“Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away”: US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes

• “Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away”: US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes
  by Tyler Durden, www.zerohedge.com  
  Last week, in the wake of Russian and US airstrikes on ISIS oil convoys, we asked three important questions: 
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  1. Who are the commodity trading firms that have been so generously buying millions of smuggled oil barrels procured by the Islamic State at massive discounts to market, and then reselling them to other interested parties? In other words, who are the middlemen?
  2. Can it possibly be true, as officials now claim, that the Obama administration refrained from bombingIslamic State oil trucks because Washington thought the group was “only” making $100 million per year instead of $400 million? 
  3. Is it likely, considering how cavalier the US is about collateral damage from drone strikes, that The Pentagon refused to take out Islamic State’s revenue stream because the military was afraid of killing a few “innocent” truck drivers who by definition knew they were transporting illegal crude for a terrorist organization?
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  The first question is, for now anyway, unanswerable. As to the second and third, here’s what we said:
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  Perhaps the US overestimated the effect its airstrikes were having on Islamic State’s oil production capabilities and perhaps The Pentagon was concerned with killing innocent truck drivers, but it could also be that, as Sergei Lavrov suggested earlier this month,the US has until now intentionally avoided hitting ISIS where it hurts in order to keep them in the game and ensure they can still be effective at destabilizing Assad. If you cut off the oil trade, they lose the ability to battle the regime.
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  Whatever the case, it’s too late now, because just as Russian airstrikes and the Iranian ground presence forced the US to do something – anything – to prove to the world that America is serious about fighting terrorism, Moscow’s targeting of ISIS oil convoys has forced the US to get on board (the Russians are going to hit them anyway, so there’s no point in vacillating).
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  American airstrikes reportedly destroyed 116 oil tanker trucks earlier this month and another 280 today in Paris mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud’s former fiefdom of Deir ez-Zor. 
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  Of course the US would hate to catch ISIS off guard risk killing innocent truck drivers, so prior to the November 16 strike, US planes dropped leaflets warning the drivers to “get out of your trucks now, and run away from them.” Here’s the leaflet (note the stick figures running for their lives): (top of post)
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  Here’s some commentary from Colonel Steve Warren from Operation Inherent Resolve (delivered at a press conference earlier this month):  
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  Early Sunday morning in Al-Bukamal, which is the southern blue circle number two, you see two blue circles there. They both represent Tidal Wave II operations, but we’re in the southern one — the one further towards the bottom of your screen, there.
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  In Al-Bukamal, we destroyed 116 tanker trucks, which we believe will reduce ISIL’s ability to transport its stolen oil products.
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  This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike. We did a show of force, by — we had aircraft essentially buzz the trucks at low altitude.
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  read more.

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