are just playing into their hand. It's a shame the word 'terrorism' has shifted away from its original meaning of "The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims", because it's such a great word, and it applies amazingly well here. An act of terror doesn't have to be crashing a plane into a building. Sawing off a man's head then posting the video on the internet is, in fact, an act of terror. It is designed to inspire fear. They've figured out what the Mafia, the Viet Cong, the Mongols, and countless other groups throughout history have found out: Making yourself look like an inhuman monster is actually a good survival strategy when your enemies are stronger and more numerous. This fictional quote, while it's from a movie, it's particularly relevant: "It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."