One lucky break (in a dozen years of floundering)

Until June of this year, none of America's para-militarized, high-tech and super-secret spy agencies had a clue as to how many militants there were in the group called ISIL or ISIS or, now, the Islamic State (IS).  They couldn't even offer a ballpark figure.  Why?  Because the group doesn't use cell phones, email, chat rooms, Twitter or Facebook.   IS uses only human couriers for its messaging, instead, and it was only the lucky capture of a key militant in June that provided any information at all on the group's size, reach or capability.

Abu Hajar was arrested with 160 USB memory sticks in his possession, just two days before the fall of the city of Mosul. It was by pure chance that the US Intelligence Agencies learned anything of ISIS's strength and that they had the ability and the goal of taking most of Sunni Iraq.  Abu Hajar cracked after two weeks of "interrogation", by which I'm certain is meant "intense torture" and gave up the head of ISIS's military council.  Somehow, the CIA managed to get decryption keys to those memory sticks, and I doubt the courier had those keys in his possession.

Hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and 17 US intelligence agencies had almost no knowledge of this organization until 4 months ago, even though it sprang up in territory the US has occupied for eight years ... there had been no estimates or predictions of the group's rapid growth and its spread through throughout the region.  The US had no idea that IS would completely overwhelm the Iraqi Army it had trained and supported ... easily.  The US stumbled onto the knowledge; they were absolutely clueless.

Knowing how incompetent the "intelligence agencies" are, there is absolutely no reason that any reasonable person, with a modicum of courage, should lend an ounce of credence to their shrill fear-drenched cries of alarm about the (probably fictional) terror group they call "Khorasan."

Don't buy it.  It's imaginary; it's propaganda.  It's a huge lie.  Like the nonexistent stockpiles of chemical, neurological, and radiological weapons of mass destruction 12 years ago ... it's warmongering of the very worst kind, and I, for one, am not buying it.  Not from these fools.